The benefits of paternity leave are already known to be widespread (for fathers, for their spouses, for their children), but now there’s another: taking it might induce other dads to follow suit.

A study released in this month’s issue of the American Economic Review suggests a social snowball effect that might counteract the stigma that’s attached to taking time off. It found that fathers who take paternity leave make their brothers 15 percent more likely to do the same. Similarly, dads who see their male coworkers take time off are 11 percent more likely to take leave themselves.

The study goes on to suggest the enhanced influence of bosses: the effect is nearly three times larger when the leave-taking dad is a manager rather than a workplace equal. (While the researchers’ data didn’t specify who in the sample was a manager, they were able to predict these data points based on who was paid the most at each firm they studied.)

The researchers came upon these findings by analyzing the number of men taking paternity leave in Norway before and after a 1993 law that granted paid leave. Immediately after the reform, the percentage of fathers taking leave shot up from three percent to 35 percent. With this in mind, the researchers could isolate social influence as a reason for further leave-taking: what changed before and after the law wasn't a personal preference shared by family or the encouragement of a particular company, but was rather that those dads were more likely to have seen a peer take time off without repercussion.