happiness article

Happiness is infectious

Washington: Happiness is contagious - like the flu.

It can spread among friends, neighbours, siblings, and spouses, according to a large study that for the first time shows how emotions can ripple through clusters of people who may not even know one another. The study of more than 4,700 people followed over 20 years found people who are happy or become happy boost the chances that someone they know will be happy.

The power of happiness can span another degree of separation, elevating the mood of that person's husband, wife, sibling, friend or neighbour.

"You would think that your emotional state would depend on your own choices and actions and experiences," said Professor Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard University, who helped conduct the study published online yesterday by BMJ, a British medical journal. " But it also depends on the choices and actions and experiences of other people, including people to whom you are not directly connected. Happiness is contagious."

The one exception was co-workers, perhaps because something in the work environment prevented their happiness from spreading, the study found.

Previous studies have documented the experience that one person's emotions can influence another's - laughter can trigger guffaws in others; seeing someone smile can lift one's spirits.

But this study is the first to find that happiness can spread across groups for an extended period.

When one person in the network becomes happy, the chances that a friend, sibling, spouse or next-door neighbour would become happy increased by between 8 per cent and 34 per cent, the researchers found.

The effect continued through three degrees of separation, although it dropped progressively from about 15 per cent to 10 per cent to 6 per cent before disappearing.

The research follows previous work by Prof Christakis and co-author James Fowler that found that obesity appears to spread from person to person. The researchers have been using records collected by the Framingham Heart Study, a project that has explored health issues, to construct and analyse maps of social networks. In the latest analysis, the researchers focused on 4,739 adults who answered questions about their happiness between 1983 and 2003.

The findings, Prof Christakis and others said, provide new evidence of the power of social networks, which could have implications for public policy. Happy people tend to be better off in myraid ways, being more creative, productive and healthy.

"For a long time, we measured the health of a country by looking at its gross domestic product," said Associate Professor Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

"But our work shows that whether a friend's friend is happy has more influence than a US$5,000 (S$7,600) raise.

Other experts praised the study as a landmark in the body of evidence documenting the influence of personal connections and positive emotions. "It's a path-finding article," said Mr Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania psychologist.

Being happy brings other benefits. "Happiness has a protective effect on your immune system and you produce fewer stress hormones," said Professor Andrew Steptoe at University College London.

Others questioned the findings, noting that it is difficult to account for every variable that might affect the outcomes of such studies.

But Dr Ed Diener, a University of Illinois psychologist, said: "This is an extremely exciting study - interesting, provocative and important."

Said Prof Fowler: " The fact that happiness spreads from person to person to person suggests that these waves of happiness we radiate could eventually wash up on our own shores."

So smile, and the world may just smile with you.


--- taken off the article on Saturday's Straits Times.

so.. there's 2 ways of being happy, either by your own choices, actions and experiences, or you can just hang out more with happy people :o