Response: The Outlier -excerpt

I have always thought that stress is a major factor in peoples' lifespans and reading the excerpt from Outliers reinforced this idea. By surrounding yourself with positive people who make you happy and ignoring those who don't greatly reduce stress levels. Not only that but it also helps lead a more upbeat and longer life. There has been experiments showing people with less stress have fewer or later in life heart attacks. I also believe it is important to do what you enjoy because it makes life a whole lot more fun...ya it seems like a basic comment everyone knows. However, it seems the more industrialized the world is becoming the more miserable people are. This is because people are more focused on material goods rather than personal relationships. While material goods may bring joy for a little, it doesn't last forever. It is important to focus on the simple things, not working 15 hours a day to buy new things.

Sociologists do base their findings off data because with out scientific proof theories are unreliable. By studying all possible causes to a finding, makes it valid. For example in the excerpt, the sociologist, John Bruhn, researched the genetics, the affect of location of living, diet and exercise of civilians in Roseto and near by places to see why people in Roseto were suffering from so many fewer heart attacks. Having researched all these possibilities and finding none were causing the fewer heart attacked he came up with the theory that it had to do with the life style in Roseto. Having done so much research and collecting data, when questioned on his theory he was able to back it up with scientific evidence.

Understanding sociology is helpful in teaching us how to live our best life possible. As in this article we can learn to live less stressful lives. However, it also can help us understand why people do the things they do and insted of judging we can be accepting. By accepting others we can learn and experience many things we may not have with a closed mind. Sociology is important to teach us how to have better relationships with ourselves and with others.