Friday, April 24, 2009

Costs and Benefits of Friends

A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.

-What Are Friends For? A Longer Life

1 comment:

Nathan Fiala said...

The problem here is that these studies are based on a complete misunderstanding of causality. Fowler, the author of one of the studies, has a list of work that is basically descriptive statistics, which he sells to the media as causal.