On Happiness
By Kim Deng
Research shows that happiness can spread from person to person within social networks. In fact, a recent study suggests that happiness has the ability to spread up to three degrees of separation from its source. For example, it can affect friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends.
If you’ve ever had a coworker, boss, family member, or friend who could liven up a room, then you’ve experienced the social dispersion of happiness firsthand. This hypothesis was tested by researchers who took data from a larger study known as the Framingham Heart Study in their analysis, which included records from a 20-year period (1983 to 2003) with a cohort of 4,739 individuals. They found that the most important contributor to the spread of happiness is the physical distance to friends, since clusters of happy people tend to live in proximity to one another. According to the study, “‘nearby friends (who live within a mile) and who become happy increase the probability that the [participant] is happy by 25%.”
Friends who live more than a mile away have no significant effect on the happiness of the participant. According to the authors, “the spread of happiness might depend more on frequent social contact than deep social connections.” They found that coworkers, however, have no effect on the participants, which suggests that this hypothesis is true for social relationships involving emotional connections.
Past research has indicated that happiness can be spread during a short period of time through “emotional contagion,” mimicry, and through gravitation-like social forces that draw individuals toward other people much like themselves. This longitudinal study, however, suggests that “clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals.”
Other factors affect happiness as well, such as previous happiness and gender. “The principal determinant of a person’s happiness was their previous happiness; individuals who were happy at one wave were roughly three times more likely than unhappy people to be happy at the subsequent observation.” Women are less happy than men. Interestingly, same-sex friendships and neighbors have a stronger impact on happiness than opposite-sex spouses who live together.
The ripple effect in social networks could extend to other areas of health. In previous studies, Fowler and Christakis observed three degrees of separation in the spread of obesity and smoking. The welfare of one could easily affect the welfare of others. In a public health setting, keeping one patient happy and healthy could improve the happiness and health of other people to whom they are connected.
Research such as this drives home the point that sometimes the key to a happier life just so happens to live up the street or is at least a phone call away. Far too often people search internally for the so-called key to happiness rather than reach out to the most obvious sources of enjoyment: friends and family. In short, staying connected with happy friends and family members could likely ensure more happiness in the future.
This research report can be found at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec04_2/a2338.
Comments? Tell us what you think: askaia@matherlifeways.com
