Nicholas Christakis

Vermont

Articles

Targeting friends to induce social contagion to benefit the world

May 2, 2024 | news.yale.edu | Mike Cummings |Nicholas Christakis

A new study co-authored by Yale sociologist Nicholas A. Christakis demonstrates that tapping into the dynamics of friendship significantly improves the possibility that a community will adopt public health and other interventions aimed at improved human wellbeing. The study, published May 3 in the journal Science, evaluated a strategy that exploits the so-called “friendship paradox” of human social networks. That theory suggests that, on average, your friends have more friends than you do.
Induction of social contagion for diverse outcomes in structured experiments in isolated villages

May 2, 2024 | science.org | Edoardo M. Airoldi |Nicholas Christakis

Research ArticleNETWORK SCIENCEEdoardo M. Airoldi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3512-0542 and Nicholas A. Christakis https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5547-1086 [email protected] Info & AffiliationsScience3 May 2024Vol 384, Issue 6695Editor’s summaryExploiting features of social networks (e.g., identifying “gossips”) has effectively diffused knowledge across populations.
Essay | Four Years Later, Covid Isn’t Done With Us

Mar 8, 2024 | wsj.com | Nicholas Christakis

Cookies, device or similar online identifiers (e.g. login-based identifiers, randomly assigned identifiers, network based identifiers) together with other information (e.g. browser type and information, language, screen size, supported technologies etc.) can be stored or read on your device to recognise it each time it connects to an app or to a website, for one or several of the purposes presented here.
Essay | Four Years Later, Covid Isn’t Done With Us

Mar 8, 2024 | wsj.com | Nicholas Christakis

By In March 2020, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. went into lockdown. Four years later, Covid has receded into the background of our lives. As is typical after serious epidemics, people are now seeking out pleasures they had to forego. Domestic air travel has been above prepandemic levels since last spring. In 2023, LiveNation sold a total of 620 million tickets to concerts and events, its biggest year ever.
What the Harvard and Boeing Boards Teach Us About Groupthink

Feb 15, 2024 | time.com | Nicholas Christakis

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We need to focus more on the social effects of AI

Dec 16, 2023 | almendron.com | Nicholas Christakis

Few people would tolerate a virtual assistant if they had to plead obsequiously each time, “Excuse me, Alexa, if it’s not too much trouble, could you kindly tell me what the weather will be today.” Instead, these devices are designed to answer brusque commands: “Alexa: weather!” And we expect them to obediently respond. Which is fine until we bring them into a home with impressionable young children, who may quickly learn that this is a normal way to talk to other people—that is, rudely.