Quitting smoking improves Relationships
Nicholas Christakis from Harvard Medical School and James Fowler from the University of California, San Diego interpreted the data of a large-scale Framingham Heart Study, started back in 1948, in their own way, and found that people quit smoking in groups.
In its own way, this is similar to herd behavior: where one goes, that's it (but in this case in a positive direction). Moreover, refusal sometimes occurs if not even relatives, but friends of friends decided to take a step towards a healthy lifestyle.
Comparing the data from 1971 and 2003, scientists built computer models of social networks (about 12 thousand people connected by about 50 thousand heterogeneous relationships) and designated smoking and non-smoking people with different icons on them.
It is known that in recent years a lot of people have got rid of the bad habit: the level of smokers in the United States has decreased from 37 to 22%. At the same time, previously a person who was a close friend of a smoker himself started smoking with a probability of 61%, each other – 29%, then – 11%.
Now this influence is spreading in the opposite direction: people can be said to "infect each other with non-smoking."
Moreover, people who cannot live without cigarettes spoil not only their health, but also their status. If previously a smoker could be associated with a large number of people, now he is likely to be on the periphery of the social network. What is clearly shown by the schemes of these very networks.
One of the comparative graphs based on the example of 1000 people.
Yellow dots show people who smoke (the diameter corresponds to the number of cigarettes per day), green dots show non–smokers.
Orange lines – friendly or marital relations, purple – family ties (illustration by James Fowler, UC San Diego).
Another curious remark: people who have received a college education are more easily susceptible to any influence (both positive and negative). But at the same time, people who have received training themselves are more convincing in relation to others.
The main conclusion of sociologists is to direct the efforts of the authorities to group, not individual, smoking cessation.
Details can be found in the press release of the university and in the article of the authors of the study, published in the open access in the New England Journal of Medicine.