Happiness is catching and spreads like the flu, according to a study that followed a whole community of people for 20 years. The effect of one happy person could ripple through three degrees of separation, researchers report.
"It is sometimes said that you can't be happier than your least happy child. It is truly amazing to discover that when you replace the word 'child' with 'best friend's neighbor's uncle,' the sentence is still true," [Boston Globe]
said psychologist Daniel Gilbert, who was not involved in the study. The researchers liken the pattern of happiness transmission to the spread of a virus: those with the most number of happy contacts are the mostly likely to catch the happy bug. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, followed more than 4,700 people living in Framingham, Massachusetts from 1983 to 2003. The participants answered periodic questionnaires about their emotional well-being and listed ...
