Generalized Friendship Paradox: An Analytical Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a theoretical model explaining the generalized friendship paradox in social networks, showing that degree and quality are positively correlated and that the paradox holds regardless of quality distribution.

Contribution

It presents a novel quality-based network growth model that analytically demonstrates the generalized friendship paradox and degree-quality correlation.

Findings

The model exhibits both friendship and generalized friendship paradox.

Degree and quality are positively correlated in the model.

The paradox holds regardless of quality distribution.

Abstract

The friendship paradox refers to the sociological observation that, while the people's assessment of their own popularity is typically self-aggrandizing, in reality they are less popular than their friends. The generalized friendship paradox is the average alter superiority observed empirically in social settings, scientific collaboration networks, as well as online social media. We posit a quality-based network growth model in which the chance for a node to receive new links depends both on its degree and a quality parameter. Nodes are assigned qualities the first time they join the network, and these do not change over time. We analyse the model theoretically, finding expressions for the joint degree-quality distribution and nearest-neighbor distribution. We then demonstrate that this model exhibits both the friendship paradox and the generalized friendship paradox at the network level, regardless of the distribution of qualities. We also show that, in the proposed model, the degree and quality of each node are positively correlated regardless of how node qualities are distributed.