The friendship paradox: Causal evidence of its behavioral consequences

Gary Charness, Francesco Feri, Matthew Jackson, Miguel A. Melendez-Jimenez and Matthias Sutter

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We provide a first causal analysis of the behavioral consequences of the friendship paradox-the fact that people's friends in a network have more connections than average. We find that people's behavior is biased by their network position: they do not best respond to what they should infer the average behavior of the population to be (which determines their payoff), but instead best respond to the average behavior of their friends. In these games of complements, the friendship paradox generates a systematic upward distortion in actions and increases behavioral dispersion. These behavioral distortions persist despite learning opportunities: subjects fail to overcome the bias even when relocated within the network which should help them to understand how average population behavior can differ from local friend behavior.

Date: 2026-08, Revised 2026-10
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https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.07819 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Friendship Paradox: Causal Evidence of its Behavioral Consequences (2026)
Working Paper: The Friendship Paradox: Causal Evidence of Its Behavioral Consequences (2026)
Working Paper: The Friendship Paradox: Causal Evidence of Its Behavioral Consequences (2026)
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