Can't help being the life of the party? Maybe you were just born that way. Researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego have found that our place in a social network is influenced in part by our genes, according to new findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This is the first study to examine the inherited characteristics of social networks and to establish a genetic role in the formation and configuration of these networks. The genes in your congeniality: Researchers identify
genetic influence in social networksThe research was conducted by Nicholas Christakis of Harvard, who is professor of sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School, Christopher Dawes and James Fowler, both of UC San Diego.
"We were able to show that our particular location in vast social networks has a genetic basis," says Christakis. "In fact, the beautiful and complicated pattern of human connection depends on our genes to a significant measure."
While it might be expected that genes affect personality, these findings go further, and illustrate a genetic influence on the structure and formation of an individual's social group.
The researchers found that popularity, or the number of times an individual was named as a friend, and the likelihood that those friends know one another, were both strongly heritable. Additionally, location within the network, or the tendency to be at the center or on the edges of the group, was also genetically linked. However, the researchers were surprised to learn that the number of people named as a friend by an individual did not appear to be inherited.
The study included national data (from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health) for the social networks of 1,110 adolescent twins, both fraternal and identical. The researchers compared the social networks of the identical twins to those of the fraternal twins, and found greater similarity between the identical twins' social network structure than the fraternal twins' networks.
There may be an evolutionary explanation for this genetic influence and the tendency for some people to be at the center while others are at the edges of the group, according to the researchers. If a deadly germ is spreading through a community, individuals at the edges are least likely to be exposed. However, to gain access to important information about a food source, being in the center of the group has a distinct benefit.
"One of the things that the study tells us is that social networks are likely to be a fundamental part of our genetic heritage," says Fowler, associate professor of political science at UC San Diego. "It may be that natural selection is acting on not just things like whether or not we can resist the common cold, but also who it is that we are going to come into contact with."
The findings also illuminate a previously unknown limitation of existing social network models, which had assumed that all members behave as interchangeable cogs. To address these intrinsic differences in human beings that contribute to the formation of social networks, the researchers have created a new mathematical model, called the "attract and introduce" model, which is also explained in this paper and supports the genetic variation of members.
This model creates networks that very closely simulate actual human social networks, and using this model, they found that when someone was placed in any virtual network, they gravitated towards the same place within the network.
Because both health behaviors and germs spread through social networks, understanding how contagions flow through social networks has the potential to improve strategies for addressing public health concerns such as obesity or the flu.
"I think that going forward, we are going to find that social networks are a critical conduit between our genes and important health outcomes," says Fowler.
Fowler and Christakis have also published on other aspects of social networks, such as the spread of obesity, smoking, and happiness.
“You wait till Larry comes and I tell him my theory!” The bids, duly sealed, were given into the keeping of the commissary officer to be put in his safe, and kept until the day of judgment, when all being opened in public and in the presence of the aspirants, the lowest would[Pg 188] get the contract. It was a simple plan, and gave no more opportunity for underhand work than could be avoided. But there were opportunities for all that. It was barely possible—the thing had been done—for a commissary clerk or sergeant, desirous of adding to his pittance of pay, or of favoring a friend among the bidders, to tamper with the bids. By the same token there was no real reason why the commissary officer could not do it himself. Landor had never heard, or known, of such a case, but undoubtedly the way was there. It was a question of having the will and the possession of the safe keys. "Well, I believe our boys 's all right. They're green, and they're friskier than colts in a clover field, but they're all good stuff, and I believe we kin stand off any ordinary gang o' guerrillas. I'll chance it, anyhow. This's a mighty valuable train to risk, but it ought to go through, for we don't know how badly they may need it. You tell your engineer to go ahead carefully and give two long whistles if he sees anything dangerous." "Fine-looking lot of youngsters," he remarked. "They'll make good soldiers." "That's just what he was, the little runt, and we had the devil's own time finding him. What in Sam Hill did the Captain take him for, I'd like to know? Co. Q aint no nursery. Well, the bugler up at Brigade Headquarters blowed some sort of a call, and Skidmore wanted to know what it meant. They told him that it was an order for the youngest man in each company to come up there and get some milk for his coffee tomorrow morning, and butter for his bread. There was only enough issued for the youngest boys, and if he wanted his share he'd have to get a big hustle on him, for the feller whose nose he'd put out o' joint 'd try hard to get there ahead o' him, and get his share. So Skidmore went off at a dead run toward the sound of the bugle, with the boys looking after him and snickering. But he didn't come back at roll-call, nor at tattoo, and the smart Alecks begun to get scared, and abuse each other for setting up a job on a poor, innocent little boy. Osc Brewster and Ol Perry, who had been foremost in the trick had a fight as to which had been to blame. Taps come, and he didn't get back, and then we all became scared. I'd sent Jim Hunter over to Brigade Headquarters to look for him, but he came back, and said they hadn't seen anything of him there. Then I turned out the whole company to look for him. Of course, them too-awfully smart galoots of Co. A had to get very funny over our trouble. They asked why we didn't get the right kind of nurses for our company, that wouldn't let the members stray out of their sight? Why we didn't call the children in when the chickens went to roost, undress 'em, and tuck 'em in their little beds, and sing to 'em after they'd said 'Now I lay me down to sleep?' I stood it all until that big, hulking Pete Nasmith came down with a camp-kettle, which he was making ring like a bell, as he yelled out, 'Child lost! Child lost!' Behind him was Tub Rawlings singing, 'Empty's the cradle, baby's gone.' Then I pulled off my blouse and slung it into my tent, and told 'em there went my chevrons, and I was simply Scott Ralston, and able to lick any man in Co. A. One o' their Lieutenants came out and ordered them back to their quarters, and I deployed the company in a skirmish-line, and started 'em through the brush toward Brigade Headquarters. About three-quarters o' the way Osc Brewster and Ol Perry, when going through a thicket, heard a boy boo-hooing. They made their way to him, and there was little Skidmore sitting on a stump, completely confused and fagged out. He'd lost his way, and the more he tried to find it the worse he got turned around. They called out to him, and he blubbered out: 'Yes, it's me; little Pete Skidmore. Them doddurned fools in my company 've lost me, just as I've bin tellin' 'em right along they would, durn 'em.' Osc and Ol were so tickled at finding him that they gathered him up, and come whooping back to camp, carrying him every step of the way." And the rush stopped. Cadnan waited for a second, but there was no more. "Dara is not to die," he said. Then he saw Orion hanging over him, very low in the windy sky, shaking with frost. His eyes fixed themselves on the constellation, then gradually he became aware of the sides of a cart, of the smell of straw, of the movement of other bodies that sighed and stirred beside him. The physical experience was now complete, and soon the emotional had shaped itself. Memory came, rather sick. He remembered the fight, his terror, the flaming straw, the crowd that constricted and crushed him like a snake. His rage and hate rekindled, but this time without focus—he hated just everyone and everything. He hated the wheels which jolted him, his body because it was bruised, the other bodies round him, the stars that danced above him, those unknown footsteps that tramped beside him on the road. Farewell to Jane and Caroline!" HoME大香蕉色人阁 ENTER NUMBET 0017
Refs
and further readingHOME
Resources
BLTC Research
Liberal Eugenics
Superhappiness?
Utopian Surgery?
The End of Suffering
Wirehead Hedonism
The Good Drug Guide
The Abolitionist Project
The Hedonistic Imperative
The Reproductive Revolution
MDMA: Utopian Pharmacology
Transhumanism: Brave New World?
Critique of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
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