Nicholas Christakis has a lot to say about the importance of the company we keep. Not only do your friends’ smoking and eating habits affect your own, but their loneliness and drinking habits do as well.
Christakis and his colleagues note that if you are directly connected with a person who drinks heavily, you are 50 percent more likely to drink heavily yourself. Even if a friend of a friend drinks heavily, your odds go up 36 percent.
Is this just another example of “birds of a feather flock together?” Do people who share similar personalities and habits simply find each other? While some of that is true, your friends also have important roles as part of your reference group. A person’s definition of eating too much or drinking too much or smoking too much might definitely be affected by the behavior he or she sees in friends and family. The “everybody does it” idea is much easier to accept if that’s all you see.
Understanding the impact of social networks on these important health behaviors is crucial to helping people improve their health. I’m hoping that Christakis and company start looking at the spread of positive behaviors, as well as negative ones. My family is telling me that one of the things that is helping them maintain weight loss is the fact that all of us are doing it together. Nobody wants to be the “fat Freberg.” 🙂
4 Comments
kjchin · April 15, 2010 at 9:58 pm
I think it is true with how friends can affect such things as your eating habits. I know that a lot of social events revolve around eating. For example, if you want to chat with a friend, you might suggest getting coffee. This can lead to a build up of unneeded empty calories. Also, i heard in a study that the first couple months of dating someone is when people usually gain weight, just because getting to know someone revolves around eating out a lot.
V i x · April 27, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Thank you for writing this blog post. I hate it when people hang out with their peers and do bad things like drug use and such, and all of that needs to be put to an end. I hope more people will stop screwing their own lives and read this blog post to get their minds right. You did a good job, Mom. I really appreciate it.
Lindsey · April 28, 2010 at 6:54 pm
This is so true! Especially what the other person said about coffee dates. I never drank coffee before I came to college and now that people here do it so much I have started to become addicted to it. You can also tell that people start talking like the friends they hang out with and they use the same mannerisms. Another thing I have noticed is when your best friend is acting really sad you start to feel down just by hanging out with them. Being around someone who is always upset can’t be too good for your own mental health.
MeredithS · May 6, 2010 at 7:29 pm
This is a really interesting post. I’ve had discussions with people about whether we think “birds of a feather flock together” or if people learn from one another. I’ve decided I agree that both of them are involved in developing behaviors. My room mates and I have very similar foods in our fridge. A lot of my food choices is due to new foods they’ve shown me. Much of the language I use is similar to my friend’s as well. But at the same time, I chose my friends because we are similar. I think that imitation can be the biggest form of flattery. Whether it is good behavior or bad behavior, I think people (friends and family) participate because of both similarity and influence.
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