Reducing college students’ social perception biases through social network intervention

ABSTRACT

In the present study, using complex network analysis, we conducted a one-year including two semesters to investigate the effect of social network intervention on college students’ social perception biases. One hundred and seventy college students participated in this study. Social network intervention was implemented in the second semester. Through changing individuals’ social neighbors and being augmented with four collaborative activities, modeling analysis showed students’ social perception biases were contingent on the level of homophily of their personal networks. Results also showed students’ social perception biases were significantly reduced after old social relationships being broken up and new social relationships being built. Furthermore, in the individual interviews, students reported heterogeneous re-grouping ensued by social network intervention offered them with opportunities of “Diversity of thinking”, “Creation of argumentative climates” and “Open-mindedness and inclusiveness change”.

KEYWORDS:

• Social perception bias
• social network intervention
• homophily of personal networks
• social relationship
• educational outcomes

Acknowledgements

Authors would like to gratefully acknowledge Yangtze University for their support of this work. Meanwhile, Authors would like to gratefully acknowledge Eun Lee for his help in implementing the research paradigm.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the College Teaching Research Project of Hubei Province in China [grant number 2020420].