Big Little ThingsYou are susceptible
Interesting article in the NY Times magazine about true virality. Now we’ve got real, published, proof of what we’ve all been hinting at re: viral marketing and stuff: you can infected by the behaviors, actions, and even sub-conscious thoughts of others.
Here’s a taste:
Between one immediate peer and another, some contagious behaviors — like smoking — seem pretty commonsensical. If lots of people around you are smoking, there’s going to be peer pressure for you to start, whereas if nobody’s smoking, you’ll be more likely to stop. But the simple peer-pressure explanation doesn’t work as well with happiness or obesity: we don’t often urge people around us to eat more or implore them to be happier. (In any case, simply telling someone to be happier or unhappier isn’t likely to work.) Instead, Christakis and Fowler hypothesize that these behaviors spread partly through the subconscious social signals that we pick up from those around us, which serve as cues to what is considered normal behavior. Scientists have been documenting this phenomenon; for example, experiments have shown that if a person is seated next to someone who’s eating more, he will eat more, too, unwittingly calibrating his sense of what constitutes a normal meal.
Yup, you hippies out there have been saying this for a while: we’re all connected, man. Right you are.
