Happiness is Contagious!

Finally looked up a new research study that is written up in Time magazine and other places (British Medical Journal, December 4, 2008, online detailed publication) .

Researchers have just discovered that happiness is contagious! Really.

They found clusters of happy and unhappy people grouped together. They also had information over a 20 year period, so that they could see how the groups evolved over time. Happiness seems to move out to about 3 degrees of separation and then fade away – that is, happy people cluster with other happy people out to their friends’ friends’ friends. The properties of the social network itself seem to predict who will be happy later in time.