Trying to
understand why people do what they do has fascinated me clear back to my
undergraduate college days. But because
of the nature of the psychology profession--general psych., counseling, educational or social psychology—their methods and the
reality of their rather passive professional job environments, i.e., sitting as
a counselor, therapist or advisor, constructing and evaluating tests and interpreting
data from studies, experiments and statistics-- I chose rather to professionally
go into classroom social science and physical education teaching and coaching. There I could be on my feet moving,
demonstrating, talking, being more actively involved with the people I wanted
to work with and try to influence for the good.
And so I had
a career in teaching; but I continued to maintain an interest in psychology.
In recent years
the unsuspected relationship between psychological findings in two areas of
particular interest to me have been independently published by well-known
Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D. (The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil ) and
Harvard researchers Nicolas Christakis, Md., Ph.D., and James Fowler, Ph.D. (Connected: The Surprising Power of Our
Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives). Let me give a very brief
synopsis of their findings pertaining to the connection between evil and the etiology of obesity.
A surprising relationship
between these seemingly disparate individual and social problems, and the influence
of social networks was found (see ‘Bad Seeds and Everyday Gluttony’ in Psychology Today, Hero, Sept 15, 2009).
From Zimbardo’s
piece in Psychology Today:
Obesity is not evil, but both share a common yet long undetected feature. Social
science, like history, has demonstrated that the most powerful causal forces
behind everything from prisoner abuse to ‘supersizing' are located less in
conscious individual choices and more in the situational and systemic factors
that envelop individuals at given times and places.The prevailing notion that personal, inner dispositions are the primary causal factors involved in bad behavior or obesity needs to be reexamined.
And from
Christakis’ and Fowler’s article in The
New England Journal of Medicine (July 2007):
"Network phenomena appear to be relevant to the
biologic and behavioral trait of obesity, and obesity
appears to spread through social ties.... The spread of obesity in social
networks appears to be a factor in the obesity epidemic."
The study showed that these effects were the product, not of
behavioral imitation, but of perceived
social norms. Having a close friend or family member who is obese made
obesity more socially acceptable -- rather than stigmatized.
These authors conclude here is a
power of social interaction that goes a long way in explaining why people do
what they do and become what they become.
Social network ties can be beneficial or they can drag one into
behaviors or lifestyles that are deleterious and counterproductive.
I remember
telling my children, ‘You can’t hang around a campfire without starting to
smell like smoke—whether you want to or not’ and even included it in my list of
life maxims. With the advent of the
worldwide computer web and social media we are influenced more than we know by
what we see, hear, and spend time with. Much
of it (especially that found on the Facebook
genre) is ‘smoke,’ or at least has the psychological effect of it if we spend much
time around it, and it can affect people in negative ways.
I end with
the old story (told more fully in an early weblog posting of mine) of the baby
eagle who was found and put into a pen with the chickens and in seeing them
imitated their behavior and became as a chicken. Later, a naturalist saw the eagle and knew of
its potential and with patience and perseverance persuaded the eagle to assume
its true nature and leave the barnyard and soar with the other eagles.
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