RESEARCH_FILE
Gerald Mollenhorst
Utrecht University
Known for:Panel studies showing personal networks turn over roughly half their members every seven years
SEE THE PRACTICE
Turn a thought this research explains into one clear move.
THE THOUGHT
“I must have done something wrong”
YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
“Their silence is information. I do not need to turn it into a sentence about me.”
ONE PRIVATE MOVE
Open a blank note and write three short lines: what you know, what you are guessing, and one thing you will not keep checking tonight. Save it and put your phone face down for five minutes.
Key findings
- 2009
Re-interviewing over 600 Dutch adults seven years after a first survey, Mollenhorst found network size stayed roughly stable while only about half of the original network members remained — and friendships depended heavily on the social contexts (work, school, clubs, neighborhoods) where people kept meeting. Half of your friends lost in seven years, social network study finds (Utrecht University survey) ↗
- 2014
With Völker and Flap, he showed in Social Networks that about seventy percent of the confidants and practical helpers people named were no longer named seven years later, and that where a relationship is embedded — its social context — shapes whether it survives or is discontinued. Changes in personal relationships: How social contexts affect the emergence and discontinuation of relationships ↗