You are who you hang with

Found this morning via Instapundit: a blog about neuroscience and metacognition written for lay people. I’ve just added it to my blogroll after reading a post there about a political blogger’s decision to close comments.

The article argues, based on research on mirror neurons (which I’ve blogged about here) and other phenomenon that avoiding unhappy people, and surrounding yourself with people who exhibit qualities you want to cultivate in yourself, is a highly rational and constructive thing to do.

One piece of advice you often find in self-help books on personal transformation is that sometimes you need to drop your old friends and find new ones. It turns out that bit of folk wisdom may actually have a basis in science . . .