Reddit mentions of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives -- How Your Friends' Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do

I read a book on sociology that postulated that lifestyles (fitness, obesity, addiction) ARE contagious. The example was something along these lines:

Amy and Julie are best friends, and go jogging every week. Julie starts a new job and makes some new friends, who aren't very fit. Julie's friends are happy without jogging, and Julie skips her jogging date with Amy with greater and greater frequency before stopping altogether. While Amy and Julie are still friends, Amy now jogs alone and loses motivation. Through Julie and Amy are still friends, and Amy has no direct contact with Julie's lazy associates, their laziness has spread through Julie to Amy.

Gross oversimplification, but definitely food for thought.

Took a photo of the book cover because the last time I looked had issues finding it:
https://imgur.com/BIpU5f3


And then I just found the [Amazon link] (https://www.amazon.com/Connected-Surprising-Networks-Friends-Everything/dp/0316036137/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) if that helps you.

It reads like a novel but discusses a lot of data as well, so certain sections do read like scholarly journals, but overall really fascinating and gave me a lot to think about.

Are you counting behavioral economics as Econ or psychology? I personally count all kahneman, fiske, and even green as psychologists. Econ might be useful for explaining how people behave after the action but it isn't good at explaining how to compel actions. I could explain more if you're interested. I saw you were looking to read the tipping point. Don't. Gladwell is crap. Read Connected instead:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316036137?pc_redir=1404306449&robot_redir=1

Honestly even sociology, especially social network theories, are much more useful to influence prosocial behavior than Econ. And unless you cite something specific, you should read up on some other fields. Econ in university always tries to make it sound like it has an answer for everything, but people are pretty complex.

An excerpt from a talk by hope researcher, Shane Lopez:

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> The power of social networks (not just the online ones) can help you spread those things to your community. Book: Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas A. Christakis

> Shane shows an image of 4 penguins walking in a line and says positive emotions move from one person to the next before they fizzle out. If you're a leader, you're the lead "pinguin." How you behave today will affect the next penguin. How that penguin behaves because they've been infected by your hope will affect another person--maybe someone you don't even know. And then that person will affect another person, before it fizzles out.

> The same is true about hopelessness. You can transfer it in the same way--a ripple effect--if you're not careful.
> So leaders have a responsibility.

> At Gallup they identify the most hopeful people in an organisation and power them to be hopeful beacons.

> Two years ago they put out a call to find hopeful teachers. The superintendents said it didn't take them a second to figure it out. Think of: who's the most hopeful person in your town. [Sad Australian fact: most people don't know the people in their own. We're isolated from our community members. Doesn't have to be]

> The most hopeful teacher in America: Mary Hawkins-Jones. She can transform an entire school district all by herself. When she was hired, she said "the children will remember me this year."


> You can do this for your school, community, town, workplace, government, children in your community. You can say to them: it's your responsibility to spread hope to the 3rd degree (the ripple effect mentioned above).

>* The three things hopeful leaders need to do to make hope happen in your community:

> Create and sustain excitement about the future. You need exciting (sometimes big) goals.

> Knock down existing obstacles to goals, and don't put up new ones.

> Re-establish goals--regoal--when the circumstances demand it.

>[...] “Hope matters. Hope is a choice. Hope can be learned. Hope is contagious.”

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source

So, idk if I have spyware or what, but when I loaded this page the first time, I was linked to a book on Amazon about this sort of thing - with a big blue banner over someone's comment (gone now though, after refresh)

https://puu.sh/styXC.png

https://www.amazon.com/Connected-Surprising-Networks-Friends-Everything/dp/0316036137

You should read Connected. It doesn't really get at this per se, but some similar concepts.

It's been a while since I read it, but there was one part where the author talked about how you can stand on the street, stop, and just look up at some imaginary thing and X% of people around you will stop and do the same thing just because of curiosity/following your action.

Playing this game lead me to this book:

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives -- How Your Friends' Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do

https://www.amazon.com/Connected-Surprising-Networks-Friends-Everything/dp/0316036137/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1536369847&sr=1-1&keywords=connected