Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives Hardcover – September 28, 2009

Nicholas A. Christakis (MD, PhD) and James H. Fowler (PhD) hold a high opinion about the potential value of their own field of expertise: "If we do not understand social networks, we cannot hope to fully understand either ourselves or the world we inhabit." Having read their book Connected I am generally inclined to agree with them, although I remain skeptical of much they have to say, including the validity of some of their most attention-grabbing conclusions. The book exhibits many of the merits that accrue when scientific authors are skilled at writing for a popular audience, but it also illustrates some of the perils that arise when complex and technical research details are truncated to make the product palatable for non-specialists. Nevertheless, anyone with a serious interest in the social sciences, public health, or public policy generally, but not previously fully-versed in social network analysis, should find Connected very instructive.

That is my summary judgment and you can stop here if you just want to understand why I assigned four stars. Connected is rich in content and I apologize that to summarize the book fairly and further justify my evaluation requires considerably more words, quite likely more than you may want to read at this point.

Social networks consist of humans and the connections between them. Most of us are members of "multiplex" networks involving different kinds of connections such as family, close friends, coworkers, neighbors, acquaintances, and so on. We can be either directly connected to others (first degree of separation), or indirectly so, through the second degree (a friend of a friend, for instance) up to about six degrees of separation to cover the globe. Networks have structure and shape: people have specific locations within networks, sometimes forming clusters that are themselves distinct network components. Christakis and Fowler do a commendable job of explaining all of this, plus they include several very clever color "maps" of different kinds of networks to provide visual reinforcement (credit the software).

Networks have the capacity for contagion, for influences to flow through the connections. We all understand how this works in a health epidemic when germs are spread, but Christakis and Fowler contend that it also applies to certain behaviors as well. There are several plausible explanations for why we might often behave or feel like others in our network, or vice-versa, including genetics (for directly related family members), our tendency to associate with others like ourselves (homophily), "emotional contagion" (the authors present several striking accounts of epidemic hysteria), shared environmental exposures, our propensity for imitation, and our desire to conform to social norms.

We can see readily enough how such influences might often operate at the first degree of separation, through ties with people to whom we are directly connected. But the authors are especially interested in "hyperdyadic spread," the tendency of behavioral influences to extend beyond the first level to generate effects at higher degrees of separation (just like germ contagion). It is not immediately intuitive that people we don't even know (aside from media personalities and the like) can significantly influence how we behave or feel. Yet Christakis and Fowler report on research where they claim to have found just that, including studies of network effects on happiness, obesity, and smoking, for example.

They propose a "Three Degrees of Influence Rule." For instance, they found in one of their studies that a person is about 15 percent more likely to be happy if someone to whom he or she is directly connected is happy; ten percent more likely if a connection two degrees removed is happy; and six percent more likely for happy persons three degrees removed. Beyond three degrees "intrinsic decay" (like in the telephone tree game) and network instability (social ties change over time) diminish the influence to negligible levels. Christakis and Fowler report similar findings from their obesity study, where they conclude (somewhat sensationally) that, "You may not know him personally, but your friend's husband's coworker can make you fat." Such network effects were observed supposedly after controlling for genetic influence, the tendency of people to befriend similar people, and the possibility of shared exposures that contributed to weight gain or loss.

The authors summarize many social network studies in addition to their own, addressing such subjects as employment search, romantic matches, sexually transmitted disease, currency circulation, financial market activity, voting behavior, and suicide. Much of the discussion is provocative and enlightening. For instance, readers will learn that there are circumstances where weak ties to others may be more helpful than strong ties, that higher status (college educated) persons influenced the spread of smoking in the 1930s and now influence the cessation of it, that networks might help explain why the rich are getting richer (the rich attract more friends, and having more friends is an aid in getting rich), and that political polarization (a bad thing in the eyes of many) increases political participation (a good thing to most).

I have various reservations about Connected, however. Some are methodological. For instance, the authors obtained the data for their principal research from the Framingham Heart Study, which has collected health information about a large inter-generational group of people since 1948, but was not designed as a social network study. Christakis and Fowler turned it into one by using the researchers' contact notes to reconstruct social connections among the participants in the more recent cohorts. But because the available information was limited the average number of assigned direct "friends" (not counting family, coworkers, neighbors or other kinds of connections) for the study subjects was only 0.7 (I know the number only because I consulted one of the authors' journal articles, not because they provided such detail in the book). Thus to me it seems their network data were at best incomplete, or worse, possibly selection biased, leaving out a large majority of the real-life friends of the study subjects. Surely many persons who were actually closely connected at the first degree were not recognized by the study as connected at all, and possibly many actual first-degree connections were linked inaccurately only at higher degrees of separation.

