Induction, Homophily, And Confounding

Nicholas Christakis explains, in his TedTalk presentation, how we are all embedded in a vast social network and how in these networks certain habits and ideologies can spread from person to person. Christakis goes on to ask how these social networks are developed and created. Through his research in obesity social network spreading, he breaks down the causes of these similarities and clustering to induction, homophily, and confounding. In this paper i will discuss how induction, homophily, and confounding has played a role in my social networks.
Induction is an idea spread from person to person. A habit I have developed through induction is smoking. My ex-boyfriend, Bryson, was my best friend and the closest person in my social network at the time. He had a habit of always smoking. The fact that I was always around him increased my chances of smoking. Eventually one hit became another and through induction from Bryson, I began to smoke as well. This example in my life reminded me of Dr. Christakis observation in his obesity study where if your friend is obese it can increase the likelihood of you becoming obese by 57% in the same given time period. …show more content…
Mr. Christakis describes homophily with the phrase “birds of a feather flock together”. Homophily is when the same types of people choose to associate with each other. This cause is promenait in the social connection with my bestfriend Taneisha. I met my best friend at school. We were in all the same classes and always caught ourselves talking about the same things so we instantly clicked. As we got to know each other we turned out to be almost the same person. Our friendship was solidified because of our similarities our cultures - shared beliefs, values, and practices (). Like how some obesity people choose their friends based on similar size, I chose my best friend because we had similar interests and