One of the more interesting results of the Framingham Heart Study: happiness and healthiness are contagious:
"two years ago, a pair of social scientists named Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler used the information collected over the years about Joseph and Eileen and several thousand of their neighbors to make an entirely different kind of discovery. By analyzing the Framingham data, Christakis and Fowler say, they have for the first time found some solid basis for a potentially powerful theory in epidemiology: that good behaviors — like quitting smoking or staying slender or being happy — pass from friend to friend almost as if they were contagious viruses..."
"The Framingham participants, the data suggested, influenced one another’s health just by socializing. And the same was true of bad behaviors — clusters of friends appeared to “infect” each other with obesity, unhappiness and smoking. Staying healthy isn’t just a matter of your genes and your diet, it seems. Good health is also a product, in part, of your sheer proximity to other healthy people. By keeping in close, regular contact with other healthy friends for decades, Eileen and Joseph had quite possibly kept themselves alive and thriving. And by doing precisely the opposite, the lone obese man hadn’t."
Puts all those lectures your parents gave you about hanging around with the right people in perspective. It also makes me think of that Woody Allen movie Zelig... we are all Zeligs, to one degree or another. And if we make good choices about who we hang around, their good behaviors can positively influence us.
Unfortunately, I like hanging around with other computer nerds playing LAN games and eating pizza all night. Hmmm. Maybe I need to start Team in Training again.
This is true, it does work. I made one person quit smoking by not telling him anything at all. He started hanging out with some of my friends and I at the pub. I'm guessing he seen that we didn't smoke, so he just didn't smoke around us while sitting at the table. At first he was going away every so often to smoke, but that seened to diminish some over time, as we were so cool to hang out with at the table (heh).
Then one day he said he quit smoking and I said congratulations, now you'll live longer, and bought him a beer. I do believe that positive attitude can and will have an effect on people.
I don't know if it's a subliminal spell we put on him or he really wanted to quit...of course deep down he wanted to quit, all smokers do I think. At least all the people I know that smoke want to quit.
To this day we still hang out here and there and I can say his attitude is just like ours now...complete personality change. So I know you can shape a person, teach an old dog new tricks, so to speak.
So, all you new parents out there, teach your children right and they will do right by you and in society.
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Colin
A friend forwarded me a link to the article, most interesting!
I often hear quotes that we are who we associate ourselves with, ie. if you want success and power you need to mix with successful and powerful people etc, which I do believe to an extent. Interesting to see that the Framingham results verify these tales.
Tom
I thought this was common knowledge, just like yawning and laughing is contagious; nice to get some sort of scientific report to confirm it, though.
But why stop at health and happiness? Because I really believe that wealth is pretty up there as well; rich people hang around rich people, but this is something of a chicken/egg question; do rich people become friends with rich people just because their rich, or do they become rich because their friends are, and want to become just that?
What about rich people that have been friends their entire life, and perhaps came from poor families? Shouldn`t they be in some sort of touch with their (poor) roots? Or is this what happened: the 2-3 buddies pushed each other at school from they were kids, already having decided that they wanted to end up in some sort of position, and being wealthy. Same thing?
Thank you
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