HAPPINESS IS CONTAGIOUS

Happiness is 'contagious’ and can spread through networks of friends, family and neighbours, a study has found.

Researchers studied complex social networks of more than 5,000 people and found that happiness is partly dependent on the mood of those near to you and their friends.

Professor Nicholas Christakis from Harvard Medical School and Professor James Fowler from the University of California, San Diego, found that a person’s proximity to happy people – specifically partners, siblings and neighbours – could make them happy too.

The researchers, writing in the British Medical Journal, found that clusters of happy and unhappy people were visible in the networks and the effect lasted for three degrees of separation - meaning one person benefitted from the happiness of their friends’ friends.

It suggests having frequent contact with other people is more important for the spread of happiness rather than the depth of the relationship, the authors said, because the closer people were physically the more likely the happiness was to be passed on.

If you have a friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6km) and who becomes happy it increases the probability that you will become happy by 25 per cent. Similar effects are seen in spouses who live together, siblings who live within a mile of each other and next door neighbours. But there is no effect on your own happiness if your co-workers are happy or not.

The authors said happiness genuinely spreads and the effect is not because happy people band together.

The same phenomenon has been seen in the spread of obesity and smoking, leading the authors to suggest it may also happen in other health-related behaviours such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, drinking, eating and exercise.
This means the spread of happiness through social networks could be used in public health policy as a positive emotional state has been shown to reduce illness and mortality, they said.

Professors Christakis and Fowler suggest the way happiness spreads like an infectious disease may be through mimicry and copying of facial expressions.
Other explanations include that happy people might share their good fortune, by being pragmatically helpful or financially generous to others, or change their behaviour towards others by being nicer or less hostile, or they merely exude an emotion that is genuinely contagious.

The study was based on data collected in the Framingham Heart Study, in which 5,124 adults aged 21-70 were recruited and followed between 1971 and 2003.

MUHAMMAD MAHTAB BASHIR
ISLAMABAD
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