The Thursday Think Positive (+) : Your obesity level may be correlated with the obesity of your social network, but so is your happiness level !
Let’s re-think the phrase “Fat and Happy.”
Rethinking Fat, and how we perceive obesity:
Our soon-to-be friends and eternal soulmates over at the New England Journal of Medicine published a study in 2007 documenting massive amounts of folks from the Framingham Heart Study, which is one of the most thorough and reputable “big data” studies conducted in the past century. Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., and James H. Fowler, Ph.D. used the Framingham Study to push the data to include a Framingham Offspring Study as well and to map each participant’s social networks to correlate the impact that obesity of members of any one participant’s social network has on the obesity of the person. They found a fascinating and strong correlation:
If an ego stated that an alter was his or her friend, the ego’s chances of becoming obese appeared to increase by 57%. Between mutual friends, the ego’s risk of obesity increased by 171%.
Interestingly, influence in friendship ties appeared to be directional— in other words, if you think of the person as a friend but the friend doesn’t think of you the same way, your obesity will be affected by theirs but theirs will not be affected by yours.
Rethinking happiness and how it spreads:
The very same guys, Christakis and Fowler, published another look at the very same data set as of 2009 looking at the correlation of happiness levels between members of the same social networks. Their findings? A friend who lives within a mile and who becomes happy increase the probability a person is happy by 25%. Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses, siblings who live within a mile, and next-door neighbors. Notable: Effects are not seen between co-workers.
