How We All Influence Each Other

September 14, 2012

Interview with Nicholas Christakis, author of the book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives -- How Your Friends' Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do

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Mike Carruthers:
How many real friends do you have?

Nicholas Christakis, M.D.:
The average number of friends Americans have is about 4 - 1/2 – that they feel socially close to, that they would spend free time with, that they would discuss personal problems with and so forth.
 

Nicholas Christakis, author of the book Connected 

It turns out that how interconnected my friends are affects many things. For example, there was one study that looked at whether teenage girls are more likely to think about suicide depending not on how many friends they had but on whether their friends knew each other.  And the girl whose friends don’t know each other or don’t get along is much more likely to consider killing herself than a girl whose friends do know each other and do get along.

And there was a fascinating study by one researcher that looked at groups of people who were put together to produce Broadway musicals.

And he found a very interesting pattern. If you put a bunch of people together who have never worked together before the musical is a flop. Conversely, if they’ve all worked together before and they all know each other, it’s a flop again.

But put a mixed group together and you get a different outcome.

So some of the people have worked together before but they also tap into new people who nobody knew before, who bring in new ideas, you get the sweet spot so that the musical is a big success and a critical acclaim as well.

The point, says Nicholas, is as humans we can’t help but influence each other in our network in lots of different ways.

This desire for connection and this desire for influence and this susceptibility to influence are so deeply rooted, they are basically inescapable.