The Widowhood Effect and the Human Superorganism
This TED Talk (a transcript is included) is the main reason I chose to take this course. Mr. Christakis’ study of social networks and network structures drastically changed the way he views the world. His studies show that humans’ actions, emotions, and tendencies stem primarily from the individual’s position in a particular network, not necessarily from the individual’s qualities. With a better understanding of networks and their implications, we can make better decisions related to our health, social status, education, and finances.
Christakis first speaks about the Widowhood Effect, to which he was first exposed during his time as a hospice doctor. It is a well-known theory that a woman’s chance of death doubles during the first year after her husband’s death, as if she “dies of a broken heart.” Christakis realized after call from a friend of his patient that the widowhood effect can extend beyond husbands and wives. Emotions are passed on through social interactions, and one of Christakis’ example networks shows that people who consider themselves “happy” cluster together. What if, then, our emotions are a product of our position in a social network rather than our own internal attitudes? I would argue that if you take two identical people and place one in a “happy” cluster and one in an “unhappy” cluster, over time their lives would look dramatically different. Christakis also speaks of physical implications of networks, namely, obesity. He shows that individuals of higher BMIs also cluster in social networks, and it is up to social scientists to discover why. Do overweight people cause others to become overweight, or do overweight people come together after the fact? Or perhaps there are outside factors that cause obesity in certain areas, such as fast food restaurants and a lack of health clubs. Christakis certainly aligns with the thesis of Chapter 1 of our textbook, that events across a population depend on an aggregate of everyone’s behavior.
Christakis’ own thesis takes this a step further. He hypothesizes that the aggregate of human behavior forms a human “superorganism,” whose movements are the movements of the actual network. He views networks as not just a snapshot of humanity at a specific time, but a living thing that represents human activity over time. In lecture, it was briefly noted how the “market” can have an opinion on businesses and the overall financial climate, and Christakis wants a similar label to be placed on the aggregate of human actions and emotions. Like Christakis, I believe that the benefits of participating in social networks outweigh the costs, and I also believe that the benefits of studying networks and network structures outweigh the costs.