Three degrees of inuence

networks.[6] While certain subsequent analyses suggested

limitations to these analyses (subject to dierent statistical assumptions);[7] or expressed concern that the
Christakis-Fowler analyses did not fully control for other
environmental factors;[8] or mis-interpreted statistical
estimates;[9] or did not fully account for homophily processes in the creation and retention of relationships
over time;[10][11] other scholarship using sensitivity analysis has found that the core ndings regarding the
transmissibility of obesity and smoking cessation are
robust,[12][13] or has otherwise replicated or supported the
ndings.[14][15] Christakis and Fowler reviewed critical
and supportive ndings in 2013.[13] Moreover, a 2012 paper by physicists ver Steeg and Galstyan suggests it may
be possible to bound estimates of peer eects [15] even if
parametric assumptions are otherwise required to identify
such eects using observational data (if indeed substantial unobserved homophily is thought to be present).[11]
Additional support for the modeling approach used by
Christakis and Fowler provided by other authors has continued to appear,[16] including of the three-degrees-ofinuence property.[17]

Three Degrees of Inuence is a theory in the realm of

Social Networks,[1] proposed by Nicholas A. Christakis
and James H. Fowler. Christakis and Fowler found that
social networks have great inuence on individuals behavior. But social inuence does not end with the people to whom a person is directly tied. We inuence our
friends who in their turn inuence their friends, meaning that our actions can inuence people we have never
met. They posit that everything we do or say tends to ripple through our network, having an impact on our friends
(one degree), our friends friends (two degrees), and even
our friends friends friends (three degrees). Our inuence
gradually dissipates and ceases to have a noticeable eect
on people beyond the social frontier that lies at three degrees of separation. This argument is basically that peer
eects need not stop at one degree, and that, if we can
aect our friends, then we can (in many cases) aect our
friends friends, and so on. However, across a broad set of
empirical settings, the eect seems to no longer be meaningful at a social horizon of three degrees. Christakis and
Fowler have examined phenomena from various domains,
such as gaining weight, happiness, and politics.

1. Intrinsic decay - corruption of information (like the

game telephone)

In addition, subsequent studies (by many research groups,

including Christakis and Fowler) have found strong causal
evidence of behavioral contagion processes (including
those that spread beyond dyads, out to two, three,
or four degrees) using randomized controlled experiments,[18][19][20][21][22] including one experiment involving 61,000,000 people that showed spread of voting behavior out to two degrees of separation,[23] matched sample estimation,[24] and reshuing techniques.[25] A 2014
paper also conrmed the spread of emotions online, using
a massive experiment.[26]

2. Network instability - social ties become unstable (or

are not constant across time) at more than three degrees of separation

3 Moral implications

Mechanism

The inuence of actions ripples through networks three

degrees (to and from your friends friends friends). Inuence dissipates after three degrees for three reasons,
Christakis and Fowler propose:[2]

3. Evolutionary purpose - we evolved in small groups

The idea of network inuence raises the question of free
where everyone was connected by three degrees or
will, because it suggests that we are inuenced by facfewer
tors which we cannot control and which we are not aware
of. Christakis and Fowler claim that society should use
the knowledge about social networks in order to create a
2 Scientic literature
better society with a more ecient public policy. This
applies to many aspects of life, from public health to
Studies by Christakis and Fowler suggested that a vari- economics. For instance, they note that it might be preferety of attributeslike obesity,[3] smoking cessation,[4] able to immunize individuals located in networks center
and happiness[5] rather than being individualistic, are more than peripheral individuals. Or, it might be much
casually correlated by contagion mechanisms that trans- more eective to motivate clusters or people to avoid
mit these behaviors over long distances within social criminal behavior than to act upon individuals or than to
1

punish each criminal separately.

REFERENCES

[10] Noel, Hans; Nyhan, Brendan (2011).

The 'unfriending problem': The consequences of homophily
in friendship retention for causal estimates of social inuence. Social Networks 33 (3): 211218.
doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2011.05.003.

If people are connected to everyone by six degrees of separation (according to the social psychologist Stanley Milgram) and inuence those up to three degrees (Christakis
and Fowler), then people can reach halfway to anyone in
[11] Shalizi, Cosma R.; Thomas, Andrew C. (2011).
the world.[27]

See also
Mark Granovetter
The Tipping Point

References

[1] The hidden inuence of social networks Nicholas Christakis on TED.com.

