Happiness is a Contagion

A twenty - year study of nearly 5000 hoi polloi in the United States has revealed that felicity is such a transmissible emotion that your common sense of well - being could affect strangers who are three degrees of interval from you . Two researchers reported in the British Medical Journal yesterday that they learned a number of other surprising things about what cause a sense of well - being , and how far your good flavour really go .

Most of the data point for this extremely long - terminal figure written report came from the Framingham Heart Study , a field in Massachusetts that ’s been ongoing since 1948 . The research worker , Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler , choose to pluck their subjects from this subject field because it included detailed histories of everyone , such as data about mate , friends , and family line . This information provided a sense of participants ’ social networks .

Each participant ’s felicity was measured with a standard test for depression , the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Index , that rates a person ’s sense of well - being .

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One of the first things the Christakis and Fowler found was that the effect of one mortal ’s happiness on a social internet can spread to alien and its consequence could last up to a class . In addition , geographic localisation had a lot to do with this . The happy temper of a friend who endure around the corner will have a much greater effect on you than a champion who go across the country . And despite the fact that misery is supposed to love company , the researchers find that sorrow appears not to spread as virally as felicity .

According to a release about the cogitation :

They also come up that , contrary to what your parents taught you , popularity does precede to felicity . People in the center of their connection clusters are the most likely people to become glad , betting odds that increase to the extent that the people surrounding them also have lots of friends . However , becoming felicitous does not aid transmigrate a mortal from the mesh interference fringe to the center . Happiness spreads through the electronic web without altering its structure .

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“ Imagine an aerial view of a backyard party , ” Fowler explain . “ You ’ll see people in clusters at the center , and others on the outskirts . The happiest people tend to be the ones in the meat . But someone on the outer boundary who suddenly becomes glad , say through a particular exchange , does n’t suddenly move into the nerve centre of the group . He merely stays where he is — only now he has a far more satisfying sense of well - being . felicity works not by changing where you ’re locate in the connection ; it plainly spreads through the connection . ”

So next meter you ’re feeling cheerful , remember that feeling may be arrive from a friend of a friend of a champion . I feel like there ’s a moral about true cat video recording on YouTube in here somewhere .

Dynamic Spread of Happiness in a big Social internet[via British Medical Journal ]

Lesdilley