A new study shows that happiness is contagious.

Several thoughtful readers sent me links to a fascinating new study that explores the contagiousness of happiness. The phenomenon of emotional contagion in fleeting interactions is well-known, but this study sheds some interesting light on how happiness spreads over time and across a large group of people.

Ever since I read that study about how people quit smoking in groups, I’ve thought that the next big thing in behavioral research would be the examination of how people’s behaviors spread across social networks.

The bottom line of this new study (which looks at the same data as the smoking study): happy people make other people happier. On average, for example, each happy person in your social network boosts your chance of happiness by 9 percent.

I liked reading this study, because it provides further scientific support for my own Second Splendid Truth. It took me a long time to see this truth clearly, because there’s a circularity to it that confused me, but once I understood it, a lot of things became much clearer:

One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy.
One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

Therefore, contrary to what a lot of people argue, striving to be happier isn’t a self-centered concern; happy people make other people happy. Happy people are also more inclined to volunteer, to donate money, to try to help other people, to persist with problem-solving, etc. than are unhappy people. Some people assume that happy people tend to be complacent and self-absorbed, but just the opposite is true.

One thing that surprised me was the apparent finding that unhappiness isn’t as catching as happiness within a social network. That’s odd, because in general, negative emotions are much stickier than positive ones — that’s the negativity bias.

It may be that in this study, looking at networks, what’s happening is that people are avoiding unhappy people altogether, or the unhappy people are isolating themselves, so that mood isn’t catching on. My guess would be that in any particular interaction, unhappiness is more catching than happiness.

There were other findings in the study that I questioned – but I wholeheartedly accept the idea that we all influence each other to be happier.

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Speaking of psychology, a great place to find a ton of fascinating posts is on the Psychology Today blogs site. It covers every angle of human psychology.

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Interested in starting your own Happiness Project? If you’d like to take a look at my personal Resolutions Chart, for inspiration, just email me at grubin, then the “at” sign, then gretchenrubin dot com. No need to write anything more than “Resolutions Chart” in the subject line.

Comments

[LarryG]

love it!

[adora]

It was all over the news last week. Very interesting. Thanks for posting the original report.

[DaveC]

Thanks for writing this great post on Happiness, and for working so hard on identifying the principles.

There's another cool post that's helpfully augmentative over at a blog called Live Long, Age Well, that prompted me to search further:
http://www.livelongagewell.com/2008/12/08/happiness-might-be-%E2%80%9Ccontagious%E2%80%9D/

Cheers, and hope it's insightful to all of you!
Dave / http://www.codekindness.org

[Rui]

How about if im unhappy? seems i would annoy others whatever

[LifeMadeGreat]

Hi

Very interesting - thank you for letting us know about it.

I think that whether one is more susceptible to "catching" happiness or unhappiness depends on the person. If you are strongly positive, then it shouldn't affect you. If you have a great of unhappiness into which you can tap, then you will start to gravitate towards those feelings.

Juliet

[The Healthy Librarian]

I also LOVED this study.

This "kind of" explains how it all works:

How exactly does happiness spread through social circles?

"Fowler & Christakis don't know. But here's what they suspect. One possibility is that happy people spread their good fortune directly by being generous with their time & money. Evolution may have encouraged infectious happiness if it helped hominids and early humans enhance their social bonds so they could form successful groups."

The other very cool part of this whole social circle thing is how they intersect with each other. I know you've written about the joy of introducing friends of yours to each other.

It's truly one of life's joys--when we meet & connect with our friend's friends, and vice versa.

www.happyhealthylonglife.com

[Alex Fayle]

This goes along with my idea that happiness is a choice. We choose the people we hang out with, which means in essence we choose whether to be happy or not...

[FupDuckTV]

I know what you mean about "negativity bias". It always seems that one bad egg can ruin the day for the whole dozen.

Did this article take into account for virtual "social networks" (MySpace, Facebook)? It always seem like someone is unhappy on those things.

[Joe Miller]

Thanks Gretchen!

[Ruthie]

That negativity bias is so unfair. I guess it's why a lot of us almost need to retrain ourselves to become happier people. But I LOVE the idea that happiness is contagious - a great one to remember!

[Saikat Basu]

It is very important to be happy yourself first. And I believe 'forced happiness' ie, smiling outside while you are crying inside, really doesn't help anyone in the long run. Focus on your own 'happiness index' and the world will automatically take care of itself.