My Boss’s Spouse’s Friend Made Me Do It
May 27th, 2008 |
Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler’s work on social networks is getting a lot of attention from both online and traditional media. From yesterday’s Washington Post:
The pair reported last summer that obesity appeared to spread from one person to another through social networks, almost like a virus or a fad.
In a follow-up to that provocative research, the team has produced similar findings about another major health issue: smoking. In a study published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team found that a person’s decision to kick the habit is strongly affected by whether other people in their social network quit—even people they do not know. And, surprisingly, entire networks of smokers appear to quit virtually simultaneously.
I found this to be an intriguing and slightly amusing finding in the context of the U.S. government’s war on drugs. As any American knows, preventive efforts in this country to curtail drug abuse have tended to place considerable emphasis on the acquisition of specific social skills, such as the “Just Say No” campaign or the D.A.R.E. program’s reliance on resisting “peer pressure.”
I’ve always thought it was an odd strategy on the face of it, ignoring as it does the native desire to experiment and the physiological rewards of recreational use. While there’s undoubtedly a social element to drug abuse, the notion that millions of innocent children are being seduced into drug use by their serpentine friends (despite the best efforts of their omniscient makers) has always struck me more as a self-serving Judeo-Christian fantasy than a cogent sociological explanation.
For the most part, the academic literature supports my skepticism. Evaluative studies on the efficacy of D.A.R.E., such as those listed below, have consistently shown that D.A.R.E.’s effect on drug use is statistically insignificant at best.
- Dukes et al. 1996. A three-year follow-up of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.). Evaluation Review, 20, 49-66. [SAGE subscription required]
- Wysong et al. 1994. Truth and DARE: Tracking drug education to graduation and as symbolic politics. Social Problems, 41, 448-472. [JSTOR subscription required]
In 2001, a Surgeon General’s report categorized D.A.R.E. as a school-based program that “Does Not Work,” citing its “social skills training and…developmental [inappropriateness].”
More substantive theories span biology, psychology, and sociology, and collectively reflect the myriad of factors influencing individuals with regard to drug use. (A good summary of these theories appears in Erich Goode’s Drugs in American Society.) Biological theories rely on genetic factors or postulated metabolic imbalances. Psychological theories cite reinforcement, “problem-behavior proneness,” or psychological pathologies.
In sociology, Robert Merton’s anomie theory of deviant behavior suggests that deviance occurs in the absence of traditional avenues to success and has been invoked to explain drug use. Travis Hirschi’s social control theory suggests that deviance occurs in the absence of social controls and consequences. Alternately, Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson’s self-control theory posits that a lack of self-control caused by inadequate parental socialization is the primary cause of deviant behavior.
Other sociological theories acknowledge more directly the influence of an individual’s particular social group. Social learning theory, derived from a combination of Edwin Sutherland’s theory of differential association and psychological behaviorism, suggests we learn acceptable behavior from our social group, which may or may not conform to the standards of society at large. Howard Becker’s subcultural theory posits that a social group’s attitude toward drug use is partly responsible for the formulation of its individual members’ attitudes toward drug use.
Could Christakis and Fowler have discovered some sort of social alignment mechanism by which behaviors are transmitted beyond the range of one’s immediate social group, beyond the scope of social learning and subcultural theories?
If the meme of direct peer pressure was enough to ignite a social panic, think how paranoid we’ll become if we find out that we’re pressured to do drugs by people we don’t even know.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
