Happiness spreads like the plague
Dec. 9, 2008 by Lisa Currie
From New Scientist…
Are your friends happy? What about their friends? These people, new research suggests, will have a profound impact on your own personal satisfaction.
Like an influenza outbreak, happiness - and misery too – spread through social networks, affecting people through three degrees of separation. For instance, a happy friend of a friend of a friend increases the chances of personal happiness by about 6%.
Compare that to research showing that a $5000 income bump ups the odds by just 2%, says James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who led the new study.
“Even people we don’t know and have never met have bigger effect on our mood than substantial increases in income,” he says. [read full article...]