Doctoral Dissertation Research: Health Behaviors and Social Networks

虽然人们普遍认为我们吃的东西会影响我们的健康，但现有的研究试图明确饮食行为和健康结果之间的因果关系，在很大程度上忽视了个人之间社会关系的作用。我们特定的食物消费模式在多大程度上取决于与我们有直接（或间接）联系的人的口味偏好？本研究的具体目标是评估：(a)口味偏好在人群中传播的程度；(b)社会地位与食物选择之间的相互关系；(c)社会关系在调节食物选择和健康状况（如肥胖和心血管疾病）方面所起的作用。食物选择和我们的健康是如何联系在一起的，这是一个研究与味觉有关的机制的特别丰富的领域。近年来，社会科学家已经做了大量的工作来系统地记录文化偏好形成的特性以及人类互动如何影响选择，但大多数研究都没有考虑到味道最字面的解释：对食物的味道。通过综合有关健康结果、社会关系和饮食行为的异常完整的数据，本研究将详细阐述20年期间饮食行为、网络特征和健康结果之间的关系。关于味觉传递和社会联系强度的假设是由味觉偏好、社会网络、不平等和饮食、营养和疾病的生物学理论的社会学研究产生的。潜在变量法将用于表征饮食模式；纵向回归方法将用于评估食物选择、社会关系和健康之间关系的强度和方向性；统计网络方法将用于估计社会关系对味觉扩散的影响。通过定量观察我们对食物口味的创新传播，这项研究是研究文化和社会网络相互联系的一种新方法。随着人们对肥胖和心血管疾病惊人增长的日益关注，该项目也具有重要的公共卫生意义。更好地了解这些健康状况背后的社会机制，可以指出更有效的行为干预措施，以解决可改变的疾病风险因素。除了阐述社会规范在特定人群中发生变化的机制之外，这项研究还具有更广泛的潜力，可以让公众更加批判性地思考，不仅是吃什么，还有怎么吃。

Nicholas ChristakisMark Pachucki Harvard University While it is commonly accepted that what we eat affects our well-being, existing research that seeks to specify causal relationships between eating behaviors and health outcomes has largely ignored the role of social connections between individuals. To what extent do our specific food consumption patterns depend on the taste preferences of people to whom we are directly (or indirectly) connected? The specific goals of this research are to evaluate: (a) the extent to which taste preferences spread through a population; (b) interrelationships between social status and food choice; and (c) the roles that social ties play in mediating food choice and health conditions such as obesity and cardiovascular disease. The question of how food choices and our health are connected is a particularly rich area to study mechanisms relating to taste. Social scientists have done a great deal of work in recent years to systematically document the properties of cultural preference formation and how human interaction influences choice, but most of this research has not considered the most literal interpretation of taste: the taste for food. By synthesizing unusually complete data on health outcomes, social ties, and eating behaviors, this research will elaborate relationships between eating behaviors, network characteristics, and health outcomes over a 20-year period. Hypotheses concerning taste transmission and strength of social ties are generated by from sociological research of taste preferences, social networks, inequality, and biological theories of diet, nutrition, and disease. Latent variable methods will be used to characterize eating patterns; longitudinal regression methods will be used to assess strength and directionality of relationships between food choice, social ties, and health; statistical network methods will be used to estimate influence of social ties on taste diffusion. By looking quantitatively at the diffusion of innovation of our tastes for food, this research is a fresh approach for studying the interconnectedness of culture and social networks. With growing concern for the alarming rise in obesity and cardiovascular disease, this project also has important public health implications. A better understanding of the social mechanisms that underlie these health conditions can point to more effective behavioral interventions to address modifiable risk factors for disease. In addition to elaborating mechanisms by which social norms can change in a given population, this research has the broader potential to make the public think more critically about not just what, but how, it eats.