James Fowler and the Power of Connections

Author: Michelle Riggen-Ransom
Posted: 10/24/09 23:10 UTC
Info: Bio
Tags: influence, obesity, Social networks, Society

Scientist James Fowler is a professor at University of California San Diego, where he studies the intersection of social and natural sciences. His most recent book is Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. For years, he has studied the role our real-life networks play in our health outcome.

CC image by Kris Krug.

You hear social networks these days and what do you think of? Twitter, Facebook etc. But Fowler is interested in “what became before”. Part of what makes us human, says Fowler, is that we live in “webs of humanity”. Who are we going to be friends with? Who do we let in and how do they influence us?

The simplest kind of natural network is a pair. Pairs connect to form beautiful webs. How do these networks form? What is their purpose? How do they connect us?

We shape our networks. We chose who we bring into our network. We even choose who within our network we connect with. Some of us want everyone to be friends with each other, others take a George Costanza approach, “We don’t want worlds to collide.”

In establishing a pairing: how many dates does it take to find Mr./Ms. right? Statistically, it would take 6,000 dates. With a network, you are in touch with personal information on a wide range of people. In fact, two out of three people who are married got married to within three degrees of separation.

Fowler is also interested in how these networks affect our lives. Researchers followed people for thirty-two years and asked questions like: where do you live? Who are you friends? They were able to see a vast, interconnected network. For the first time, they got a bird’s eyeview of a real social network. On one case, they studied obesity in Framingham – was it spreading like the flu? They were able to cluster info, size the data points to indicate obesity.

The results were not definitive, and had to account for false positives. These were easy to deal with: compare to results using a simulator. Or maybe people of the same type were choosing to be friends, reflecting a characteristic called homophily (we choose to be friends with people who are like us.) There was an advantage to having thirty-two years worth of data to draw from.

They made a movie visualizing this data, which Church played for the audience. In the clip, there are shifting lines, expanding and disappearing dots representing and tracking marriages, divorces, death. “We are connected in ways that other social species are: school of fish, flocks of birds”.

So to the issue of obesity: can your friends make you fat? It turns out that you are 57% more likely to have fat friends if you yourself enjoy a danish or three once in a while. Spouses and siblings have enormous influence. But it’s only the truly deep connections that have that influence – you can’t catch obesity from a fat guy on the bus like cooties.

Some people whose friends gain weight stop being friends with them. But data shows that every friend makes you happier regardless of their weight i.e. it is better to have a fat friend than no friend at all. People who ended friendships when their friend gained weight ultimately ended up gaining themselves. A healthier lifestyles means getting friends and family involved. This is critically important if you want to make real change in your life.

Fowler also discussed “emotional stampedes”. Emotional states like happy, unhappy and neutral spread through networks. And, far-away friends affect you as much as people close to you. For instance, even seeing a far-away friend once a year getting fit can inspire you.

There’s also financial contagion e.g. Northern Rock bank, where there was a run on the bank because everyone thought that everyone else thought the bank was going to fail. Contagion works with voting, too. Person to person effects; voting inspires others in their network to vote.

“Real influence spreads three degrees and no further,” says Fowler. They most affect obesity, smoking, drinking, happiness, altruism, loneliness and depression. There’s a ripple effect in networks; influence and ties gets weaker the further you go out. They also conducted twin studies: can genes affect people’s social network structure? His research showed that it did.

There are important lessons to take online: social networks affect you in many ways. Is that the end of free will? No. Fowler personally reacted to this new evidence by losing five pounds. This, he feels, will potentially improve his son’s life, his son’s friends lives. By changing his behavior, he wants to take care of friends and family. “If you tell people that they can influence one thousand people, they will change their lives.”