Now new research by political scientist, James Fowler, and physician, Nicholas Christakis,shows that we may actually have less control over our choices than we think, and that "our social networks explain a lot about human experience." Their observations focus on our ties to others and how they affect our emotions, sex, health, politics, money, evolution, and technology. All of these things affect the social learning environment that influences our children's success as well. Our neighbors or even strangers can influence behaviors and outcomes that have moral overtones and social repercussions. When Fowler and Christakis studied social networks more deeply, they began to think of them as a kind of 'human superorganism' (that grows and evolves). They explain that "seeing ourselves as part of a superorganism allows us to understand our actions, choices, and experiences [and those of our children] in a new light. We are affected by our embeddedness in social networks and influenced by others who are closely or distantly tied to us. As such, we necessarily lose some power over our own decisions. That being said, it is important to chose our friends wisely.
Here is an anecdotal example of how this happens. It is a joke that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev told Secretary of State James A. Baker III in an effort to underscore how difficult it was for Russia to make the psychological transition to capitalism after so many years of communism. He did it with this yarn:
A Russian peasant finds a lamp by the side of the road and rubs it. Out pops a genie. The genie tells the peasant he can have any wish. The peasant tells the genie,
"You know, I have only three cows, but my neighbor Igor has ten cows."
"So you want twenty cows?" the genie asks the peasant.
"No, says the peasant, I want you to kill seven of Igors cows."
Fowler's and Christakis' studies show that Americans are not so different. And the Germans have a word for pleasure gained at someone else's loss - schadenfreude!
For human beings everywhere, "The networks in which we are embedded function as reference groups, which is a social scientist's way of saying "pond." We all want to look good (or at least equal) in our own pond, regardless of which part of the world we happen to live, and this desire affects our choices and our attitudes toward others. With this awareness, individuals may view themselves as 'existentialists', and consciously work to consider the ideas, assumptions, attitudes and beliefs of others carefully, and with skepticism, relying first on their own experiences to decide what they will believe. A religious existentialist would include prayer and meditation in this continuous effort.
“In the 1950s, Robert K Merton, a very influential social scientist, codified the basic ways that reference groups affect us: they can have comparative effects (how we or others evaluate ourselves), influence effects (the way others dictate our behaviors and attitudes, or both.)” What Fowler and Christakis add is that the emotions of those in our network also affect our choices and are contagious.
This happens because “we are biologically hardwired to mimic others outwardly, and in mimicking their outward displays, we come to adopt their inward states. If your friend feels happy, she smiles, you smile, and in the act of smiling you also come to feel happy. In bars and bedrooms, at work and on the street, everywhere people interact, we tend to synchronize our facial expressions, vocalizations, and postures unconsciously and rapidly, and as a result we also meld our emotional states. One biological mechanism that makes emotions (and behaviors) contagious may be the so-called mirror neuron system in the human brain. Our brains practice doing actions we merely observe in others, as if we were doing them ourselves. [For example] if you've ever watched an intense fan at a game, you know what Fowler and Christakis are talking about--he twitches at every mistake, aching to give his own motor actions to the players on the field. In one experiment related to emotional contagion, subjects listened to recordings of nonverbal vocal reactions communicating two positive emotions, such as amusement and triumph, and two negative emotions, such as fear and disgust. Investigators monitored the subjects' brains for a response by placing them in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. The subjects were told not to react to what they heard. While subjects did not visibly respond to the sounds, the MRI results showed that hearing the cues stimulated parts of the brain that command the corresponding facial expressions. It seems we are always poised to feel what others feel and to do what others do."
Although autism has been linked to a mirror neuron dysfunction, virtually "everyone has experience with emotional contagion: we share a joke with a friend, we feel sad when a spouse cries, we rage against city hall with our neighbors, and we hug our kids tight when they've had a bad day. Yet one often overlooked aspect of all this sharing is that emotions spread not only to our friends but to our friends' friends' and beyond--even when we are not present. We are (all connected) like a herd of buffalo quietly grazing on the plain until one of our neighbors starts to run. Then we start to run, and others start to run, and suddenly, mysteriously, the whole herd is barreling forward."
