When it comes to changing health behaviors, it takes more than a far-flung network of friends on Facebook egging you on. It takes a jostling herd, US researchers said on Thursday.
Social scientists have assumed that changing behavior would spread like the flu, which transmits best via individuals with lots of long-distance contacts.
To change behavior, however, you need to be surrounded by the message — with neighbors, family and members in the community all reinforcing the same idea.
“For about 35 years, wisdom in the social sciences has been that the more long ties there are in a network, the faster a thing will spread,” Damon Centola of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose study appears in the journal Science, said in a statement. “It’s startling to see that this is not always the case.”
Knowing how best to influence health behavior is important to health reform as the US turns its focus to preventing disease, rather than treating it.
Researchers have already shown that networks of friends can have a powerful impact on health behavior, influencing smoking, obesity and even happiness.
However, it is not clear which type of network is best.
Centola set up two different types of social networks within an online community of about 1,500 people.
“I had to create a little social petri dish,” Centola said in a telephone interview.
One group consisted of individuals with far-flung ties and the other involved clusters of people who interacted with each other.
“When people signed up, I would assign them ‘health buddies’ in the space of this online social networking site,” Centola said.
To form friendship groups, Centola introduced people to six other people who had similar interests.
“That is the social world that you had,” he said.
The goal was to get people to register for a health forum in which they rated different health services.
The team then seeded the groups with people to encourage them to sign up and they watched to see how quickly people would register.
People in the small friend groups registered four times as fast as those with less connected networks.
“It spread through the population so quickly. It saturates very, very fast,” Centola said.
Social scientists had thought that it would be redundant to give a health message to a person more than once. However, Centola said when it comes to health habits, people are quicker to change when they hear the message from more than one source.
He said the findings are useful when policymakers need to develop strategies to promote vaccinations or health screenings, but it could be equally effective in combating obesity.
“The more difficult the behavior and the more resistant to change, the more vital these densely clustered ties would be,” Centola said.
ANGER: Unrest worsened after a taxi driver was killed by a police vehicle on Thursday, as protesters set alight government buildings across the nation Protests worsened overnight across major cities of Indonesia, far beyond the capital, Jakarta, as demonstrators defied Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s call for calm. The most serious unrest was seen in the eastern city of Makassar, while protests also unfolded in Bandung, Surabaya, Solo and Yogyakarta. By yesterday morning, crowds had dispersed in Jakarta. Troops patrolled the streets with tactical vehicles and helped civilians clear trash, although smoke was still rising in various protest sites. Three people died and five were injured in Makassar when protesters set fire to the regional parliament building during a plenary session on Friday evening, according to
‘NEO-NAZIS’: A minister described the rally as ‘spreading hate’ and ‘dividing our communities,’ adding that it had been organized and promoted by far-right groups Thousands of Australians joined anti-immigration rallies across the country yesterday that the center-left government condemned, saying they sought to spread hate and were linked to neo-Nazis. “March for Australia” rallies against immigration were held in Sydney, and other state capitals and regional centers, according to the group’s Web site. “Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together,” the Web site said. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do “what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration.” The group also said it was concerned about culture,
Australia has announced an agreement with the tiny Pacific nation Nauru enabling it to send hundreds of immigrants to the barren island. The deal affects more than 220 immigrants in Australia, including some convicted of serious crimes. Australian Minister of Home Affairs Tony Burke signed the memorandum of understanding on a visit to Nauru, the government said in a statement on Friday. “It contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru,” it said. “Australia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru’s long-term economic
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
RSS