Contagious Happiness Spreads… Vaccination Imminent
Posted on Jan 4th, 2009 at 3:18 pm by Megan in Misc Geek Stuff
Apparently, happiness is contagious. Achoo. Your Welcome.
So Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler from Harvard Med and UC San Diego (respectively) performed a study on over 4500 people. They started as children in 1983 and went on for twenty years until 2003. The results? Apparently if those in your social circle are jolly and jovial, your 15% more likely to be turning that frown upside down.
There are some oddities found within the study. Say your best friend who lives a few miles away got great news and can’t stop bouncing off the walls. As long as your not a jealous ass, your mood will spike by as much as 60%. However, if that wall bouncing is coming from the significant other you happen to live with, look for less than a 10% difference in your own demeanor. Seems hunni dearest isn’t as essential to our positivity as we all may have thought…
It looks like this is how it works: We as human beings subconsciously mimic others’ body language. That includes body language, posture, and yup, you guessed it, smiles. Fake it until you make it, you paste that grin on for long enough and eventually you’ll be pretty upbeat yourself.
And it looks like happiness also comes in handy for more than humming a sweet tune. A general good mood can in turn give you a healthier heart, lower chances of developing diabetes, make you less likely to smoke and thus avoid all sorts of unfriendly lung problems, greatly decrease your odds in obesity and just raise your lifespan in general. Live long and prosper, indeed.
Christakis compares catching the happiness bug “like pebbles thrown into a pond”, noting the ripples moving through social networks. Sociologist Duncan Watts from Columbia explains it like this, “Social influence is mostly a good thing. We should embrace the fact that we’re inherently social creatures and that much of who we are and what we do is determined by forces that are outside the little circle we draw around ourselves.”
However, Watts goes on to explain how his findings showed happy people tend to stick together, and therefore keeping their happy germs to themselves. So, my glum friend, slap a smile on, pretend not to be an angry, cynical bastard and grab your most chipper pal and take him out for dinner. If it doesn’t lighten your mood, at least you can smile on the inside about his naivety as he tells you the upside to today’s economy and how we’re really not that bad off. You win, sunshine, you win indeed.
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This study follows closely the premise of “The Secret”, a popular book that I’m sure most people know of. I’d like to think that my own happy-go-lucky, eternal optimist personality has benefited me greatly throughout my years. Feeling blue? Here…Pull my finger.
Brody Dorland – Something Creative, Inc.