Monday's Washington Post had a fascinating article on new research showing the impact of social networks on smoking. (The research team previously completed a study showing the impact of social networks on obesity.)
In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person's decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit--even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually simultaneously.Taken together, these studies and others are fueling a growing recognition that many behaviors are swayed by social networks in ways that have not been fully understood. And it may be possible, the researchers say, to harness the power of these networks for many purposes, such as encouraging safe sex, getting more people to exercise or even fighting crime.
"What all these studies do is force us to start to kind of rethink our mental model of how we behave," said Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist. "Public policy in general treats people as if they are sort of atomized individuals and puts policies in place to try to get them to stop smoking, eat right, start exercising or make better decisions about retirement, et cetera. What we see in this research is that we are missing a lot of what is happening if we think only that way."
This is hardly news to education researchers, who have long known about powerful "peer" effects in the classroom. A strong indicator of how a student will perform is how his or her classmates perform. But perhaps this networking idea could be taken in interesting new directions. Could social networks be harnessed to encourage more high school students to take challenging courses? Could teachers' networks be used to get more of them to engage in teaching methods that work? And could parents' networks be tapped to encourage more of them to engage in helpful "parental involvement" en masse: showing up for teacher-parent conferences, checking on their children's homework, taking their kids on college visits, filling out financial aid forms, etc.?
The theory is simple but striking: if everyone in your social group starts a new behavior, you're more likely to follow suit. I speak from personal experience; why do you think those of us at Fordham finally started blogging?
Photo from Flickr user nirbhao.
