A social network map of 2,200 people, James Fowler

We practice generosity with others and with ourselves,
over and over again,
and the power of it begins to grow
until it becomes almost like a waterfall, a flow.
- Sharon Salzberg

How altruistic is your social network? In their experiments, Christakis and Fowler have found that when people in their studies were on the receiving end of a generous exchange, they were likely to become more generous to the next people they were paired with — until their larger study group was “infected” with altruistic behavior. This might help explain why altruists are able to continue being generous without constantly being taken advantage of my other community members, possibly leading to more subdued altruistic behavior. It also might point ways to increase generosity in our communities. According to Christakis and Fowler’s work, we can improve our world by both acting in pro-social ways and networking to other people who are living well and doing good works. How are you choosing to grow your actions and influence your network?

James H. Fowler is an associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego. Nicholas A. Christakis is a physician and a professor in both the sociology department and school of medicine at Harvard University.  They have based their recent co-authored book Connected on The Framingham Heart Study data. The famous Framingham Study is a cardiovascular study that has been running since 1948 (now on its third generation of participants) with over 5,000 adult subjects from Framingham, Massachusetts. As part of the collected materials, the study regularly asks the subjects for the names of family members and one friend – although people often list more than one friend. This rich mine of data historical has allowed Christakis and Fowler to chart the social networks of a whole community and track their behavior on a range of variables. You can read more about their work in the recent New York Times article by Clive Thompson (source for the quotes in this posting).

Christakis and Fowler have found that we can affect people three degrees away from us  - that is your friend’s friend’s friend (or brother’s friend’s sister), so we actually may have a lot more indirect influence than we think:

…they conducted a laboratory experiment in which participants played a “cooperation game.” Each participant was asked to share a sum of money with a small group and could choose to be either generous or selfish. Christakis and Fowler found that if someone was on the receiving end of a generous exchange, that person would become more generous to the next set of partners — until the entire larger group was infected, as it were, with altruistic behavior, which meant the altruist would benefit indirectly.

Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler

Statistics show that most of us are connected to more than 1,000 people (within three degrees of separation). This is the pool of people whom we can theoretically help make healthier, fitter, happier, and possibly more altruistic and generous - just by our contagious example. So what can you do, among your network to be generous and grow generosity? Studies show it will make a big difference.

If someone tells you that you can influence 1,000 people,
it changes your way of seeing the world.
- James Fowler

Photo by Alberto Montauban

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Having just returned from a trip to Alaska, I am still amazed at a team hunting behavior used by humpback whales only in Southeast Alaska. They work cooperatively to effectively catch tons of herring per day. What does this have to do with what we do every day in the workplace? If you have ever been frustrated by a lack of good teamwork with professional or volunteer tasks, we may learn a few things from these leviathans.

Here are some features of the whale’s teamwork:

• Use loosely knit teams, with some ad hoc members, to achieve a goal
• Work in an orchestrated fashion, using proven strategy and a variety of tools
• Work cooperatively, not competitively, and seem to share leadership

We were fortunate to hear a lecture and presentation by Dr. Fred Sharp of the Alaska Whale Foundation. He has been researching these whales for about 25 years, and has spent extensive effort on this one phenomenon. He even uses a critter cam (a video camera suctioned to a participating whale - see video below) to get video footage of the teamwork from below the surface. The day after the lecture we had the amazing and rare experience of seeing a pod of 10-13 whales bubblenetting over 15 times from a boat at close range.

Because each humpback has a unique tail (or fluke) marking, Sharp has been able to document which whales are doing this and in which groupings. It turns out that about 50 whales in the region participate in bubblenetting regularly, so may recognize each other and have experience working together. However, there are perhaps 90 more whales that join bubblenetting groups as they come upon them and do not participate regularly with the set groupings (which can include as many as 25 whales!).

Here is how it works:

• A group of whales come together – keep in mind that these mammals are 50 feet in length and weigh about 50 tons (about the length of a city bus).
• They find a school of herring and all dive to the bottom (their preferred depth for this activity is about 150 ft).
• One whale emits a constant stream of bubbles in an open spiral pattern, so that they form a wall that gathers the school of fish – and effectively contains them.
• Another whale, or more than one, starts making shrill, urgent sounding calls (I could hear them clearly above the surface!) – that seem to reinforce the wall effect of the bubbles and keep the school in a tight ball.
• The whales flash the white underside of their board-like dorsal fins; this seems to scare the fish that try to escape back into the net.
• Then, seemingly without signal, the whole pod surges as a tight group up from the bottom with their huge, unhinged jaws open and scoop the whole school into their mouths.
• Researches state that even in loosely knit groups, the whales come up in the same position every time they bubblenet consecutively.

Despite all of the years of scientific research, observation, identification, and lab experimentation, much about this group feeding tactic is mysterious. However, by my own experience I can attest that it is powerful, elegant, and effective. How many human teams can we say that about?

Here is a video of Dr. Sharp and the whales bubblenetting. This explains the critter cam as well: