Contagious Why Things Catch On

The clip tells a budding love story:
A clip of “Parisian Love” can be viewed at
http://jonahberger.com
. The story behind “Parisian Love” came from an interview with Anthony
Cafaro on June 20, 2012.
“The best results don’t show up in a search engine”:
 The quote came from Iezzi, Teressa (2010),
“Meet the Google Five,” 
http://creativity-online.com/news/the-google-creative-lab/146084
.
Simply adding more arousal:
 Berger and Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral,” 192–205.
obesity reduces life expectancy:
The statistic about obesity came from Whitlock, Gary, Sarah
Lewington, Paul Sherliker, and Richard Peto (2009), “Body-mass Index and Mortality,” 
The
Lancet
374, no. 9684, 114.
disgust is a highly arousing emotion:
For a discussion of how disgust affects social transmission,
see Heath, Chip, Chris Bell, and Emily Sternberg (2001), “Emotional Selection in Memes: The
Case of Urban Legends,” 
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
81, no. 6, 1028–41.
the practice strengthens the maternal bond:
 To learn more about baby-wearing and attachment, see
www.attachmentparenting.org
.
the company created an ad centered on the aches:
To see a clip of the Motrin ad, see
http://jonahberger.com
.
the marketing debacle:
 Learmonth, Michael (2008), “How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin
Mom Campaign: Bloggers Ignite Brush Fire over Weekend, Forcing J&J to Pull Ads, Issue
Apology,” 
AdAge.com
, November 17, retrieved from 
http://adage.com/article/digital/twittering-
critics-brought-motrin-mom-campaign/132622
.
4.
Public
Ken Segall was Steve Jobs’s right hand man:
 All taken from my interview with Ken Segall on May,
15, 2012. For more information on Ken’s work with Apple, see Segall (2012), 
Insanely Simple:
The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success
(New York: Portfolio/Penguin).
If lots of people are eating there:
 For an economist’s take on this issue, see Becker, Gary S. (1991),
“A Note on Restaurant Pricing and Other Examples of Social Influence on Price,” 
Journal of
Political Economy
99, no. 3, 1109–16.
pick entrées preferred by other diners:
 For evidence of social influence in entrée choice, see Cai,
Hongbi, Yuyu Chen, and Hanming Fang (2009), “Observational Learning: Evidence from a
Randomized Natural Field Experiment,” 
American Economic Review
99, no. 3, 864–82. For
research on conformity in hotel towel use, see Goldstein, Noah J., Robert B. Cialdini, and Vladas
Griskevicius (2008), “A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental

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Conservation in Hotels,” 
Journal of Consumer Research
35, 472–82. Similar approaches have
also been applied to get people to reduce home energy consumption.
People are more likely to vote:
For evidence of social influence in voter turnout, see Nickerson,
David W. (2008), “Is Voting Contagious? Evidence from Two Field Experiments,” 
American
Political Science Review
102, 49–57. For a discussion of how social influence may affect obesity
and smoking cessation, see Christakis, Nicholas A., and James Fowler (2009), 
Connected: The
Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives
(New York: Little,
Brown, and Company).
what brand of coffee to buy:
 For evidence of social influence in coffee choice, see Burnkrant, Robert
E., and Alain Cousineau (1975), “Informational and Normative Social Influence in Buyer
Behavior,”