My Inc.com article today, “Habits Are Contagious. How to Make The Science Work for You.” began

Habits Are Contagious. How to Make The Science Work for You.

Research finds that we transmit habits like diseases, or like cures. How to use that insight to make the habits you want stick.

Studies show that quitting smoking and losing weight spread through networks like diseases do. Many other behavioral changes work similarly.

If you lead, you change behavior in yourself and others. You may find changing teams may change someone’s behavior more than trying to change them directly.

Here’s relevant research:

From Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego, based on studying a social network of over 12,000 people over 32 years:

Over the past 30 years, the number of smokers in the United States has steadily decreased–a tribute to the efforts of public-health workers everywhere. And while this fact is indisputable, less obvious are the social and cultural forces that lead an individual to kick the habit. In fact, when someone crumbles that last empty pack of their favorite brand and vows to never buy another, he might not realize that he is less like the heroic individual grasping his own bootstraps and more like a single bird whose sudden left turn is just one speck in the larger flock.

I highlighted how much harder the social part of changing a habit can be because we can use it to work for us too. I like academic studies, but we don’t just want information. We want to use it to improve our lives and businesses.

Read the rest at “Habits Are Contagious. How to Make The Science Work for You.“