Who You Know Shapes What You Believe
Try a simple tool to measure your network diversity and its impact.
Posted April 3, 2026 | Reviewed by Tyler Woods
How does who you know shape what you believe?
It’s a question I’ve spent years studying, starting early in graduate school. My research has found that the people we discuss important matters with (not casual acquaintances or social media contacts, but our real inner circle) have a strong influence on our beliefs. When everyone close to you shares the same political or religious views, those beliefs get reinforced and sustained. So, the more your inner circle agrees with you, the more certain you feel, even when a belief may be inaccurate.
What’s striking is how little it takes to disrupt this effect. Having even one person with different views in your close network is linked to significantly less extreme beliefs. One person! That finding has stayed with me since we first published it, and it’s the core insight behind this tool.
I explore this in more detail in my book and in my own research, and sometimes I’ll ask my classes to think about their own personal networks. However, I wanted to create something people could engage with directly, easily, and share with their own networks.
So today I’m sharing a new interactive tool to help you audit your own network diversity!
Introducing the Network Diversity Audit
The Network Diversity Audit is a free, browser-based worksheet that walks you through four steps:
At the end, you’ll get a Network Diversity Score and four reflection questions designed to help you think critically about your close relationships and your information environment.
A few important notes: This tool is designed for reflection and educational purposes only. The scores are rough estimates meant to prompt reflection, not precise measurements. The exercise is grounded in my own research on personal network composition and misinformation susceptibility. The social media section draws on research into how social media shapes influence. I explore the underlying social science in more depth in Chapters 5 and 6 of my book.
This is the second tool in a growing suite of free media literacy resources connected to Misguided . If you haven’t tried the Identity Map yet, I’d encourage you to try both! They measure related but distinct things, so you’ll get a comprehensive picture of potential identity and network biases to reflect on.
This post also appears on Misguided: The Newsletter.
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Matthew Facciani, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the Yale School of Public Health.
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