{"id":224142,"date":"2025-10-28T02:22:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T07:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/more-friends-more-division-study-finds-growing-social-circles-may-fuel-polarization"},"modified":"2025-10-28T02:22:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T07:22:13","slug":"more-friends-more-division-study-finds-growing-social-circles-may-fuel-polarization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/more-friends-more-division-study-finds-growing-social-circles-may-fuel-polarization","title":{"rendered":"More friends, more division: Study finds growing social circles may fuel polarization"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/more-friends-more-division-study-finds-growing-social-circles-may-fuel-polarization2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Between 2008 and 2010, polarization in society increased dramatically alongside a significant shift in social behavior: the number of close social contacts rose from an average of two to four or five people. The connection between these two developments could provide a fundamental explanation for why societies around the world are increasingly fragmenting into ideological bubbles.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe big question that not only we, but many countries are currently grappling with, is why polarization has increased so dramatically in recent years,\u201d says Stefan Thurner from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), explaining the study\u2019s motivation. The research was <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.2517530122\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers\u2019 findings confirm that increasing polarization is not merely perceived\u2014it is measurable and objectively occurring. \u201cAnd this increase happened suddenly, between 2008 and 2010,\u201d says Thurner. The question remained: what caused it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Between 2008 and 2010, polarization in society increased dramatically alongside a significant shift in social behavior: the number of close social contacts rose from an average of two to four or five people. The connection between these two developments could provide a fundamental explanation for why societies around the world are increasingly fragmenting into ideological [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}