Delanceyplace.com 12/9/08-Happiness

In today's excerpt-happiness is contagious, and it is more contagious than unhappiness. In a twenty-year study of over 4700 individuals, Harvard professor Nicholas Cristakis carefully examined the effects of happiness within a social network, and documented the results in the British Medical Journal. The following is excerpted from the much more detailed paper presented in a recent issue of that journal:

"Emotional states can be transferred directly from one individual to another by mimicry and 'emotional contagion,' perhaps by the copying of emotionally relevant bodily actions, particularly facial expressions, seen in others. People can 'catch' emotional states they observe in others over time frames ranging from seconds to weeks. For example, students randomly assigned to a mildly depressed room-mate became increasingly depressed over a three month period, and the possibility of emotional contagion between strangers, even those in ephemeral contact, has been documented by the effects of 'service with a smile' on customer satisfaction and tipping. ...

"While there are many determinants of happiness, whether an individual is happy also depends on whether others in the individual's social network are happy. Happy people tend to be located in the centre of their local social networks and in large clusters of other happy people. The happiness of an individual is associated with the happiness of people up to three degrees removed in the social network. Happiness, in other words, is not merely a function of individual experience or individual choice but is also a property of groups of people. Indeed, changes in individual happiness can ripple through social networks and generate large scale structure in the network, giving rise to clusters of happy and unhappy individuals. These results are even more remarkable considering that happiness requires close physical proximity to spread and that the effect decays over time. ...

"These models show that happy alters (friends) consistently influence [an individual's] happiness more than unhappy alters, and only the total number of happy alters remains significant in all specifications. In other words, the number of happy friends seems to have a more reliable effect on ego happiness than the number of unhappy friends. Thus, the social network effect of happiness is multiplicative and asymmetric. ...

"All these relations indicate the importance of physical proximity, and the strong influence of neighbours suggests that the spread of happiness might depend more on frequent social contact than deep social connections. ..."Happiness spreads significantly more through same sex relationships than opposite sex relationships. ...

"Conclusions: Human happiness is not merely the province of isolated individuals. ... The better connected are one's friends and family, the more likely one will attain happiness in the future. ... People's happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected. This provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomenon."

James H Fowler and Nicholas A Christakis, "Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study,"British Medical Journal, 4 December 2008