Why It Matters Who Your Friends Are

Imagine a scenario where all of your friends are jumping off a cliff. If everyone jumps, do you jump as well?
We know that the correct answer is supposed to be: "No, never! I am an independent thinker, and other people have no influence over me."
But the truthful answer is, yeah, maybe you do jump.

To study how other people can influence us, two scientists got access to data that tracked more that 12,000 residents of Framingham for 32 years. And the results were staggering.
They found evidence that weight gain and obesity could spread from person to person. Just like people can catch a flu from others, obesity was infectious and it was spreading within families and from friend to friend.

But obesity wasn't the only thing going around the Framingham community. When one person started to drink more alcohol, the drinking spread through the social network as well.

The same with smoking. If someone started smoking cigarettes, people around them were more likely to pick up the same smoking habit.
As disturbing as all of this may be, some positive evidence was also found. And that is that good behavior could also spread.

Some of the studies mentioned:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056...
https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a...

Images © Piers Baker www.svgdoodlewhiteboard.com

#friends #influence #behavior