The more happy people you know, the happier you're likely yo be: But is it worth it?
Courtesy ripleybsxOkay, okay, y’all are getting stressed out about fear being contagious (I can smell it), so consider this:
Happiness is infectious too.
It’s not contagious in quite the same way as fear though. There are no pheromones directly involved—no, just being happy makes other people happy, they make people happy, and so forth (leave it to happiness to have such a milquetoast, touchy-feely method of transmission).
What’s remarkable here isn’t that being happy or sad can make other people happy or sad, it’s how happiness seems to have a cascade effect through social networks (you know, like Facebook, right, but in real life).
When someone is sad for whatever reason, their sadness doesn’t necessarily make a ton of other people sad. But when someone becomes happy, their happiness seems to flow into their social network by three degrees of the familiar six degrees of separation that divide any two people in a huge social network. That is, if you’re happy, your friends are more likely to be happy, and so are their friends’ friends, and so are their friends’ friends’ friends, but that’s about where it stops.
If you’re happy, friend living within one mile from you have a 25% increase in their chances of being happy, a co-resident spouse has an 8% increase, siblings a 14% increase, and next door neighbors a 34% increase in their likelihood of being happy. (Isn’t that odd? Your neighbors are more than 4 times more likely to be affected by your happiness than your spouse is.) And if any of these people do become happy, then the effect rolls over to their friends, neighbors, etc., and the system usually stretches to about 3 degrees from the original happy person.
Researchers figured the specifics of this out by mining through data on 5000 subjects over 20 years collected by the Framington Heart Study, which collected information on the social networks of its participants, as well as their ratings on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Index.
It’s kind of like that movie Pay it Forward, except without Kevin Spacey. See, Kevin Spacey is never happy. His childhood was haunted by a series of premature deaths of pet guinea pigs, his adolescence marred by a rare bone condition known as “wiggle fingers,” and on the day he would win the Best Actor award for “American Beauty” he swallowed a pen cap, ruining the whole evening. The chain of happiness ends with Kevin Spacey.
The study also confirmed that popularity does indeed lead to happiness. If you’re at the center of a social network (i.e. popular), you’re more likely to be surrounded by happy people, and so more likely to be happy yourself (because happiness cascades, but sadness doesn’t, more friends and associates just increases your odds).
Hmm. Now that I think of it, it’s not just like Pay it Forward, it’s like every zombie movie ever made. If you’re a zombie, people living near you and people who might try to band up with you in a zombie disaster are more likely to become zombies themselves (although we’d have to boost that spouse probability up from 8%). And, the same way the popularity increases your chance of happiness, being surrounded by zombies increases your chances of becoming a zombie (or at least your chances of getting your face eaten).
So I guess the take-home messages are as follows:
-Social networks aren’t just on the Internet. (Questionable)
-If you’re happy, that doesn’t mean Kevin Bacon will be happy, even if he knows your friends’ friends’ friends.
-If you’re happy, that certainly doesn’t mean that Kevin Spacey will be happy. (But don’t feel bad about it.)
-Being an individualist makes you less likely to be happy.
-Popularity is everything. But…
-Being popular also increases your chances of having your face eaten by a zombie.
Are y’all with me?
Email
Delicious
Digg
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Science Buzz is supported by the
Add a new comment