Have you been feeling happy lately? Maybe you should thank your friends and your friends’ friends. In December 2008, a new research by the Harvard Medical School and the University of California, San Diego published by the British Medical Journal suggested that your level of happiness is influenced not only by the people you know, but by the people they know, for up to three degrees of separation.
This study established that happiness spreads through your social network, sort of like a virus, so that if you feel cheery, it could impact someone you have never met.
The researchers studied social networks of 5000 people for 20 years. They determined that if a person was happy, it increased by 15 % the chances of that individual’s friends to be happy, by 9 % the chances of that friends’ friends to be happy and by 6 % the chances of that friends’ friends’ friends to be happy.
I personally find it a little hard to believe that part of my happiness could be due to a stranger who is three times removed from my life. However, I do believe that when you are connecting with happy people, it could impact your own life positively. Conversely, spreading happiness around could also increase your own happiness, with the snowball effect. If you’re happy and you impact your friend’s life in a positive way, they will turn back to you with more happiness, and so on….
If happiness is a virus, then it is the only one worth catching… And if you catch it, don’t be afraid to spread it!
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