lifecourse

The New Scientist reports this morning that, “Like an influenza outbreak, happiness – and misery too – spread through social networks, affecting people through three degrees of separation. For instance, a happy friend of a friend of a friend increases the chances of personal happiness by about 6% (see graphic). Compare that to research showing that a $5000 income bump ups the odds by just 2%, says James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who led the new study.”

“Even people we don’t know and have never met have bigger effect on our mood than substantial increases in income,” he says. He and colleague Nicholas Christakis, of Boston’s Harvard Medical School, made the connection by mining 53,228 social connections between 5124 people who took part in a decades-long clinical study.

This study employed similar methods to those used to study smoking and obesity as part of the Framingham Heart Study, the research subjects recorded social contacts and health status as part of the long-term clinical study. Social links between participants allowed the investigators to map the spread of happiness — one item on the psychological questionnaire included in the study.

Even more than smoking and obesity, happiness spreads best at close distances, they found. A happy next-door neighbour ups the odds of person happiness by 34%, a sibling who lives within 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) by 14%, and a friend within half a mile by a whopping 42%.

The effect falls off through the network, with friends’ happiness boosting the chances of personal happiness by an average of 15% and friends of friends by 10%. As with obesity and smoking, Fowler and Christakis detected no effect beyond three degrees of separation.

And the sociological commentary…

Ruut Veenhoven, a sociologist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands, editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies, and curator of the World Database of Happiness agrees. “Happy people are typically more involved, are nicer to their kids and their dog, and live longer,” he says.

The study, which he describes as “terribly creative”, might even help people improve their daily lives. “If you want to make people happier, you know at least how it spreads.”

Read the full story.

A new study suggests that link between obesity in parents and children is the result of both social and genetic factors. This important study, first reported by Reuters, gives equal weight to family lifestyle and genes in determining teenagers’ weight.

“What we do as a family — our family lifestyles — matters for weight. Lifestyles aren’t just about individual behaviors,” study author Dr. Molly A. Martin, Pennsylvania State University in University Park told Reuters Health. The study is the first to demonstrate that the connection between parents and children’s weight is social as well as genetic.

“We had a gut sense that this was known or true, but in the research literature it actually had not been proven,” added Martin, a sociologist who studies families, social inequalities, and adolescent health. Instead, she said, scientists studying behavior and genetics have focused solely on the roles of genes and environment, without trying to separate out the effects of a family’s behavior.

The study was also picked up by US News & World Report, which reported:

Adolescents tended to be heavier in families that frequently missed meals or spent several hours a day in front of the TV or video games, researchers report in a special issue of the American Journal of Sociology.

“My study finds that weight runs in families, but it’s not just because of genetics. What we do together, how we spend our time together, what we eat and how we organize ourselves as family matters,” said study author Molly Martin, an assistant professor of sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

The methods…

For the new study, Martin included data from more than 2,500 pairs of twins, siblings or half-siblings. She examined numerous factors that could contribute to a teen’s weight status, such as parental obesity, socioeconomic status, parental education levels, birth weight, activity levels and more.

Two factors that emerged as separate from a family’s genetic influence were whether or not families missed meals, and the amount of time they spent watching TV or playing video games.

Read more from Reuters.
Read more from US News & World Report.

Science Daily reports on a new study from sociologist Rob Ford about the decline in racial prejudice in Britain since the 1980s, which the research suggests is attributable to the tolerance of younger generations.

Dr. Rob Ford from The University of Manchester says that social contact with black or Asian Britons is becoming increasingly unremarkable to white people in their 20s and 30s.

The study published in next month’s British Journal of Sociology found that while 60% of people born in the 1910s opposed marriage between white relatives and ethnic minorities, this figure falls to 25% for people born in the 1970s.

The study draws upon data from the British Social Attitudes Survey conducted in the 1980s and 90s.

“The marked decline in racial prejudice is backed by further data points in 2006, 2004 and 2003 so the results here are pretty emphatic: we are becoming a more tolerant society. The attitudes of older cohorts reflect the fact that their perceptions were shaped by growing up in an ethnically homogeneous Britain before mass immigration began,” he said. “Those cohorts express much more hostility about social contact with minority groups than their children and grandchildren.”

Ford cautions against the assumption that racial prejudice will disappear in the immediate future. He notes, “…while prejudice is therefore likely to be less of a problem in the future, it is unlikely to disappear overnight. Cohort replacement is a slow process and significant levels of hostility to ethnic minorities remain even in the youngest cohorts surveyed here.”

Read more.

