How We All Influence Each Other

November 2, 2009

Interview with Nicholas Christakis, M.D., author of the book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives

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Mike Carruthers:
We humans are social creatures. We live in communities and networks and we’re all influencing each other.

Nicholas Christakis, M.D.:
We are much more affected by these networks in which we’re imbedded than we are even by media. That is to say whether you gain or lose weight, for instance, has a lot more to do with whether your friends are gaining or losing weight than what the models looks like on the covers of magazines.
 

Nicholas Christakis, author of the book Connected, says it’s not just your friends and family members who are influencing you…

That is to say that the friends of your friends and your friends, friends, friends can ripple through the network and affect you. This would seem to suggest that we have less free will than we might of thought. On the other hand, even as it is the case that you’re being influenced by all these other people you can influence all these other people. In fact, choices you make in your life can influence hundreds, sometimes thousands of other people.

All sorts of things can spread through our networks and communities.

In general, we show that while bad things and good things spread in networks the fact that good things spread more consistently helps justify the fact that we put up with the spread of bad things – and in fact helps explain why we live our lives imbedded in social networks.

Some of the good things that spread through our networks include…

Positive changes in behaviors, smoking cessation, happiness, voting, kindness, love and affection – how people find their partners, valuable information about finding a job that you have lost.

To hear the  complete unedited interview, click here.