Copyright Annette Marie Hyder


Misery loves company—but happiness does too

One joy scatters a hundred griefs.  —Chinese Proverb


New research shows that happiness can spread among people like a contagion. It spreads among friends, neighbors, siblings and spouses like the flu.

For the first time, a large study shows how emotion can ripple through clusters of people who may not even know each other.

The Washington Post reports:

The study of more than 4,700 people who were followed over 20 years found that people who are happy or become happy boost the chances that someone they know will be happy. The power of happiness, moreover, can span another degree of separation, elevating the mood of that person's husband, wife, brother, sister, friend or next-door neighbor.

"You would think that your emotional state would depend on your own choices and actions and experience," said Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard University who helped conduct the study published online today by BMJ, a British medical journal. "But it also depends on the choices and actions and experiences of other people, including people to whom you are not directly connected. Happiness is contagious."

The full article is available at The Washington Post

Emotions have a "collective existence"

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.  —Mark Twain

Daily News Central reports:

The scientists took data from the well-known Framingham Heart Study, and were able to recreate a social network of almost 5,000 people who had answered questions about their subjective feelings of happiness over a 20-year period — whether they felt hopeful about the future, for example.

Not surprisingly, people closest to each other had the greatest impact on happiness levels. But people who were so far removed they might never even have met also had an observable effect.

The more happy connections a person had, the happier the individual was likely to be, Fowler and Christakis observed.

The takeaway from this work? We're not totally in control of our own happiness. It doesn't depend solely on our own choices, actions and experience. Emotions have what Christakis calls "a collective existence."

Unhappiness is also "contagious," the researchers noted, but it appears to have a far weaker effect on members of a social network.

When you're smiling( the whole world smiles with you) lyrics
Song by Shay, Fisher and Goodwin

When you're smilin'....keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you
And when you're laughin'....keep on laughin'
The sun comes shinin' through

But when you're cryin'.... you bring on the rain
So stop your frownin'....be happy again
Cause when you're smilin'....keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you

(instrumental break)
Oh when you're smilin'....keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you
Ah when you're laughin'....keep on laughin'
The sun comes shinin' through

Now when you're cryin'.... you bring on the rain
So stop that sighin'....be happy again
Cause when you're smilin'....just keep on smilin'
And the whole world gonna smile with

The great big world will smile with

The whole wide world will smile with you