That is just one example. Peer scientists, persons much more qualified than myself, have raised other methodological concerns. For instance, Christakis and Fowler have been criticized for the specification of one of their mathematical models, with one adjusted replication finding no significant social network effects on obesity.

While it seems clear enough that network analysis has been and can be applied in socially beneficial ways, the authors at times appear overly optimistic about the prospects. One of their themes is that "positional inequality" (persons placed in less advantageous positions in networks) can be mitigated if policy makers better take into account the role of social networks. For example, they suggest that a friends-of-friends strategy may sometimes be preferable to one that involves just the direct subjects and their one-degree friends -- if you join your friends to lose weight you might succeed, they say, but if their friends are overweight and not working on it, your friends might relapse, affecting you too. But, at least in this example, their strategy does not seem to offer much practical promise, since with each additional tier of friends engaged the cumulative cost goes up exponentially and there are diminishing marginal returns in the effectiveness pay-off for the first-tier direct subjects.

One big factor that makes Christakis and Fowler upbeat about the future of network analysis is the advance of communications technology. In part they are excited because they see treasure mines of data. They observe, for instance, that cell phone information allows researchers to study where connected people are minute by minute. The authors do not pause to consider the potential privacy intrusions and risks that expanded access to such data might enable.

Christakis and Fowler believe that technology now makes physical distance less of a constraint for certain networks (such as scientific collaborations, for instance) and they think the Internet has facilitated match-making networks of various kinds. Yet interestingly, they suggest that modern technologies do not take us away from our prehistoric past, but rather move us closer toward it, in the sense that "our desire to form connections depends partly on our genes." They say that, "Overall, the evidence from real-world networks suggests that online networks can be used to enhance what flows between real-world friends and family, but we do not know yet whether the Internet will increase the speed or scope of social contagions in general."

The bottom line is that there is still much about social networks that social scientists and others do not understand. For instance, I do not think that we can yet say much with great confidence about the magnitude and diffusion of behavioral influences (as distinct from pathogenic agents) beyond the first degree of separation, in spite of the assertions of Christakis and Fowler here. However, what they have done should help enrich future research.

While the statistics in the original journal articles might be fine, the authors do not present the interpretations in a particularly convincing way. Many interpretations given are just stated and the reader is apparently supposed to accept that explanation without evidence why it is the correct explanation. Even I can think of alternate explanations for some of their observed data.
Also, in many chapters the point is made and then elaborated upon for pages when they could've stopped much earlier--or else instead of just restating the same conclusions over-and-over, they could've told why other explanations don't work.

I loved this book. Sensitive, aware people perceive on a daily basis that actions, behaviors and emotions impact the lives of those around us, but the science that proves conclusively that your behaviors are impacting mine, my spouse's and friend's in Idaho offers such hope for improvement in the cosmic social network of which we all have our "connectedness". I loved the anecdotal stories - Nicholas and Erika meeting, the Starbucks employee, crazy unstoppable laughter - to which each reader will add additional network stories. We are connected, like it or not, so perhaps we can all start behaving in ways that benefit the entire network. Everyone who reads this will think twice about the impact of cutting someone off in traffic. Dr Christakis and Dr. Fowler have written for the scientific world, NY Times and lay reader - all who are part of the network.

Connected by Nicholas A. Christakis Md, PhD and James H. Fowler, PhD is a fascinating and intriguing novel. Christakis and Fowler expose the extraordinary connections within different social networks. The way they analyze how everyone is connected within "six degrees" of each other. It is also interesting how they adopted the conclusion that emotions can spread from and to "three degrees" away from you. For example, my friend's friend's friend is upset because her dog died, her being upset could ripple through the social network and upset me. In addition, they grasped my attention when they began to explain how our behaviors mimic each other. Christakis and Fowler have observed that people react in ways similar to their co-workers, friends and/or family. This observation makes me wonder how many of my reactions are mirrored reactions of those around me and how many are solely mine? Surprisingly they believe the way others portray people as attractive or not so attractive can also be spread through the "three degrees" and mimicry. I guess the idea of individualism doesn't really apply in this novel because it is all based on the fact that we are all connected in some way whether it be personal and/or emotional.

Furthermore, I believe this book was difficult to read because Christakis and Fowler went into so much depth with every concept they brought up. Many times throughout the novel I noticed myself getting bored with the text and having a hard time finishing each section. Most of the subsections within the novel were explained so much that I started to get confused with some of the ideas they were trying to express. Besides the fact that the authors had a hard time finding the appropriate amount of text for their concepts; they tackled a large and very interesting subjects and did a fantastic job exposing all the sides of social networks.

This book opens very well and is extremely convincing... If only it kept this pace. By the end I felt I'd invested enough into the book that I had to finish it even though it had stumbled into common sense connections with little more to add of insightful value. This book is worth it to read about the contagion of obesity and even the public health connections but it should have ended there. Sometimes less is more.