Belief consonance and cues of structural embeddedness jointly shape curation in online social networks

Social environments are increasingly curated through digital interfaces, raising questions about how psychological and structural cues shape discourse networks in online interaction settings. We investigate two forces that guide network curation: belief consonance —the tendency to prefer interaction with individuals who share similar beliefs– and sensitivity to mutual connections , a structural cue indicating how embedded a peer is in one’s network. In an experiment, 373 participants made 7,328 decisions about maintaining or dissolving ties to peers while sharing their opinions about social issues. We manipulated whether they could see how many mutual connections they shared with their alters or not. Across conditions, we observed a robust preference for belief consonance: participants were significantly more likely to dissolve ties with alters whose beliefs differed from their own. When mutual connection information was available, participants were also more likely to retain structurally embedded alters, and sever ties to those with whom they lacked mutual connections. Critically, embeddedness did not moderate the effect of belief consonance– sharing mutual connections reduced the likelihood of tie dissolution similarly for both agreeing and disagreeing alters. These findings suggest that in minimally embedded online interaction settings, belief consonance and structural embeddedness exert additive, not interactive, effects on network curation. While belief similarity strongly shapes tie decisions, structural embeddedness provides an independent stabilizing influence on the evolution of discourse networks.