Three degrees of influence

New Scientist

What Affects Us?

Micheal Bond - writing in the New Scientist (3rd January 2009): "Three degrees of contagion" argues that we are affected not just by the emotions and demeanor of those around us but also by friends of friends and even friends of friends of friends even if we haven't met them. Read the article here >>

One of the key conclusions is : At first sight, the idea that we can catch the moods, habits and state of health not only of those around us, but also those we do not even know seems alarming. It implies that rather than being in charge of where we are going in life, we are little more than back-seat drivers, since most social influence operates at a subconscious level.

In the same issue of the Magazine another related article refers to "How social contagion can strengthen your resolve", You can read the article here >>

This article includes this key conclusion We are innately social animals, so it is hard to resist being influenced by others.

It's pretty clear then that the scientific studies are identifying that we are influenced by those around us, those around them and the people they know. It's hard to envisage how someone we don't know can influence us, but if they strongly influence someone we do know and that person influences us, then the chain will have the effect now being reported. In the detail, it's clear that the chain is different for different things, perhaps not a surprise. Some things follow gender lines and for others relatives have greater (or lesser) influence than those who live nearby. In the context of the Societal Web, and social networking on line in particular, though, this has significant implications.

What do we affect?

In writing this article I've given thought to the impact of looking at these things from the other end of the chain.

Aristotle said :

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

sometime more than 300 years before the Birth of Christ. Often requoted, but this too is something clearly based in truth.

On-Line, in social networks we interact with others more often and with more visibility than we tend to do off-line. So if people are influenced by the  friends of friends of friends then what we do has a chance of influencing the friends of the friends of our friends. This begins to explain the power of social networks - and a weakness. The powerful part of this is that our reach (and the influence we have in that reach) goes further than was perhaps realised, and the numbers are staggering. If our immediate sphere of influence in the 'old' of-line world was limited to those we socialised with, lived with and worked with, it's unlikly we reached more than 150 people or so, Dunbar's number. That's something thatis based on person to person relatonships reliant on memory and personal interation.

What's the impact in the Societal Web?

Increasingly, in social networks, we are outsourcing our memory. The network retains (better than we can) the memory of our interactions and than means Dunbar's number can be extended, perhaps to many hundreds, even thousands. If we just assume 1,000 then our sphere of influence in social networks could reach a theoretical billion people. The level of influence with each person that we have might be tiny, but the reach is staggering. That's where Aristotle's influence becomes really important. If we aren’t consistent and focused on what we want to achieve then we won't influence in a consistent way and towards our own goals. Do it well and there is an army waiting to support you.

So, the upside is that we have more influence than we probably realised, but the risks are that we infect our networks with something negative that colours others (who don't yet know us) before they even meet us. In the Societal web the impact and influence we exert is leveraged to a larger potential number of people and we are influenced by a larger.

It's possible that Cyber Disinhibition (which we discussed in this post >>)may also be related here as influence from others acting in a disinhibited way on-line may encourage the same behaviour from others throught their networks of friends and contacts

There are many implications for that which we will return to in later posts.

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Tagged as: Aristole, Contagion, Influence, New Scientist