Is Divorce Contagious?

McDermott and her colleagues found that study participants were 75% more likely to become divorced if a friend is divorced and 33% more likely to end their marriage if a friend of a friend is divorced.

Couple that with the fact that it's women initiating the majority of divorces (~70% of them) and you can conclude that when cupcake's BFFs start pushing the detonate button on their marriages, there's a good chance yours will be next.

“Approaching the epidemiology of divorce from the perspective of an epidemic may be apt in more ways than one,” McDermott and her colleagues wrote in a forthcoming article in the journal Social Forces. “The contagion of divorce can spread through a social network like a rumor, affecting friends up to two degrees removed.”

Sociologists call the phenomenon “social contagion”—the spread of information, attitudes and behaviors through friends, families and other social networks.

Here's the fun part- these results came from a demographic that is less likely than average to get divorced in the first place.

study participants are nearly all white, better educated and more likely to be middle class and were less likely to be divorced than the U.S. population. (They note these demographic characteristics are also associated with lower divorce rates nationally.)