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...]

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Stress and anxiety seem to be an all too common part of life – we take them for granted. Periods of depression are usually viewed as normal: “Everybody gets depressed from time to time”. All too often, we ignore our own happiness, assuming that we’re supposed to handle whatever comes our way. Research has proven that unhappiness has a negative impact on health. Unfortunately, it seems that modern life has placed great emphasis on quantity rather than quality.

Our current state of affairs does little to promote true happiness. We face constant demands in terms of job stress and financial responsibility, and seem driven toward productivity.  One recent health study found that stress has a delayed impact on cardiovascular health, while another found a link between depression and the formation of atherosclerosis.  According to statistics, the incidence of cardiovascular disease increased by 53% following 9/11, in a group of online study participants.

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Wesleyan students who wish to talk to someone about their emotional health may wish to contact the Office of Behavioral Health for Students  at 860.685.2910.

The researchers confirmed the joys of giving in three separate ways. First, by surveying a national sample of more than 600 Americans, they found that spending more on gifts and charity correlated with greater happiness, whereas spending more money on oneself did not. Second, by tracking 16 workers before and after they received profit-sharing bonuses, the researchers found that that the workers who gave more of the money to others ended up happier than the ones who spent more of it on themselves. In fact, how the bonus was spent was a better predictor of happiness than the size of the bonus.

The final bit of evidence came from an experiment in which 46 students were given either $5 or $20 to spend by the end of the day. The ones who were instructed to spend the money on others — they bought toys for siblings, treated friends to meals and made donations to the homeless — were happier at the end of the day than the ones who were instructed to spend the money on themselves.

read full New York Times TierneyLab article…

Scientists know that positive people are happier, period. Tapping into your bright side is easier than you’d guess.

Joie de vivre. We all know people whose engagement with life can only be described as joyful. Fittingly, nature rewards these happy-go-lucky types: Being optimistic in middle age increases life span by at least 7.5 years–even after accounting for age, gender, socioeconomic status, and physical health, according to a large Yale University survey. What’s behind their hardiness: They minimize the destructive effects of stress.

“Of course, optimists get stressed,” says David Snowdon, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky who studies aging. “But they automatically turn the response off much more quickly and return to a positive mental and physical state.” Here are four habits that longevity experts say are at the heart of a sunny disposition–and that you can adopt, too. read full article…