By Nick Miller Researchers asked 160 high school students in New York to identify their close friends, regular friends and acquaintances, and then ...
A recent study shows that about one-third of a million more Americans voted in 2010 because of one Facebook message on Election Day.
What is quite startling, however, from the social network research is that obesity spreads almost like an infectious disease, not just to friends but to friends of friends, and further.
Who you are is a function of whom you know. Your friends help shape your outlook, values, emotions and behaviors. Psychologists call this "social contagion," and it can work for or against you.
As children, we were given many examples of how the company we keep might influence us. Emerging research has found that these childhood lessons weren't mere scare tactics employed by our well-intentioned parents. They were onto something.
Social contagion -- a term invented by researchers to describe how influence spreads from one person to another -- is real but invisible. For instance, you run a higher risk of being overweight if a friend of a friend is overweight.
What kind of connection can exist invisibly, without people talking to each other, watching how each other behaves, or even knowing about each other's existence?
