How your friends change your habits – for better or worse
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190520-how-your-friends-change-your-habits—for-better-and-worse
The BBC article, “How your friends change your habits – for better and worse,” written by William Park, illustrates human decision-making as ultimately a socially-dependent concept. People absorb stimulus around them that they then take into consideration, whether conscious of it or not, when making decisions ranging from whether to apply sunscreen, to their thoughts on someone driving versus cycling to get around. In discussing the concept of social networks and how they can influence the individual, Park states: “When we eat with others we have a natural tendency to use their behaviour as a guide,” says Suzanne Higgs, who studies the psychobiology of appetite at the University of Birmingham. “Lots of studies have shown that when we eat with people who eat a lot, we eat more. People aren’t often aware they are being influenced in that way” (1). Though one might believe they are eating in a way they would normally do so, this study shows that often times we subconsciously decide to stop according to the habits of the other person, illustrating the power another person’s decision can carry over our own.
William Parks research and thoughts on the process of someone’s decision-making directly correlates to the concepts we have discussed in class about diffusion in networks. As seen throughout chapter 19, “as individuals make decisions based on the choices of their neighbors, a particular pattern of behavior can begin to spread across the links of the network,” (Easley and Kleinberg), meaning that the choices made by your friends affect the ones you end up making, and then those ultimately spread to your other friends, creating a cascade of patterned decisions. Social networks directly linked to someone can thus have a greater influence on one’s life when compared to the impact that a general population’s opinion has.
This can be used to enact both negative and positive change, but provides hope in that an individual’s decision can truly make a difference if spread in a large enough network with the right resources.