National differences in network density: Israel and the United States

Most sociological perspectives suggest that personal relations are shaped by broad societal structures, but there is relatively little systematic cross-national research on social networks. We replicated Fischer's (1982) study of northern Californians' networks in the Haifa, Israel, region. Results suggest that, in many respects, the networks did not differ much. Israelis, however, had networks that were denser than the Americans' networks - and denser than networks reported from elsewhere, too. While we cannot conclusively account for this difference, it probably reflects the differences between Israeli group orientation and American individualism.