Fowler and Christakis explain that "the flipside of this realization is that people can transcend themselves and their own limitations." Part of the solution here is to remember that "your thoughts are not real either in the sense that you create them and reinforce them, or the emotions that go along with them. Your thoughts are only what you believe and continually reinforce in your mind." Does this mean that you can become super-human and never feel the pain of negative feelings or rejection of your ideas? That you will never make mistakes emulating the negativity in your pond? Of course not! It simply means that you can learn to overcome this, to rise above it. You can learn to dust yourself off, clear your mind of negative thoughts, and keep moving forward toward a positive future by living in the present - in the now. You can learn to write your own stories, feel the way you want to feel, live the life you deserve to live, and choose the friends you want to have. Eighty percent of the suffering we experience is fully unnecessary, the result of negative stories we or others tell us about our "reality."
Negative thoughts and the emotions that go with them seem convincing when we experience these. But thoughts are not facts. I hope you can learn this easily with the emotional support of your friends and family and those in "your pond". But if that is not possible for you, there is still a way. A way that has to be chosen everday in every moment by letting go of your thoughts and living in the now. This can be learned though practice, practice, practice.
With this tool you can carefully learn to free your mind. Will you suddenly become a person who is unaffected, immune to the negative thoughts and beliefs of others? Of course not. This isn't human! But we can learn to better navigate difficulties in our environments, and more easily overcome the obstacles and limitations these may present, without resorting to constant defensive thoughts or negative beliefs that are either self defeating or self-determining.
This is what I love to help kids do in piano, overcome limitations and obstacles real and perceived to help them achieve their piano goals and dreams. Not just the most talented, but every student. I tell them sweet stories (I’m also an author) that change the way they view themselves to open doors of possibilities in their minds. And I show them, with my body, how I love to play the piano! I play Mozart, and Bach, and Billy Joel, and a whole community of wonderful artists who also loved the piano, and wanted to share their love of music with others. I also try my best to create a wonderful, positive learning environment for students - a musical garden, if you will - and to protect this even when it's difficult. Why? Because, I know how powerful this is for children's piano success. And now, Fowler's and Christakis' findings (that we are all connected by three degrees of influence) show this is also important to their friends' success, and their freinds' friends' success, and their friends’ friends’ friends’ success. In the superorganism that we are all a part of, each of us makes a difference. So, share the love - and these proven insights with someone connected to you. I guarantee, it will have a positive affect in the life of someone you may not even know!
Best Wishes,
Cynthia Marie VanLandingham
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Read more about Piano Lessons below...
The modern world of high speed internet, microwave ovens, and big-screen movies, tends to create expectations of instant results for everything we strive for, and piano lessons are no exception. Children and sometimes even parents expect overnight results in piano. Sociologist, C. Wright Mills refers to this phenomenon as our Sociological Imagination. In this imagination we may forget to consider what goes on back stage to achieve the results we want. The message that hard work and sacrifice pays off over time has lost ground in our imaginations in recent decades, but this view may now be headed for a comeback. We see this in the increasing popularity of simple living, back-to-basics conservation, and delayed gratification. The idea seems to be spreading quickly and contagiously, and I'm glad, because this is a great message for piano students. In the article above I explain how ideas and attitudes spread throughout human networks. Now I want to tell you what it’s like to nurture a child’s musical talent.
Nurturing your child’s or your own musical talent is a lot like growing a garden. It takes time and patience, as well as attention to the simple things, like coming to lessons each week, attending recitals, developing a practice routine, staying focused on your goals, keeping a positive attitude, and simply believing in yourself. There are no substitutes for these simple, hopeful steps to piano success.
To borrow an illustration from a 1909 children's story by Frank L. Baum, "Hope is what makes us believe that the yellow brick road (step by step) will lead to the Emerald City." Having a positive belief system and sustainable goals has a powerful effect on the future by feeding positive cycles of empowerment. A negative belief system, on the other hand, has the opposite effect in creating expectations of failure and misfortune. As discussed earlier, our beliefs, negative or positive, can be contagious, spreading to others similar to the way diseases are spread from person to person. So, it's very important to understand how this happens.
One reason people come to expect failure is that they continually set unrealistically high and unobtainable, or unsustainable, goals for themselves, and thus experience frequent failure. Over time, this history engenders a negative belief system." Julian B. Rotter's Expectancy Theory of Motivation is a widely held Social Learning Theory that emphasizes individual control over one's destiny. In the United States strong individualism leads to a need to explain our actions as ways of getting something for them or satisfying some need, or in other words that, "My effort makes a difference." New research discussed above adds another dimension to this belief, imploring greater awareness of the learning environment and the attitudes and beliefs that are expressed and nurtured there.
Read more - Related article on teaching.
Why are Teachers Afraid of Sharing their Successes?
