The influence your friends’ friends have on your life

Is the phrase “tell me who you hang out with and I’ll tell you who you are” true? Scientific research says yes.

Hello friends!

Doctor Nicholas A. Christakis, a professor at Harvard University and Yale, worked with terminally ill patients. He already knew that, statistically, when one spouse dies, the chance that the other will get sick or die within a year greatly increases. One day, however, he began to consider the influence of illness not only on the husband on the wife or the wife on the husband, but also on what the researcher calls the social network.

The concept of social network has nothing to do with social networks like facebook and twitter. A social network, for Christakis, is a concept that describes the people with whom we have direct relationships, on a daily basis, and more: the friends of your friends and the friends of your friends’ friends.

For example, I have a friend named Gustavo. Gustavo has a friend named Rodrigo. Rodrigo, on the other hand, has a friend called Ivan. So, Gustavo’s friend of my friend’s friend is Ivan.

According to sociological research and based on complex mathematical calculations, Ivan has influence on several factors in my life, even though I don’t know him. And this happens to everyone on a given social network.

To visualize, it is easy to imagine what this influence means in terms of health. If Ivan gets the flu, there’s a real chance that I will get the flu. After all, Ivan will have contact with Rodrigo and Rodrigo, in turn, with Gustavo.

One of Christakis’s studies that became well known around the world concerns obesity. As with the flu, the obesity of a friend of a friend of a friend can be “contagious”, in the sense that a friend influences the behavior of the other and, in the long run, lifestyle can lead to obesity – or non-obesity.

As far as obesity is concerned, it gets a little harder to visualize, like the flu. How can the obesity of someone I may not even know influence my body weight? Well, from the habits. If, say, Ivan starts eating greasy and industrialized foods at social events with Rodrigo, Rodrigo can adopt the same food tastes and, consequently, influence Gustavo who, over the years, can also influence my eating habits.

Likewise, if Ivan starts doing physical exercise, this new habit can be passed through my social network and influence my health. Christakis mentions that weight is one of the phenomena that can be studied scientifically in a social network. But not only.

As well as health issues such as the flu or body weight, moral tendencies such as accepting or rejecting a given political position or defending a cause also permeate social relations. And, last but not least, emotions are also in this chain of influences.

The happiness of a relatively distant person, like my friend’s friend Ivan, can have a big impact on my level of happiness. This is because emotions are contagious. We, as human beings, learn to have emotions and not only to have emotions, we also express them. By expressing them, we influence people who are in contact with us. In that sense, an emotion like joy or sadness is as contagious as the flu.

Christakis’ team did in-depth studies on this subject of emotions and came to conclusions similar to the transmission of germs or obesity.

The other’s fault, my responsibility

In a TED Talk, Christakis mentions that when the results of the obesity survey were published, newspapers in the United States ran the following headline:

“Are you gaining weight? Blame your fat friends.”

In Europe, however, the focus was different:

“Are your friends getting fat? Maybe you should blame yourself.”

Ultimately, both headlines are correct because the influence is reciprocal. If I stop eating badly and start exercising, it influences my friends, my friends’ friends and even the friends of my friends’ friends, just as Ivan can, indirectly, influence me.

Which leads us to think about the issue of guilt and responsibility. Of course, we can blame others for our behavior, our health, or our sadness. But that just doesn’t change anything. Looking back at one’s own responsibility is much more impactful. After all, if the other in my social network has an impact on me, I also have an impact on my social network. Which means if I get healthier, my social network tends to get healthier too. If I get happier, my social network tends to get happier too.

According to Christakis, this is the mechanism of culture. How a culture changes or stays the same. The individual directly influences his social network. And the social network directly influences the life of the individual.

Tell me who you’re with…

Does the phrase “tell me who you hang out with and I’ll tell you who you are”, then, make sense? According to Christakis’ research results, yes. Yes, because it is possible to locate several factors of an individual from the social network in which he participates and is inserted.

However, it is clear that the determination is not 100%. Even if a guy has depressed friends, that doesn’t mean he will be depressed. But the reciprocal influence is proven. The individual, when changing, changes the social environment, and the social environment, when changing, changes the individual. The change may not be felt overnight, but it is easily noticeable in the long run.

Another point to be thought about is the change of a social network. If an individual changes a lot, it is natural that their social network will also change. A subject whose friends, friends of friends and friends of friends of friends frequented a certain place and shared certain thoughts (like a church, a football team, a place to go to party)… if this subject changes completely, his whole network will change . Friends, friends of friends and friends of friends of friends will walk away. They will have less influence, but another social network will take their place.

Conclusion

What I would like to point out, in conclusion, is the impact we can have on our social network and even on people we don’t know and, virtually, on society in general. Which makes us think about the issue of responsibility for each act and each behavior.

Have you thought? If you increase your happiness level, can even your friend’s friend’s friend benefit?

– Questions, suggestions, comments, please write below!

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