Yesterday the Telegraph (UK) ran a story about Malcolm Gladwell, famous author of ‘The Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink,’ and pop sociologist extraordinaire. The article was based upon an informal interview with Gladwell to discuss his latest book ‘Outliers: The Story of Success,’ which has received critical acclaim here and abroad. Telegraph (UK) reporter Bob Williams writes about meeting Gladwell in his Greenwich Village apartment, and the pleasure of being greeted with a properly-prepared cup of tea — which is later criticized for its weakness.

Williams writes:

As with his previous books, Gladwell glides effortlessly across every subject imaginable to back up his theories with statistics – from the tendencies of Korean airline pilots to crash and of sportsmen born in January to do well, to why so many top lawyers are Jewish. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a theory about why he likes watery tea, as he has seems to have one for everything else. It would, by definition, be elegantly framed, somewhat left-field, but guaranteed – when snappily packaged as, say, The Pouring Point – to capture the zeitgeist instantly.

About the book itself:

Exceptional people – or “outliers” as [Gladwell] calls them – excel for rather more prosaic reasons. Geniuses are made, not born, benefiting from very specific advantages in their environment and putting in at least 10,000 hours of practice first. The premise is not exactly counter-intuitive. Indeed, some have carped that it is obvious.

“Hopefully it will be an anti-anxiety book,” says the author. “The route to success is ordinary – it’s not based on extravagant, innate gifts. I want to demystify.” He wants to “humble the successful and strip them of their illusions of their own virtue”.

Read the full story, here.

Temple University sociologist Matt Wray has identified new patterns in suicides in the Las Vegas area, Medical News Today reports. The study, titled “Leaving Las Vegas: Exposure to Las Vegas and Risk of Suicide,” examined rates of suicide in the Entertainment Capital of the World over a 30-year period and compared that data to the rest of the nation. Wray and his colleagues found:

residents of Las Vegas face a suicide risk that is significantly higher than the risk faced by residents elsewhere

people who die while visiting Las Vegas are twice as likely to die by suicide than are people who die visiting someplace else

visitors to Las Vegas face an even higher suicide risk than residents of Las Vegas

Wray offers some plausible explanations for this pattern, but encourages further study…

According to Wray, there a couple of scenarios that may explain the reasons for this geographical suicide cluster, but these need further research. “One would be ‘gambler’s despair’ – someone visits Las Vegas, bets his house away and decides to end it all. Another would be that those predisposed to suicide disproportionately choose Las Vegas to reside in or visit. And, finally, there may be a ‘contagion’ effect where people are emulating the suicides of others, with Las Vegas acting as a suicide magnet, much like the Golden Gate bridge. Some people may be going there intent on self-destruction.”

On a positive note, Wray’s study found that the suicide risk has actually declined over the past 30 years in the Las Vegas area in contrast to national rates, which have risen slightly in recent decades.

USA Today reports on statistics from the Census that indicate “the age at first marriage has been climbing steadily for all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic groups. The median age is now the oldest since the U.S. Census started keeping track in the 1890s: almost 26 for women and almost 28 for men.”

There are general pros and cons for marrying at different times, but there seems to be little agreement…

And as young people wait longer to marry, there is growing debate over whether waiting is a good idea, and if so, how long is best. Those who advocate marriage in the early to mid-20s say that’s the age when the pool of possible mates is larger, it’s when couples can “grow up” together and it’s prime for childbearing. But others favor the late 20s or early 30s, saying maturity makes for happier unions and greater economic security — both of which make divorce less likely.

Sociologist Andrew Cherlin weighs in…

“It’s better not to get married as a teenager,” says sociologist Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University. “Beyond that, I don’t think there’s an ideal age.”

There does seems to be sociological evidence that earlier is better…

A study being drafted by sociologist Norval Glenn of the University of Texas-Austin finds that those who marry in the early to mid-20s are slightly happier and less likely to break up than those who marry in the later 20s, but are significantly more satisfied with their relationships than those who marry at 30 or older.

But marrying later might be best, according to Paul Amato…

But research by sociologist Paul Amato of Pennsylvania State University for a 2007 book he co-wrote suggests quite the opposite. The studies for Alone Together: How Marriage in America Is Changing used different data and different criteria and found distinct benefits to marrying older.

“We found that the delay in marriage was actually a good thing and it actually improved the average marital quality by a fair amount,” he says.

“Older marriages (30s vs. 20s) were more cohesive in the sense they did things more often together as a couple. And couples who married at older ages were less likely to report thinking about divorce or that their marriage was in trouble.”

