Running may be socially contagious. If you have ever found yourself walking on the treadmill next to somebody who is sprinting, only to decide that you must start running too, you are not alone. A new study, conducted by researchers at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, have found that runners influence each other’s workouts, with friends running similar distances and mimicking one another. Gender played a role too, as researchers found that men ran faster when running with male friends, whereas females didn’t display a shift in speed when running with male companions. As Sinal Aral, a professor at M.I.T. stated, “The impacts go beyond correlation to causation. If you run more, it is likely you can cause your friends to run more.