Is Happiness Catching?
By CLIVE THOMPSON
New York Times magazine
By Nicholas A. Christakis & James H. Fowler
You’re going to be hearing a lot about social contagion in the coming months, for it’s a great topic for people who are interested in how social networks function. Researchers Nicholas A. Christakis & James H. Fowler say:
We found that social networks have clusters of happy and unhappy people within them that reach out to three degrees of separation. A person’s happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends—that is, to people well beyond their social horizon. We found that happy people tend to be located in the center of their social networks and to be located in large clusters of other happy people. And we found that each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%.
The blue-dot people above are the unhappy ones; the yellows are happy.
The New York Times reports that more than happiness is passed along through friendship networks: so is the likelihood of gaining weight or giving up smoking!
A public health program to reduce obesity would be more efficient if it began by targeting well-connected people (because they’ll influence more friends.)
The research found that it’s friends who are influential. Colleagues at work, not so much.
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