A tale of two cities and three degrees of influence

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion. – Henri Fredric Amiel

Many of us may have played the prank where you stand on a crowded pavement and randomly point to something in the sky and observe others randomly joining in. 

In the winter of 1968, social scientists Stanley Milgram and Leonard Bickman Lawrence Berkowitz actually conducted this experiment. A person or a group of people would randomly stare at a window. They wanted to find out if the number of people observing the window had an impact and filmed all the passersby to analyse the chances of a group being formed. They also published a paper called 'Note on the drawing power of crowds of different size' in 1969. They found that if only one person was looking up, 4% of the pedestrians would stop and join in. If 15% people were doing this, 86% of people would glance up and 40% of the people would stop and join in. Astonishingly, even if just five people were looking up, it stopped 40% of the passersby and nearly 80% of the people would look up. 

Later, Stanley Milgram went on to establish the famous Six Degrees of Separation theory. He gave out letters to people in Omaha, Nebraska and Wichita, Kansas to be delivered to recipients in Boston Massachusetts. The people who got the letter had to mail the letter to someone who they thought would know the recipient. Sometimes, the letters would be delivered in one or two hops and sometimes it took 10 hops. On an average, it took the letters six hops to be delivered. From which was born the concept of Six Degrees of Separation. 

Then the question started to arise - what does Six Degrees of Separation really mean? Is the world really a small place, do we, across the world and in communities, behave in similar ways? 

This is where the tale of two cities comes in. One is a small town in Shaniin India and another is Framingham in the state of Massachusetts, United States. There is another town in India called Shani Shingnapur in Maharashtra. What is peculiar, is that the houses in Shani Shingnapur have no locks on their doors. Apparently even the bank in the city does not have locks on its doors! One is held in sheer amazement at how towns can behave in this way.

Contagion of trust makes trust – Marianne Moore 

On the other hand, you have close friends who get into life long brawls and business partners who rip each other off and once seemingly closely knit family units, which are ripped apart by marital, violence and financial discord. Sometimes, a dispute between two individuals escalates to a dispute between two neighbourhoods, which escalates to a dispute between two ideologies. 

On the other hand, you have kindness, like the micro finance organisation Grameen Bank, which was built on trust between strangers, surrounded in impoverished circumstances, bound by a common trait of poverty, but even more importantly, a common desire to change the future of generations to come. 

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. - Henry Adams

Why do the good citizens of Shani Shingnapur now need locks on the doors? To get a scientific grasp, I need to take you across the seven seas to a town called Framingham, where a very famous study called The Framingham Heart Study was initiated in 1948. A total of 5209 citizens from the town participated in the study. Later on, in 1971, their children and spouses were enrolled in the study. More recently in 2002, more children were enrolled. At regular intervals, all the participants came to a facility where they submitted themselves to detailed examinations and submitted a lot of personal data. Nearly 12000 people have been observed for many decades. The researchers also captured information about their social networks. They identified their relatives; parents, spouses, siblings and children; “close friends,” where they lived and their place of work. They were then contacted two-four years later. 

Given their home and work information, the researchers then determined who were each other’s neighbours and co-workers. Researchers James H Fowler from the University of California and Nicholas A Christakis from the Harvard University first set out to study the spread of obesity in social networks across 32 years and then they studied Happiness across the networks for 20 years. Needless to say, a very comprehensive study; with very interesting findings. 

Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance. - Nikola Tesla 

Fowler and Christakis were keen on studying obesity, which was beginning to gain an epidemic proportion. They found that if your friend was obese there was a 45% chance that you were obese. This was the first degree of separation and influence.

If a friend of your friend was obese, or as they call a second degree of separation, there was a 25% chance that you were obese. This was the second degree of influence. 

If your friend’s friend’s friend was obese, there was a 10% higher chance that you were obese. This was the third degree of influence. 

They had found a contagion. More importantly they found three degrees of influence. The actions and behaviours of an individual could be felt across three degrees of influence. 
What is more fascinating is that if your friend gained weight, there was a 57% higher chance that you would gain weight in the future. If you lost weight, there is a 57% higher chance that your friends have lost weight! 

A Framingham resident was roughly 20% more likely to become obese if the friend of a friend became obese — even if the connecting friend didn’t put on a single pound. Indeed, a person’s risk of obesity went up about 10% even if a friend of a friend of a friend gained weight.

