Self-modification through planned peer pressure

[mattbell]

I recently had the thought that one of the most effective ways of helping yourself change for the better may be to surround yourself with people who are similar to who you aspire to be. 

People often want to change their habits but sometimes lack the willpower to do it.  However, people are innately social creatures.  Having other people of a particular type around you uses the "peer pressure" that overprotective adults warned us about as kids, but harnessed for a self-chosen purpose.   Want to exercise more?  Hang out with people who like to exercise.  Want to learn to be more optimistic?  Hang out with optimists.  Even if the pressure is not overt, the presence of the other people will at least provide constant mental reminders of the habit you want to change as well as a positive reinforcement structure for making the change. 

I'm wondering what kind of research there is to back up or refute this. 

Comments

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Anecdotal, but my current housemate has remarked that one of the reasons why she likes living with me is that it's a good environment for her to learn more CS. Similarly, I like being in the vicinity of people who are working on interesting projects, because being in an environment where people are batting around ideas helps me come up with interesting ideas of my own and new ways to put old things together.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Hell yeah.

That reminds me, we should hang out again. I want to hear more about your projects, especially the homemade transgenic bacteria. :-)

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Sure! I hadn't RSVPed yet, btw, but I'd like to come to your birthday party.

[radiantsun.livejournal.com]

I know I"m an easily influenced person and have known this for a while, so I made the choice to try and only associate with high quality people (I don't always make it, but I think my core group of friends is pretty rockin). It is similar to your statements about peer-pressure.

In a movie whose name I can't remember but I saw five times as a teenager, there is a line "You are what you hang with". The girl delivered it in response to a guy apologizing for his friends being assholes, and the line stuck with me ever since.

Also, there are certain people I need to avoid hanging out with, not because they are "bad" but because they do things I don't want to do, and know I can only resist so often.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

There was actually a study a while back that suggested that people with thin friends are more likely to stay thin and people with large friends are more likely to gain weight, due to presumably a number of different lifechoices involved. The fat acceptance crowd got all up in arms about it, which I thought was kindof ironic.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I exercise a lot more than many of my close friends. However, I found a different motivator to get me to do it -- making it fun! This seems to have worked.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Well I wasn't necessarily recommending the strategy... but you asked about research on the subject and it was a recent example I knew of. Oh, hey, found the original article on the study from NEJoM:
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/370

[euneeblic.livejournal.com]

Yes! This has been my strategy for the last 9 years. What you're talking about is situational psychology. Philip Zimbardo wrote a book about it called The Lucifer Effect (http://lucifereffect.com/). He focuses almost entirely on how our environment and the people in that environment shapes us to do bad things, but he does have one chapter where he turns it around and shows that we can use the same effect to better ourselves.

[aaangyl.livejournal.com]

It seems that might also expose you to their strategies and habits that support those ways of being. Maybe you never before realized just how much athletic people move around, or that optimistic people work with their perception and use a slightly different language set or that organized people have habits that trigger with high priority at specific intervals. As you said, we're social creatures, and we'll "pick up on" stuff that's mostly not at a conscious level if exposed to it enough.

[radven.livejournal.com]

A great book called The General Theory of Love talks a lot about how our limbic brains pick up on and pattern off of the people around us. I think the quote some studies along these lines too.

It is absolutely fascinating stuff.

Great book, I highly recommend it.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Looks really interesting. I may not get to it for a while though as I have a long queue.