Hard Times Got You Down? Get Happy -- or Happier Friends
by Laura Rowley
Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 11:14AM ET - U.S. Markets close in 4 hours and 46 minutes.
Laura Rowley Money & Happiness
Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2008, 12:00AM
If you think misery loves company, think again. A new study published in the British Medical Journal suggests that the truth is closer to another cliche -- smile and the world smiles with you.
The Probability of Happiness
The study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of California San Diego found that happiness is contagious: A friend who lives within a mile and becomes happy increases the probability that you'll become happy by 25 percent; a next-door neighbor's joy raises the probability by 34 percent; and a gleeful spouse who lives with you ups the probability by 8 percent.
"What our work shows is an emotional stampede, or herd-like behavior in emotions, which is dependent on the structure of network," says Nicholas Christakis, a physician and professor of sociology at Harvard. "Whether you are happy depends on those two or three degrees beyond your social horizon."
Christakis and co-author James Fowler examined a group of people in Framingham, Mass., whom researchers have tracked -- along with their descendants and friends -- since the 1940s. They examined 12,000 people who were interviewed over 30 years, who had named relatives and friends in their interviews, and regularly reported on their well being.
Proximity Is Key
They found extended social ties made an impact on a participant's contentment: An individual was 15 percent more likely to become happy if his friend was happy; 10 percent more likely if that friend's friend is happy; and almost 6 percent more likely if the friend's friend's friend is happy. Moreover, happiness spread a bit more strongly and more consistently than unhappiness; the authors suggest that from an evolutionary perspective, happy groups are more likely to cooperate in survival.
The study suggests that the spread of happiness depends more on proximity and frequent social contact than deep social connections, and that gender may play a role (happiness spreads "more significantly" through same-sex friends than opposite-sex relationships). For example, the research showed the happiness of a far-away sibling had no significant effect, while the happiness boost from a friend who lives within a mile is 25 percent.
If I apply this theory to my own life, the happiness of my neighbor Jen, with whom I share the ups and downs of parenting and a mutual love of dogs, should affect my well being more than the emotional state of my sister Mary in Iowa, with whom I share everything. Moreover, Jen's happiness should boost my mood significantly more than my husband's (which is so implausible I have to wonder if something is rotten in Framingham, at least on the marital front).
Emotional Contagions
"We find there's a tremendous decay with distance," says Christakis. "You'll be happier if your next-door neighbor is happy, but not one two houses over; it's face to face or frequent contact. If you're like most people, you'll instinctively smile back if I smile at you. People will adopt the mood of other people they are with."
Oddly, the study found no emotional contagion whatsoever in a place where we get the most face-to-face contact: the office. Almost 40 percent of participants had at least one coworker who also participated in study. "The social context may moderate the flow of happiness from one person to another," the authors write.
But Stanford University Professor Robert Sutton, co-director of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization, says mood contagion in the workplace is well documented, and the result may have been a methodological issue: Just because coworkers share the same employer doesn't mean they work in the same office or on the same shift. (Participants weren't specifically asked to name coworkers.)
"If you look at the basis of lots of organizational cultures -- especially in workgroups -- people will feel the same," says Sutton. "Emotions are contagious. People who have more control over your life and are higher status are the ones who often have the strongest effect."
Happy Is as Happy Does
Fowler, an associate professor of political science at U.C. San Diego, suggests a little schadenfreude may be at work. "We think the workplace offers an opportunity for collaboration but also competition," he says. "Prizes given out in workplaces can't be given to everyone -- someone's raise might mean another is being passed over for a raise. In a competitive environment you're genuinely affected by that person's happiness -- it actually makes you a little less happy."
How is happiness spread through social networks? "Happy people might share their good fortune -- for example, by being pragmatically helpful or financially generous to others; or change their behavior toward others -- for example, by being nicer or less hostile; or merely exude an emotion that is genuinely contagious," the authors write. "Psychoneuroimmunological mechanisms are also conceivable, whereby being surrounded by happy individuals has beneficial biological effects."
The study also underscores what I suspected in high school -- popular kids do have more fun. People in the center of a social network, surrounded by many happy people, are more likely than others to become happy in the future. While this finding would seem to provide fertile marketing material for country clubs looking to grow their ranks, the study found it actually matters if the other people like you as much as you like them.
With Friends Like These...
Here's how they figured it out: Research participants listed their friends. A number of these individuals also happened to be part of the study, and sometimes listed the friend who had named them. When a member of that mutual pair became happy, it increased the probability of their friend's joy increasing by a whopping 63 percent. By contrast, the likelihood of a boost in happiness by an "ego-perceived friend" -- the guy you golf with at the country club who you named but who didn't have you on his list -- had only a 12 percent effect.
Finally, the hedonic treadmill -- the phenomenon in which we adapt to a new car or fancy bling over time, and it no longer gives us the same pleasure -- shows up in the interpersonal spread of happiness as well. Someone is 45 percent more likely to be happy if a mutual friend who was interviewed in the past half-year becomes happy. In contrast, the effect is only 35 percent for friends who were examined within the past year, and it declines and ceases to be significant at greater periods of time. In other words, when it comes to happiness and social networks, the bottom line seems to be: What have you done for my mood lately?
If your social network is neither large nor happy, there's good news. Fowler and Christakis found that the biggest factor in someone's happiness was their previous happiness. Individuals who were happy at one wave in the study were roughly three times more likely than unhappy people to be happy at the subsequent observation. A variety of studies -- including work by the late researcher David Lykken of 65 pairs of twins separated at birth and raised apart -- suggest people have a happiness set-point to which they tend to return.
Catch the Wave
Perhaps the best way to boost one's happiness in this depressing economic environment is to recognize that joy not an individual experience, but a property of groups of people.
"If you could choose to be the happiest person on a block or surrounded by happy people, choose the latter, because it tends over time to have make you more susceptible to happy waves that move through the network," says Fowler. He also advises people not to sever ties with their unhappy friends, because reducing your network reduces the potential to catch a subsequent wave of happiness. (Just don't have coffee with your miserable friend on a daily basis.)
Fowler says he's recently made a ritual of listening to his favorite song before he gets home from work: "The study says small things make a big difference. If I'm happy, I can affect my son, and my son's friends, and my son's friends' mother," he explains. "Hundreds of people are potentially affected by this small thing I've done for myself. When we're facing a job loss or the death of a loved one and life is overwhelming, it seems like little things don't matter -- but the study says they do."
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