SOCIAL NETWORKS

Behavior Modification

By Alex Hutchins

In an article published on The Big Think, by Megan Erickson, we read:

"It turns out we’re not the only species that assembles ourselves into networks," says physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis in his Floating University lecture, "If You're So Free, Why Do You Follow Others?" Consider the slime mold, for instance. When placed in a maze with food at the end of it, individual amoebas will connect to create a sort of "super organism" capable of performing feats that no single organism could do on its own.

One mycologist, Toshi Nagagaki, found that the path taken through the maze by this "super organism" was more efficient than the path proposed by his graduate students.

"If you put oat flakes at the entrance or the exit of the maze this simple organism will change its shape and connect to the two sources of food by finding the minimum path length solution between the two points," says Christakis. "Obviously if you ask, 'Can this amoeboid fungus solve a maze?' the answer is no, but the maze-solving ability emerges as a result of interactions."

Fearless Leader...

“…emerges as a result of interactions”

Interesting… 

as this really is the basis and justification for all of our social interactions and social networking.  We, as humans have an extraordinary need that creates the desire to belong.  We have social networks for bikers (Hells Angels) and social networks for Mustang owners (special networks for ’65 Mustangs and yellow Mustangs) and social networks for parolees and social networks for those who like to wear certain clothes or drink certain wines or who may have special and unique beliefs.

Throughout our life, we copy the behavior of people we admire or with whom we are connected.  We are influenced very early in life by our parents and older siblings mimicking both good and bad behaviors. 

Hell's Angels . . .

The urge to pepper our conversation with phrases we hear uttered by close friends and colleagues,”  says Harvard physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis,  “can be irresistible.”  No matter how annoying and pretentious you find business jargon, the day will no doubt come where you will want to “take it to the next level,” or refer to easy fixes as picking the “low hanging fruit.”  And, you will want to do this because of some mentor or because these phrases are continuously being used by the members of the group to which you belong.

In one recent study, psychologists showed subjects silent videos of speakers reading a list of words then asked them to repeat the words they saw on screen. Without being instructed to, subjects pronounced the words in the same accent as the person on the video. The researchers attribute this impulse to the brain's innate tendency to empathize and affiliate. 

But we pick up more than just speech patterns from our interactions. "You come to copy [those in your network] along a whole variety of traits," says Christakis.  And,

according to Christakis -- who, with his team at Harvard, has mapped and studied workplace networks – “once we appreciate how intricately and deeply people are connected to each other, we can use that understanding as a tool to call forth better behavior.”

“…call forth better behavior.” 

Interesting . . .

it is all about managing people and achieving increased productivity, assuming that increases in productivity are directly related to better behavior.

Hey, check out this video on social networking.

Christakis suggests identifying the most influential people in the network, and targeting education and outreach towards those specific people:

"We know that when groups of people, particularly people who know each other and are interconnected collaboratively, engage in something such as a health improvement behavior that they're more likely to sustain it and more likely to respond positively."

So,

we can now conclude that

social networks influence behavior. 

And if

our hypothesis is correct,

then, whoever

controls social networks

controls us.