How does others' behavior influence my own?

Whether we have obese friends or sit next to an obese person at a party, we unconsciously imitate their unhealthy behavior. In this video, HealthMaker James Fowler, PhD, professor of medical genetics and political science at UCSD, explains.

Transcript

00:00

Maybe you get together for Thanksgiving, and you see how your friends behave and you hear about all the kinds of things they've been doing over the year. And that has a real impact on how you

00:07

think about your own behavior. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:15

Well, there are lots of laboratory studies that show that we unconsciously imitate the behavior of people who are near us.

00:21

And so just for example, if I bring you into a room and I sit you next to someone who's eating more than the room

00:27

next door where somebody is eating less, you'll eat more. Like, just randomly nip. Put you next to a stranger, you'll eat more. There's a big literature on mindless eating.

00:35

And that's one thing that we know is that, unconsciously, we tend to imitate the actions of those around us. With strong social behavior that's

00:44

spreading across hundreds of miles, that can't be the only explanation because you're not seeing your friend [INAUDIBLE].. So we really think that this is about our ideas, our norms,

00:52

what we think of as appropriate behavior. And one thing that economists have found is that we actually have changed our idea of what is

00:58

normal over the last 10 years. That's how much things have been changing that we think normal now is a higher level.

01:05

And so if your only goal is to get back to normal, you might not be, you know, going back as far because now we can-- normal is at a much higher level.

01:15

And so this is another thing that I think that spreads. But because it's an idea, it can spread over the telephone, it can spread over the internet.

01:22

It can be the kind of thing that you transmit between you and your friend, you know, once or twice a year. Maybe you get together for Thanksgiving,

01:28

and you see how your friends behave and you hear about all the kinds of things they've been doing over the year. And that has a real impact on how you think about your own behavior.