Contagious Behaviours
A very pared down article about contagious behaviours in social networks - the article spans 10 pages on the NY Times so these are the parts I found the most interesting, sorry if it doesn't make too much sense, I tried to make it flow a tiny bit!
(Christakis is a medical doctor and sociologist at Harvard.) The mother’s sickness had, in effect, spread outward “across three degrees of separation,” Christakis told me. “This illness affects the daughter, who spreads to the husband, who spreads to the friend, the guy who calls me up,” he added. He began talking to colleagues, wondering how he could further study the phenomenon.
Over the next year, the sociologist (Christakis) and the political scientist (Fowler) continued to analyze the Framingham data, finding more and more examples of contagious behavior. Drinking spread socially, as did happiness and even loneliness. And in each case one’s individual influence stretched out three degrees before it faded out. They termed this the “three degrees of influence” rule about human behavior: We are tied not just to those around us, but to others in a web that stretches farther than we know.
~~~
The subconscious nature of emotional mirroring might explain one of the more curious findings in their research: If you want to be happy, what’s most important is to have lots of friends. The gamble of increased sociability pays off, for a surprising reason: Happiness is more contagious than unhappiness. According to their statistical analysis, each additional happy friend boosts your good cheer by 9 percent, while each additional unhappy friend drags you down by only 7 percent. So by this logic, adding more links to your network should - mathematically - add to your store of happiness.
~~~
Obesity had its own quirk: Spouses didn’t appear to have as big an effect on each other as friends. If a male Framingham subject had a male friend who became fat, his risk doubled, but if his wife became obese, his risk was increased by only 37 percent. This, Christakis and Fowler say, is because when it comes to body image, we compare ourselves primarily to people of the same sex (and in the Framingham study, all spouses were of the opposite sex). In fact, different-sexed friends didn’t transmit any obesity to one another at all. If a man became fat, his female friends were completely unaffected, and vice versa.
~~~
Click for link to DA artist.
They discovered that behaviors appear to spread differently depending on the type of friendship that exists between two people. In the Framingham study, people were asked to name a close friend. But the friendships weren’t always symmetrical. Though A might designate B as his friend, B might not think of A the same way; he might never designate A as a friend. Christakis and Fowler found that this “directionality” mattered greatly. According to their data, if A becomes obese, it has no effect on B at all, because he doesn’t think of A as a close friend. In contrast, if B gains weight, then A’s risk of obesity rises by almost 100 percent. And if the two men regard each other as mutual friends, the effect is huge - either one gaining weight almost triples the other’s risk.
People who were deeply enmeshed in friendship circles were usually much happier than “isolates,” those with few ties. But if an isolate did manage to find happiness, she did not suddenly develop more ties and migrate to a position where she was more tightly connected to others. The reverse was also true: if a well-connected person became unhappy, he didn’t lose his ties and become an isolate. Your level of connectedness appears to be more persistent than even your overall temperament. “If you picked up someone who’s well connected and dropped them into another network, they’d migrate toward the center,” Christakis said. Your place in the network affects your happiness, in other words, but your happiness doesn’t affect your place in the network.
To look at society as a social network - instead of a collection of individuals - can lead to some thorny conclusions. In a column published last fall in The British Medical Journal, Christakis wrote that a strictly utilitarian point of view would suggest we should give better medical care to well-connected individuals, because they’re the ones more likely to pass on the benefits contagiously to others. “This conclusion,” Christakis wrote, “makes me uneasy.”
~~~
Yet there is also, the two scientists argue, something empowering about the idea that we are so entwined. “Even as we are being influenced by others, we can influence others.” For most of us, within three degrees we are connected to more than 1,000 people - all of whom we can theoretically help make healthier, fitter and happier just by our contagious example. “If someone tells you that you can influence 1,000 people,” Fowler said, “it changes your way of seeing the world.”
Full link here at the NY Times.
.
(Christakis is a medical doctor and sociologist at Harvard.) The mother’s sickness had, in effect, spread outward “across three degrees of separation,” Christakis told me. “This illness affects the daughter, who spreads to the husband, who spreads to the friend, the guy who calls me up,” he added. He began talking to colleagues, wondering how he could further study the phenomenon.
Over the next year, the sociologist (Christakis) and the political scientist (Fowler) continued to analyze the Framingham data, finding more and more examples of contagious behavior. Drinking spread socially, as did happiness and even loneliness. And in each case one’s individual influence stretched out three degrees before it faded out. They termed this the “three degrees of influence” rule about human behavior: We are tied not just to those around us, but to others in a web that stretches farther than we know.
~~~
The subconscious nature of emotional mirroring might explain one of the more curious findings in their research: If you want to be happy, what’s most important is to have lots of friends. The gamble of increased sociability pays off, for a surprising reason: Happiness is more contagious than unhappiness. According to their statistical analysis, each additional happy friend boosts your good cheer by 9 percent, while each additional unhappy friend drags you down by only 7 percent. So by this logic, adding more links to your network should - mathematically - add to your store of happiness.
~~~
Obesity had its own quirk: Spouses didn’t appear to have as big an effect on each other as friends. If a male Framingham subject had a male friend who became fat, his risk doubled, but if his wife became obese, his risk was increased by only 37 percent. This, Christakis and Fowler say, is because when it comes to body image, we compare ourselves primarily to people of the same sex (and in the Framingham study, all spouses were of the opposite sex). In fact, different-sexed friends didn’t transmit any obesity to one another at all. If a man became fat, his female friends were completely unaffected, and vice versa.
~~~
Click for link to DA artist.
They discovered that behaviors appear to spread differently depending on the type of friendship that exists between two people. In the Framingham study, people were asked to name a close friend. But the friendships weren’t always symmetrical. Though A might designate B as his friend, B might not think of A the same way; he might never designate A as a friend. Christakis and Fowler found that this “directionality” mattered greatly. According to their data, if A becomes obese, it has no effect on B at all, because he doesn’t think of A as a close friend. In contrast, if B gains weight, then A’s risk of obesity rises by almost 100 percent. And if the two men regard each other as mutual friends, the effect is huge - either one gaining weight almost triples the other’s risk.
People who were deeply enmeshed in friendship circles were usually much happier than “isolates,” those with few ties. But if an isolate did manage to find happiness, she did not suddenly develop more ties and migrate to a position where she was more tightly connected to others. The reverse was also true: if a well-connected person became unhappy, he didn’t lose his ties and become an isolate. Your level of connectedness appears to be more persistent than even your overall temperament. “If you picked up someone who’s well connected and dropped them into another network, they’d migrate toward the center,” Christakis said. Your place in the network affects your happiness, in other words, but your happiness doesn’t affect your place in the network.
To look at society as a social network - instead of a collection of individuals - can lead to some thorny conclusions. In a column published last fall in The British Medical Journal, Christakis wrote that a strictly utilitarian point of view would suggest we should give better medical care to well-connected individuals, because they’re the ones more likely to pass on the benefits contagiously to others. “This conclusion,” Christakis wrote, “makes me uneasy.”
~~~
Yet there is also, the two scientists argue, something empowering about the idea that we are so entwined. “Even as we are being influenced by others, we can influence others.” For most of us, within three degrees we are connected to more than 1,000 people - all of whom we can theoretically help make healthier, fitter and happier just by our contagious example. “If someone tells you that you can influence 1,000 people,” Fowler said, “it changes your way of seeing the world.”
Full link here at the NY Times.
.