Read Online The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier by Susan Pinker - Free Book Online
Authors: Susan Pinker
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comes to sharing a bowl of Doritos, you might say that it’s each man for himself. 26 And the more overweight the person—especially if she’s young and female—themore her peers influence her waistline. In a study by the economist Justin Trogdon and his colleagues, teenage girls were much more susceptible to “catching” their friends’ weight increases than were teenage boys. 27
Given the mechanics of social transmission, it seems you have to be there to “get the music.” Emotional synchrony—not to mention the synchrony of one’s daily schedule—can play a strong role in weight gain and weight loss. Unwittingly, my friend Florence Velly demonstrated how physical proximity to friends can affect one’s waistline. Soon after she moved from France onto my street in 2009, Florence and I happened to meet in a nearby park while she was walking her dog. It was an early morning in spring. Sparkling with dew, the grass was alive with squirrels. As our paths crossed there was flash of recognition, though we had never met. When I stopped to give her dog a friendly pat, we discovered that not only were we neighbors but she had just begun to swim with my team three times a week (along with Sylvie, whom you met in Chapter 1 , and Lou, whom I will introduce in Chapter 8 ). Florence and I started walking her dog together in Montreal’s Mount Royal Park every Thursday morning. Her pace was brisk. Her black lab, Talia, eagerly bounded uphill no matter how icy it was, and we followed behind, chatting amiably. After several consecutive Thursdays, I noticed that a couple of pounds had dropped off.
From left, swim team members Christine Cardinal, Florence Velly, and the author, in clothes designed by Florence’s brother
. (Image and Figure Credits 4.3 )
That was a good thing, as Florence’s brother was a dress designer in Paris, and he soon sent her a box of samples. Several teammates gathered inFlorence’s living room to try on the slinky silk jersey dresses in eye-popping prints. To watch my athletic teammates slide those brilliantly colored sheaths over their heads was to know that French fashion is one thing and French fries are another. Sadly, Florence’s return to France two years later ended our casual get-togethers and Thursday walks, and I really missed her. Her departure registered on my scale too: those lost pounds reappeared. While she was my neighbor and a member of my “village,” her proximity had affected me. I not only enjoyed her company, I exercised more often and felt a subtle pressure to meet her aesthetic standard. Those influences evaporated when she was no longer close by.
FAMILIES AND GETTING FAT
Given the role of proximity, not to mention shared genetic predispositions, it makes sense that siblings also influence each other’s weight. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler discovered that if one brother in the Framingham study became obese, then, controlling for other factors, his brother’s chances of putting on weight increased by 40 percent. The siblings probably viewed each other’s creeping weight gain as a normal part of aging, providing another explanation for obesity contagion. If most everyone in your tight circle of friends, family, or co-workers has started going out regularly for margaritas and nachos and acquires love handles in the process, your standards for what a normal waist size looks like might change.
At this point you won’t be surprised to learn that sibling contagion is more intense among women. If a sister in Framingham got fat, her sister’s chances of subsequently packing on the pounds increased by whopping 67 percent, nearly 30 percent more than the impact between brothers. Husbands’ and wives’ weights rose in tandem, though wives affected their husbands’ waistlines more than the reverse (and given that this effect persisted up to three degrees of separation, it wasn’t just about who was doing the shopping and cooking). Here was the female effect again,
Given the mechanics of social transmission, it seems you have to be there to “get the music.” Emotional synchrony—not to mention the synchrony of one’s daily schedule—can play a strong role in weight gain and weight loss. Unwittingly, my friend Florence Velly demonstrated how physical proximity to friends can affect one’s waistline. Soon after she moved from France onto my street in 2009, Florence and I happened to meet in a nearby park while she was walking her dog. It was an early morning in spring. Sparkling with dew, the grass was alive with squirrels. As our paths crossed there was flash of recognition, though we had never met. When I stopped to give her dog a friendly pat, we discovered that not only were we neighbors but she had just begun to swim with my team three times a week (along with Sylvie, whom you met in Chapter 1 , and Lou, whom I will introduce in Chapter 8 ). Florence and I started walking her dog together in Montreal’s Mount Royal Park every Thursday morning. Her pace was brisk. Her black lab, Talia, eagerly bounded uphill no matter how icy it was, and we followed behind, chatting amiably. After several consecutive Thursdays, I noticed that a couple of pounds had dropped off.
From left, swim team members Christine Cardinal, Florence Velly, and the author, in clothes designed by Florence’s brother
. (Image and Figure Credits 4.3 )
That was a good thing, as Florence’s brother was a dress designer in Paris, and he soon sent her a box of samples. Several teammates gathered inFlorence’s living room to try on the slinky silk jersey dresses in eye-popping prints. To watch my athletic teammates slide those brilliantly colored sheaths over their heads was to know that French fashion is one thing and French fries are another. Sadly, Florence’s return to France two years later ended our casual get-togethers and Thursday walks, and I really missed her. Her departure registered on my scale too: those lost pounds reappeared. While she was my neighbor and a member of my “village,” her proximity had affected me. I not only enjoyed her company, I exercised more often and felt a subtle pressure to meet her aesthetic standard. Those influences evaporated when she was no longer close by.
FAMILIES AND GETTING FAT
Given the role of proximity, not to mention shared genetic predispositions, it makes sense that siblings also influence each other’s weight. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler discovered that if one brother in the Framingham study became obese, then, controlling for other factors, his brother’s chances of putting on weight increased by 40 percent. The siblings probably viewed each other’s creeping weight gain as a normal part of aging, providing another explanation for obesity contagion. If most everyone in your tight circle of friends, family, or co-workers has started going out regularly for margaritas and nachos and acquires love handles in the process, your standards for what a normal waist size looks like might change.
At this point you won’t be surprised to learn that sibling contagion is more intense among women. If a sister in Framingham got fat, her sister’s chances of subsequently packing on the pounds increased by whopping 67 percent, nearly 30 percent more than the impact between brothers. Husbands’ and wives’ weights rose in tandem, though wives affected their husbands’ waistlines more than the reverse (and given that this effect persisted up to three degrees of separation, it wasn’t just about who was doing the shopping and cooking). Here was the female effect again,
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