However, if two people considered each other as “good or close friends”, then chances any one of the friends gaining weight, TRIPLES the future risk of the other friend gaining weight. They found that if a woman’s sister or a man’s brother became obese there was a 67% and 45% increased risk of them turning obese. 

Just like how you have six degrees of separation, the authors discovered what they termed as the Three Degrees of Influence. They found that we are linked to each other in a living web that transmits more than what we thought, further than what we ever imagined with an impact more profound than many other theories. From obesity, they moved to Happiness and they started studying other communities. 

The people who influence you are the people who believe in you. - Henry Drummond

They found that a person was 15% more likely to be happy if directly connected to a happy person, which is the First Degree. At the second degree, they were 10% more likely and at three degrees, 6% more likely to be happy. 

More importantly, each unhappy friend decreases the likelihood of happiness 7%.

Even in loneliness, the clusters of loneliness extended upto three degrees of influence. They found loneliness spreads faster than people making friends and social connections. They found the spread of loneliness in women to be stronger than for men. 

They found the same patterns in depression. If your neighbour or friends became depressed, you ran an higher risk of becoming depressed. Then the researchers started researching other aspects of life.

They found that social drinking spread upto three degrees of influence, before fading in impact. 

Then they went to research smoking. They found that personal friends and not co-workers, caused people to start smoking. But interestingly, in small firms, if a co-worker stopped smoking, their colleague had a 34% higher probability at kicking the butt, themselves. The authors explain that smoking was really for the friendship and the experience of going out for a smoke together. But if you were the only one standing outside with a smoke, then chances are you would give it up. So here is a suggestion for everyone who wants their friends to stop smoking. Stop joining them for a smoke, you are not helping them. 

What about salary increments? They found clear evidence, that when someone got a salary raise, other people’s happiness levels went down. 

Then they researched the question, what if both the people have to be friends? If you consider someone a friend, but someone does not consider you a friend, then chances are that the person will have an influence on you, but you will not have an influence on that person. Therefore your friendship need not even be reciprocated for the influence to take hold. 

The authors researched sleep deprivation and drug use in adolescents. They found that in this area, the influence lasted upto four degrees of influence. The found a similar trend in voting patterns. They found that one decision to vote influenced three other people to vote. 

Reverting to Shani Shingnapur now. There is a contagion of no locks. There is a contagion of no crime. A new norm has been set in society that is similar to the spread in Framingham. The point is that there is overwhelming evidence that our behaviours are a source of influence not only on our friends, families and co-workers; but to their friends’ on to the third level of their friends. 

In an earlier column I asked a question, what are you looking forward to in the next few weeks? I've also asked the question, how are the challenges that you faced last week, a part of a higher scheme of things?

This leaves us with the question of profound responsibility.

What is a coach? We are teachers. Educators. We have the same obligations as all teachers, except we probably have more influence over young people than anybody but their families. And, in a lot of cases, more than their families. - Joe Paterno

How have your actions impacted someone else? Where have you picked up a habit? A habit of being happy or a habit of finding something meaningful in your day to day work. If you find your work meaningless, is it because you have caught the contagion from your colleagues? If you find joy in your everyday life, is it because of a partner who brings joy to you? If you find yourself voting in the next elections, is it because you caught the contagion, and could it be, that since you have decided to vote, three other people around you will decide to vote? 

Could it be, if you started dressing nicely to work, people around you started dressing well to work? 

Could it be, ever since you started taking yoga and zumba classes, your friends start eating healthy and the discussions now center around health? 

Could it be, your happiness spread to others? 

Could it be, your sense of achievement and excitement at work, galvanised others into a sense of purpose? 

Could it be, since you started arriving to work before time, attendance in office improved? 

Could it be, you were more powerful than you thought? 

Could it be, you had a teacher who gave you a contagion of loving or hating a subject? 

Could it be, you were an unknown source of influence? 

Could it be, you brought joy to the families of a co-worker, just by smiling and being nice to your co-workers? 

Could you be the source of a new trust in your workplace? 

We would love to hear from you. How did you catch a contagion? How were you at the vortex of a contagion? 

Opportunity + Hope = Possibilities 

The author is the founder of The Positivity Company. This is part of a series called 'Positive Mondays' which describes how positivity has a multiplicative effect, simultaneously impacting all work and life outcomes.