STRANGE CONTAGION

Thoughts, feelings, and actions are as contagious as viruses. Our goals and desires might not be our own but belong instead to someone we hardly know or possibly never met. In Strange Contagions the journalist and psychologist Lee Kravetz sets out to challenge what we think of as free will.

Strange Contagions sets out to redefine the human experience with an unusual proposition: Thoughts, feelings, and actions are as contagious as viruses. Even those that are most intimate to each of us, and those that seem most central to our identities, are those we have likely caught from others. Understanding strange contagions and the many things they covertly affect in our lives, from our memories to our moods, allows each of us to more actively choose and control who we are and who we will become. Seeking out unexpected examples of social contagions—both contemporary and historical— that are as astonishing as they are unpredictably commonplace, this book explains the surprising reason why eating disorders exploded after the late 1960s, and how people can “catch” weight loss. It shows us that our goals and desires might not be our own but belong instead to someone we hardly know or possibly never met; and how unconscious mechanisms can cause a single crime to become a crime spree. Strange Contagions sets out to challenge what we think of as free will. With radical implications for business, education, medicine, and psychology, it re-conceptualizes our lives as the products of hidden systems that influence and connect us all, and proposes that we can use this knowledge to become more ourselves. Lee Daniel Kravetz has a master’s degree in counseling psychology and is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism. He is the co-author of SUPERSURVIVORS: The Surprising Link Between Suffering and Success, and has written for Psychology Today, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times, among other publications. He lives in Northern California with his wife and children.