Your friends are making you fat (and good tennis players)

People that know me, know that when I'm losing a debate, I often just falsely quote the New England Journal of Medicine. This was a technique that my father told me about that a friend of his in college used and I thought it was great. So, I assure you, my reference to the NEJoM in this post is legitimate.

There has been plenty of press these days on the so-called real-life phenomenon of the "social network". The New England Journal of Medicine published a report, The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years which found:

Discernible clusters of obese persons were present in the network at all time points, and the clusters extended to three degrees of separation. These clusters did not appear to be solely attributable to the selective formation of social ties among obese persons. A person's chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval.

I'm not a doctor or researcher, but does this report not surprise anyone but me? Replace obesity with anything: Star Trek fan, tennis player, alcoholic - isn't it an obvious conclusion that people with certain interests/ hobbies/ habits surround themselves with people like them? It's not much of a tennis game without other players, afterall. In defense of the research (admittedly, not that it needs my defense), and despite what the mainstream press has reported, the report does say that social ties aren't "solely attributable" to people's obesity.

I do find 2 things interesting about this research: (1) It reinforces the concept of "social proof", (2) It reinforces the concept of personal "self interest".

Social Proof
According to wikipedia, social proof is:

"...a psychological phenomenon that occurs in ambiguous social situations when people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior. Making the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation, they will deem the behavior of others as appropriate or better informed."

I recently finished reading a a book, "Influence: Science and Practice" by Ray Cialdini, in which Cialdini describes such observations as a man in a business suit being more likely to be followed jaywalking than a person in informal clothes. Again, it seems obvious to me that the NEJoM's results could have been predicted by this well-known principle.

This principle can be applied to social design to ensure people inherently/ unconsciously behave in your community in the way you desire:

1. Establishment of a Community Manager to police misbehavior, and encourage positive behavior. Ensuring "positive" behavior occurs more often than "negative" means other users will observe, and emulate, the positive behavior.
   
2. Design features and UI such that positive behavior (or, to generalize, the behavior you wan to reinforce) is demonstrated to all users.
   

Self Interest
Bokardo.com had a post entitled, The Del.icio.us Lesson, in which he describes that social sites still need to adhere to the principle that: Personal Value Precedes Network Value. In other words, a social site must first offer individuals personal value (however it is measured) before we ask them to contribute to the site. YouTube, as another example, offered free video storage before it was entertaining for 3rd parties.

On my way to work last week, on the Seattle Transit, a woman handed me a Seattle PI newspaper (I had originally only asked for the Fry's flier, but I guess she took my original request as a request for her entire paper) in which Guest Columnist John Barnett wrote an article, on the heals of the NEJoM report, entitled Use your friends for weight loss. His closing paragraph was the most interesting:

Don't expect help [to lose weight] from family and friends. They don't want to lose their image of you, just the way they have known you.

Implicit in this statement, and not touched on in the NEJoM report, is that your family and friends passively prevent your weight loss. Further, your weight loss is your battle and so your motivation has to come from within.

In the context of social design, even if you, as a Product Manager, understand that you need to offer users personal value, you need to further find those intrinsic motivators that will spur your community to go on to contribute as if they were the only ones using your site. The question I'm asking myself: "What problem do I need solved that requires me to contribute to a site that, either partially, or in it's entirety, would be valuable to others?"