But ultimately whether or not you are ‘ready’ does seem to matter…

“People are more concerned with their own self-development than they used to be,” [sociologist Andrew] Cherlin says. “People are postponing marriage until everything in their lives is working in order. The order means after you’ve finished your education, perhaps after beginning your career, and increasingly after you’ve lived with your partner. They’re postponing marriage until they think they’re ready for it.”

Read the full story.

Science News reports this morning on an alarming new trend which suggests that middle-aged whites are a high-risk group for committing suicide.

A dark underside of middle-age has surfaced in the past decade. Although this phase of life is one psychologists have long considered a time of general stability and emotional well-being, white men and women ages 40 to 64 accounted for the bulk of a recent increase in the U.S. suicide rate, a new study finds.

Data gleaned from U.S. death certificates show that the overall suicide rate rose 0.7 percent annually between 1999 and 2005, reversing a downward trend in the rate that had begun in 1986. This increase primarily reflected a 2.7 percent annual rise in the suicide rate among middle-aged white men and a corresponding 3.9 percent annual rise among middle-aged white women, say epidemiologist Susan Baker of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and her colleagues.

A sociologist weighs in…

In 2005, evidence of a disproportionate number of annual deaths among middle-aged people in the United States raised suspicion that an escalating percentage of the deaths were suicides, remarks sociologist Robert Bossarte of the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y. “The big unanswered question is why middle-aged adults killed themselves at an increased rate in the years covered by this new study,” Bossarte says.

Possible contributors to this trend include mounting numbers of military veterans reaching middle age and rising difficulties for middle-aged individuals in trying to secure medical insurance, he suggests.

Read more.

This morning the Guardian (UK) reported on the battle over Proposition 8 in California. Proposition 8, also known as the ‘California Marriage Protection Act,’ is a proposed amendment to California’s state Constitution which will only recognize heterosexual unions, eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry. The Guardian article describes this battle as emblematic of a larger cultural divide in the United States. 

The Guardian reports:

Conservative and evangelical groups were freshly mobilised by the California supreme court’s decision in May to overrule voters’ approval of a ban on same-sex marriages in 2000.

But the movement has its roots in the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, says University of California-Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout.

“They got as far as they could on abortion and have embraced marriage laws as the next step in their agenda,” said Hout, co-author of The Truth About Conservative Christians: What They Think and What They Believe. “Their main agenda remains the reversal of Roe v Wade, but they’re trying to gain new allies who look askance at gay marriage.”

Not that it’s a purely Machiavellian manoeuvre. Proponents of bans on same-sex marriage are “truly concerned that the state should not be licensing immoral behaviour”, Hout said.

“In their interpretation of the Bible, they see a prohibition on homosexual activity. Gay marriage condones a lifestyle that’s ruled out by their reading of the scripture.”

Read the full story.

The Telegraph (UK) reported today on a new results from a survey by parenting website Netmums which revealed that one in six mothers favored one child over others. The website surveyed more than 1,000 parents, and found that nearly 20 percent of them said that they love one of their children more than the others. Netmums also revealed that one-third of parents said they loved all their children equally, and half said they love their children equally but ‘in different ways.’ And of course, they couldn’t resist seeking out sociological commentary…

The Telegraph reports:

There can be negative impacts to having a favourite child, however, which can lead to undesirable personality traits in later life for both the child itself and other siblings.

Dr Martina Klett-Davies, a sociologist specialising in families and sibling relationships at the London School of Economics (LSE), said: “If there is a favourite child, they probably become too spoiled and find it difficult in later life.

“But the imbalance could prepare siblings for unfairness in later life when you leave the family circle by teaching them to be fighters.”

The full story.

US News and World Report ran a story entitled ‘A Sociologist’s Take on Abortion‘ on Adam Voiland’s ‘On Men’ blog. 

Voiland writes:

Earlier this week, I blogged about a conference on how abortions impact men emotionally. I pointed out that there’s a dearth of dispassionate research exploring whether the controversial procedure affects men’s mental health. That’s very much the case, but I’d like to follow up with perspective, as well as some data, from one of the few academic researchers who has tackled the issue: Arthur Shostak, an emeritus professor of sociology at Drexel University. We weren’t able to connect before that post.

Since the early 1980s, Shostak has been periodically surveying and interviewing what he calls “waiting-room men”—the 600,000 or so guys who sit and wait each year as their partners undergo an abortion, and who help them return home afterward. Though firmly pro-choice, Shostak says he considers every abortion “a tragedy” and cites reducing the need as one of the reasons he studies how the procedure affects men. Thirty years ago, he went through an abortion with his partner; since then, he has surveyed upward of 3,000 waiting-room men about their experiences.

After reading about Shostak’s work, Voiland conducted an interview with him and posted excerpts on his blog. Read it here.