(via Daniela Duncan on Flickr!)
These are the results of a long and massive study on happiness conducted by Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego � published by the British Medical Journal last year:
* If a social contact is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by 15 percent; A friend of a friend, or the friend of a spouse or a sibling, if they are happy, increases your chances by 10 percent. A happy third-degree friend increases a person's chances of being happy by 6 percent.
* Happiness is more contagious than unhappiness, the study found. �However, every extra unhappy friend increases the likelihood that you'll be unhappy by 7 percent.
* Happy people in close geographic proximity were most effective in spreading their good cheer. A happy friend who lives within a half-mile makes you 42% more likely to be happy yourself. If that same friend lives two miles away, his impact drops to 22%.
* Now the funny thing is that happy neighbors have more impact on your happiness that a happy spouse! Happy spouses provide an 8% boost. Next-door neighbors who are happy make you 34% more likely to be happy too.
* People with the most social connections -- friends, spouses, neighbors, relatives � are the happiest. The happiest people are at the center of large social networks.
Last edited by Cheryll - Bahá'í Life; 12/06/12 11:43 AM.