[2] Connected Preface+chapter1
[3] Christakis, Nicholas A.; Fowler, James H. (2007). The
Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32
Years. The New England Journal of Medicine 357
(4): 370379. doi:10.1056/NEJMsa066082. PMID
17652652.
[4] Christakis, Nicholas A.; Fowler, James H. (2008). The
Collective Dynamics of Smoking in a Large Social Network. The New England Journal of Medicine 358.
doi:10.1056/NEJMsa0706154. PMC 2822344. PMID
18499567.
[5] Christakis, Nicholas A.; Fowler, James H. (2008).
Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. British Medical Journal 337 (337):
a2338. doi:10.1136/bmj.a2338. PMC 2600606. PMID
19056788.

Homphily and Contagion Are Generically Confounded in Observational Social Network Studies.
Sociological Methods & Research 40 (2): 211239.
doi:10.1177/0049124111404820.
[12] VanderWeele, Tyler J. Sensitivity Analysis for
Contagion Eects in Social Networks.
Sociological Methods & Research 40 (2): 240255.
doi:10.1177/0049124111404821.
[13] Christakis NA and Fowler JH, Social Contagion Theory:
ExaminingDynamic Social Networks and Human Behavior, Statistics in Medicine 2013; 32: 556-577
[14] MM Ali, A Amialchuk, S Gao, and F Heiland, Adolescent Weight Gain and Social Networks: Is There a Contagion Eect?, Applied Economics 2012; 44: 2969-2983
[15] G ver Steeg, A. Galstyan, Statistical Tests for Contagion
in Observational Social Network Studies, Journal of Machine Learning Research 2012; 563-571
[16] A. Gonzalez-Pardo, R. Cajias, D. Camacho, An Agent
Based Simulation of Christakis-Fowler Social Model,
Recent Developments in Computational Collective Intelligence, 2014; 513: 69-77
[17] http://www.cbma.bio.uminho.pt/files/
Pacheco-Manuscript.pdf
[18] Centola, Damon (2010). The Spread of Behavior in an
Online Social Network Experiment. Science 329 (5995):
11941197. doi:10.1126/science.1185231.
[19] Centola, Damon (2011). An experimental study of homophily in the adoption of health behavior. Science 334
(6060): 12691272. doi:10.1126/science.1207055.

[6] Christakis, Nicholas A.; Fowler, James H. (2009).

Connected:The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks
and How They Shape Our Lives. Little, Brown and Co.
ISBN 978-0316036146.

[20] Fowler, James H.; Christakis, Nicholas A. (2010).

Cooperative behavior cascades in human social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
107 (12): 53345338. doi:10.1073/pnas.0913149107.
PMC 2851803. PMID 20212120.

[7] Cohen-Cole, Ethan; Fletcher, Jason M. (2008). Detecting implausible social network eects in acne, height, and
headaches: longitudinal analysis. British Medical Journal. doi:10.1136/bmj.a2533.

[21] Aral, Sinan; Walker, Dylan (2011). Creating Social Contagion Through Viral Product Design: A Randomized
Trial of Peer Inuence in Networks. Management Science 57 (9): 16231639. doi:10.1287/mnsc.1110.1421.

[8] Cohen-Cole, Ethan; Fletcher, Jason M. (2008).

Is obesity contagious?
Social networks vs.
environmental factors in the obesity epidemic.
Journal of Health Economics 27:
13821387.
doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2008.04.005.

[22] Rand D, Arbesman S, and Christakis NA,"Dynamic Social Networks Promote Cooperation in Experiments with
Humans, PNAS:Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences 2011; 108: 19193-19198

[9] Lyons, Russell (2011). The Spread of Evidence-Poor

Medicine via Flawed Social Network Analysis. Statistics,
Politics, and Policy 2 (1). doi:10.2202/2151-7509.1024.

[23] Bond, RM; Fariss, CJ; Jones, JJ; Kramer, ADI; Marlow,
C; Settle, JE; Fowler, JH (2012). A 61-million-person
experiment in social inuence and political mobilization.
Nature 489: 295298. doi:10.1038/nature11421.

[24] Aral, Sinan; Muchnik, Lev; Sunararajan, Arun

(2009).
Distinguishing inuence-based contagion
from homophily-driven diusion in dynamic networks.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106
(51): 2154421549. doi:10.1073/pnas.0908800106.
[25] Anagnostopoulos, Aris; Kumar, Ravi; Mahdian, Mohammad (2008). Inuence and Correlation in Social Networks. Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: 715.
doi:10.1145/1401890.1401897.
[26] Kramer, ADI; Guillory, JE; Hancock, JT (2014).
Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks (PDF). Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
[27] connectedthebook.com - Download slides

External links
Article concerning three degrees of inuence

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