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This is an older study (2017) I came across and found fascinating. As many of you regular readers will know I have reported many times on the benefits of exercise. But this study was fascinating in that it looked at the contagion effect of exercise i.e. do people affect each other with the exercise bug?
To answer that question the researchers analyses data from a global network of 1.1 million runners over a period of five years and in addition 3.4 million social network ties. That’s a lot of data! What did they find?
Well, yes there is social contagion, runners do infect each other but the specifics are quite interesting. For example, it was found that both men and women influence men (men more than women) but that men do not influence women. Another interesting influence is that of being faster or slower runner. It was found that those who were slightly slower of faster influenced others most.
Read the paper for more interesting insights but of note is that exercise (in this case running) is infectious but how infectious depends on certain other factors such as closeness, gender, and how good you and your friends are — or not.
Reference:
Aral, S., and Nicolaides, C. (2017).
Exercise contagion in a global social network.
Nat. Commun. 8.
doi:10.1038/ncomms14753.
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Andy is author of leading brains Review a monthly e-magazine on all things the brain, behaviour, and business.
