Experts Identify Powerful Contagion: Happiness

Geezer is happy to report that researchers at the Harvard Medical School have determined, after careful study, that happiness is contagious. And because Geezer is happy, according to the formula derived from the research, the chances of happiness being enjoyed by any of Geezer’s friends who live within one mile of Geezer is increased by 25 percent. Wait there’s more. The research suggests that a happy sibling within the same distance increases one’s probability of happiness by 14 percent. And more. Even the happiness of a friend’s friend boosts your chance of being
happy by 9.8 percent. And more more. The happiness of a friend
of a friend of a friend boosts your chance of being happy by 5.6
percent. All of which begs the question: How far
from happy friends does one have to go to be truly miserable?
The Boston Globe reports that the researchers used data from the Framingham Heart Study, a
long-running program initiated in 1948 to examine factors that
contribute to heart disease among residents of the Boston suburb and
their offspring. The happiness researchers looked at responses to a
depression test that was administered several times between 1983 and
2001, in which people were asked how often in the previous week they
had experienced positive feelings such as "I felt hopeful about the
future," "I was happy," "I felt that I was just as good as other
people," and "I enjoyed life." Those data were overlaid with information about the subjects’ family
members, close friends, jobs, and home addresses, and then used to
reconstruct and analyze their social networks.
Read more about the latest contagion in the Boston Globe.