Obesity Appears to Spread Through Social Ties

New research shows that obesity is strongly influenced by social ties, to the point that researchers are actually speaking of it in terms of the "person-to-person spread of obesity" and "clusters out to three degrees of separation" (Christakis & Fowler, 2007). In other words, if your friends become obese, you have a 57% chance of also becoming obese. If your adult siblings become obese, your chances of following suit go up by 40%. If your spouse becomes obese, you have a 37% chance of becoming obese as well.

The bad news is that obesity, related to social networks, does seem to be a significant factor in the current epidemic. However, the good news is that, because it is related to social networks, and because the behaviors of social networks can be changed, there is a great deal of hope that positive behavioral interventions, aimed at entire social networks, can help to change the course of obesity in our culture.

What does this mean to you, and what can you do to influence the social network behavioral changes necessary to fight obesity? The first thing you should not do is begin a backlash against those who are obese, as if they are carriers of a disease that has the potential to affect you. All this will accomplish is to polarize the population, resulting in two groups (obese and non-obese) in a stand-off, with no change in the behavior of either group. The negative relationship between smokers and non-smokers is a perfect example of the environment to be avoided. What you can do is be aware that all it takes to change the behavior of an entire social network is for one person to change their behavior. In time, their behavior will spread and the behavior of the entire group will be changed.