How Our Friends Influence Who We Are! (Social Clusters Explained)

sirwinchester (75)in #sirwinchester • 8 years ago

The social environments that humans create around themselves are very interesting, and tell a lot about the individual. We live in clusters of social friendship groups, and they influence us more than many people know!

There's a popular theory that everyone is connected to every other person through 6 (or less) other people - maybe you've heard of it.

But there is another theory called the "3 steps of influence". Let's look at an example:
If person A is obese, then his friends are 15% more likely to be obese as well.
The friends of that friend are 10% more likely, and even the friends of those friends are still 6% more likely to be obese than the average person!

And this applies to many different aspects in life like smoking and other habits.

When you are always acting kindly and speaking politely, chances are that the person you speak to will also spread more kindness. The person that receives that will then also speak more kindly etc.
It's like a chain reaction.

This means that how you act doesn't only influence the people in your immediate circle, but also your friend's friend's friend!

When we reverse this principle, it gets even more interesting.
Maybe someone you have never heard of is influencing you slightly, because you are connected through friends!

Of course not everything is related through 3 steps. This is just the basic model.
It can vary greatly depending on the situation and the person.
But in general, it has been proven that the people we spend time with influence us! And we might be surprised as to how far that goes.

There is another interesting aspect about our social networks.

First, we need to understand that we have strong ties and weak ties.
Strong ties are people we feel very close to, they are good friends and we are in contact with them pretty often.
Weak ties are more like acquaintances, people we don't know that much and maybe we don't even get along that well.

Now if you were looking for help -for example a new job- who would you ask first?
Your friends, right?

But surprisingly, the people who you're not that close to are more helpful!

Why? Let's dig deeper:

People mostly hang around with other people that have a similar background to themselves. That's logical, because they have similar interests, can talk about similar topics, understand each other's problems etc.

So we are mostly in a social environment of like-minded people.

Now if you ask your closest friends if they know of any job-offers, they'll likely have the same information as you.
But if you ask a "weak tie", someone from a different circle of friends with different connections might help you out more, and provide you with new information.

Of course this is meant to be understood with the bigger picture in mind, a highly positioned lawyer will likely not be able to accept any job offers from a street worker.
But this theory just suggests that people around you will have similar connections and information like you!