How do I influence the health of other people in my social network?

Healthy changes your friends make, and even friends of friends make, can ultimately change your behavior. In this video, HealthMaker James Fowler, PhD, professor of medical genetics and political science at UCSD, explains this ripple effect.

Transcript

00:00

The interesting thing about this, this can happen even if the person who connects the two of you doesn't change themselves. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:13

So the easiest thing to demonstrate is that your friend's friend, someone that you don't know but someone that your friend knows--

00:19

if your friend's friend changes their behavior, that might change your friend's behavior. And then the change in your friend then causes you to change.

00:26

So your friend's friend might start jogging, and then your friend might start jogging, and then you might start jogging. So you have these ripples that can spread out.

00:32

And you didn't know the original person who started this cascade. But even more amazingly, you might have a friend's friend who goes on a diet.

00:39

And your friend already is at a weight that they're happy with. And so they don't go on the diet, but they're really pleased with their friend's progress.

00:48

And in the course of everyday conversation, they talk to you and say, oh, did you hear about this new diet? My friend is having a lot of success with this.

00:54

And you say to yourself, gee, that sounds like a really interesting idea. And then you try it as well. And so your friend's friend changed,

01:00

and you changed, even though your friend didn't change. Your friend acted as a carrier of the disease, if you will. And so this is one of the things that we found evidence

01:09

for in these research studies, that it's surprising how strong the relationship is between friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends.

01:16

It's strong enough that the only way that you could explain the strength of those relationships is if you had this sort of carrier status going

01:22

on in these inner layers between you and those other people. [AUDIO LOGO]