Facts and Statistics on How Happiness Is Contagious

Facts and Statistics on How Happiness Is Contagious

We found that happiness can spread like a virus through social networks. In fact, if your friends’ friends’ friend becomes happy, it significantly increases the chance that you’ll be happy. –Dr. James Fowler, in “Happiness Is… – MSNBC.” 4 Facts & Stats on How Happiness Is Contagious A study by two professors from Harvard and UCSD, Dr. Nicholas Christakis and Dr. James Fowler, found that when a person becomes happy: Next door neighbors have a 34% increased chance of becoming happy. A friend living within one mile has a 25% increased chance of becoming happy. Siblings have a 14% increased chance of becoming happy. A spouse has an 8% change of becoming happy.   More on the Happiness Contagion Study… Happiness isn’t a solitary experience; it’s dependent on others. Harvard researchers followed 4,739 people for 20 years, measuring how social networks, siblings, friends and neighbors are affected by the happiness of others. The study controlled factors of age, gender, education and occupation. Researchers found that close physical proximity is essential for happiness to spread. A happy friend who lives within a half-mile makes you 42% more likely to be happy yourself. If that same friend lives two miles away, the impact drops to 22%. Happy siblings make you 14% more likely to be happy, but only if they live within a mile. Happy spouses provide an 8% boost, if they live under the same roof. Previous research has shown that people who are happy have healthier hearts, they have lower levels of stress hormones, and they live longer. –Dr. James Fowler, in “Happiness Is… – MSNBC.” Text in this...
The Laughter Epidemic: An Example of How Much We’re Connected and Affected by Others’ Emotions

The Laughter Epidemic: An Example of How Much We’re Connected and Affected by Others’ Emotions

Tanzania 1962: In a girls’ boarding school in Africa, three students suddenly started laughing uncontrollably. Six weeks later, more than half the school had been infected. The school was closed and people were sent back to their towns and villages. Ten days later, another curious thing happened: the laughter broke out again in a village over 55 miles away, where some of the students lived. 100s more were affected. Other outbreaks started over a wide area, until the epidemic peated out over six months. By then, over 1,000 people had been affected, though they all fully recovered.   So why did it happen?   Some villagers thought it was caused by radiation poisoning, and doctors were called in to investigate. Their findings: mass psychogenic illness.   Emotions of all kinds can spread quickly.   How you feel depends on how others feel.   In fact, even a friends’ friends’ friend can affect you.   We’re biologically hardwired to mimic people around us.   By copying others’ outward behavior, we also adopt their inner emotions: your friend feels happy. She smiles. So you smile, and you feel happier. Positive emotions like this can fuel an emotional stampede, which can often last longer than a stampede of negative emotions. –Excerpt from the above video, “Laughter Epidemic.” Image: "The three gigglers" by Alan...
What Is Social Contagion? How the Spread of Obesity Is an Example of Social Contagion

What Is Social Contagion? How the Spread of Obesity Is an Example of Social Contagion

Social contagion is the spread of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors from person to person and among larger groups as affected by shared information and mimicry. Paul M. Kirsch, “The Influence of Social Contagion and Technology on Epidemic Non-Suicidal Self-Injury,” 2012.   The Spread of Obesity: An Example of Social Contagion Social contagion actually may account for as much, or perhaps, even more of a person’s risk of obesity than genetic and other factors that have been previously studied. Academic research shows that, at least in the American population, and maybe in the international population as well, that we are all connected to one another by six degrees of separation. Your friends’ friends’ friends’ friends’ friends’ friend, for example, is going to include just about everybody in the population. And what we find, remarkably in the study, is that although the average degree of separation between individuals is six, here your influence extends up to three degrees of separation. And so, halfway, pretty much half the distance into the social network, your health behavior is having an impact on other people. –Dr. James Fowler in “Obesity and Social Networks – CBS.”   Mindless Eating – Explaining Obesity in Terms of Social Contagion   Image: "TransparencyCamp 2012 - #tcamp12 social network graph [1/2]"...
Now You Can Understand Why Connecting To Other People Is Great, Thanks To This Shouting Sociologist

Now You Can Understand Why Connecting To Other People Is Great, Thanks To This Shouting Sociologist

The benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs!” Nicholas Christakis, MD PhD, in his powerful TED Talk “The Hidden Influence of Social Networks,” lays down the omnipotent role of social networks and the benefits of connecting with other people… Social Networks Naturally ‘Sustain & Nourish The Good’ & ‘Reject The Bad’ We form social networks because the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs. If I was always violent towards you or gave you misinformation or made you sad or infected you with deadly germs, you would cut the ties to me, and the network would disintegrate. So the spread of good and valuable things is required to sustain and nourish social networks. Similarly, social networks are required for the spread of good and valuable things, like love, kindness, happiness, altruism and ideas. If we realized how valuable social networks are, we’d spend a lot more time nourishing them and sustaining them, because I think social networks are fundamentally related to goodness. And what I think the world needs now is more connections.” An Example Showing How Certain Properties Reside Not In Individual Parts, But In The Interconnections Between Them Think about these two common objects. They’re both made of carbon, and yet one of them has carbon atoms in it that are arranged in one particular way – on the left – and you get graphite, which is soft and dark. But if you take the same carbon atoms and interconnect them a different way, you get diamond, which is clear and hard. And those properties of softness and hardness and darkness and clearness do not...