Author(s)

Miguel Pereira Lopes

School of Social and Political Sciences, Lisbon Tech University, Lisboa, Portugal.

This study empirically tested if the personality trait of optimism and the interpersonal capability to generate optimism in one’s network nodes (i.e., alter-optimism) influences the social relationship patterns. The results provide evidence that optimism trait is independent from the way social networks of personal-issue sharing, advice-seeking, problem-solving, and innovation, are structured. In contrary, the alter-optimism capability does provide a good explanation of one’s social network position. Implications of these findings are discussed at the end.

Optimism; Alter-Optimists; Homophily; Social Network Analysis

Lopes, M. (2012) “Good Vibrations”: The Social Networks of Optimists and Alter-Optimists. Social Networking, 1, 1-12. doi: 10.4236/sn.2012.11001.