Smiles Are Contagious Too!

This is simply another take, POV, on the previously posted study, but I thought it was worth sharing nonetheless and allthemore...

Smile! Study Says Happiness is Contagious
(From APP, as posted on foxnews.com on Friday, December 05, 2008)

LONDON — When you're smiling, the whole world really does smile with you. A paper being published Friday in a British medical journal concludes that happiness is contagious — and that people pass on their good cheer even to total strangers. American researchers who tracked more than 4,700 people in Framingham, Mass., as part of a 20-year heart study also found the transferred happiness is good for up to a year.

"Happiness is like a stampede," said Nicholas Christakis, a professor in Harvard University's sociology department and co-author of the study. "Whether you're happy depends not just on your own actions and behaviors and thoughts, but on those of people you don't even know."

While the study is another sign of the power of social networks, it ran through 2003, just before the rise of social networking Web sites like Friendster, MySpace and Facebook. Christiakis couldn't say for sure whether the effect works online.

"This type of technology enhances your contact with friends, so it should support the kind of emotional contagion we observed," he said.

Christakis and co-author James Fowler, of the University of California in San Diego, are old hands at studying social networks. They previously found that obesity and smoking habits spread socially as well.

For this study, published in the British journal BMJ, they examined questionnaires that asked people to measure their happiness. They found distinct happy and unhappy clusters significantly bigger than would be expected by chance.

Happy people tended to be at the center of social networks and had many friends who were also happy. Having friends or siblings nearby increased people's chances of being upbeat. Happiness spread outward by three degrees, to the friends of friends of friends.

Happy spouses helped, too, but not as much as happy friends of the same gender. Experts think people, particularly woman, take emotional cues from people who look like them.

Christakis and Fowler estimate that each happy friend boosts your own chances of being happy by 9 percent. Having grumpy friends decreases it by about 7 percent.

But it also turns out misery don't love company: Happiness seemed to spread more consistently than unhappiness. But that doesn't mean you should drop your gloomy friends.

"Every friend increases the probability that you're at the center of a network, which means you are more eligible to get a wave of happiness," Fowler said.

Being happy also brings other benefits, including a protective effect on your immune system so you produce fewer stress hormones, said Andrew Steptoe, a psychology professor at University College London who was not involved with the study.

But you shouldn't assume you can make yourself happy just by making the right friends.

"To say you can manipulate who your friends are to make yourself happier would be going too far," said Stanley Wasserman, an Indiana University statistician who studies social networks.

The study was only conducted in a single community, so it would take more research to confirm its findings. But in a time of economic gloom, it also suggested some heartening news about money and happiness.

According to the research, an extra chunk of money increases your odds of being happy only marginally — notably less than the odds of being happier if you have a happy friend.

"You can save your money," Christakis said. "Being around happy people is better."

Introducing: The Art of Happiness

Introducing: The Art of Happiness
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

November 22, 2008, My 41st Birthday, New York City:

The Art of Happiness

I’ve decided.

I’ve decided to celebrate my birthday by doing something and being someone positive; by giving back to this beautiful life and this wonderful world, so that others might feel as grateful as I am for being and feeling as alive, healthy and wise, as I feel today.

I’ve decided to begin a new blog dedicated to living a life in the pursuit of Happiness, Love and Positive Thinking. It is called The Art of Happiness (aofh/blogspot.com). It is an endeavor that is a long-time coming.

The blog promises not only to bring daily good news to its readers, but it will also inspire and show people how to make the most of our unified existence.

Chock full of wisdom, this blog will not only make you think, ponder, and appreciate all the great things in life, but it will also do its best to make you smile, feel, laugh and inspire you to do the same for others.

So, please help me celebrate by passing on the good news to all your friends and family! The official URL for the blog is: http://AofH.blogspot.com (AofH stands for Art of Happiness)

*

To inaugurate the blog I am reposting a classic story and photo of mine, one of my favorites and one that perfectly summarizes why I am launching this new endeavor:

THIS IS MY GOD
August 5, 2005

I was lying in the kiddy pool on my back, admiring the deep blue sky, when I lifted this ball before me, and, immediately, I had my epiphany—perhaps, one of the greatest I have ever had.

*

An hour later, Enzo, my oldest son, asks me, "Papa, if you could have three super powers, what would they be?"

It took all but a mere moment for me to realize my answer.

"Well, first I would want the power to always by happy. Second, I would like the power to make others happy, especially those that are seemingly often angry, sad or otherwise discontent."

Alas, when I got stuck on thinking of a third superpower, Enzo interrupted me and blurted, "No Papa! Those aren’t super powers! You have to want powers like 'flying,' 'becoming invisible,' 'shooting fire,' or 'super-human strength'…"

“Oh,” I answered, “I guess I don’t know then,” and lied back again to soak in the sun that was shimmering upon the water, for I had decided that in the pursuit of both sanity and serenity, I was not going to begin a deep philosophical discussion with my six year old—not because he would not fathom its murky depths, but primarily because I knew he would likely take too avid of an interest and interminably ask "Why?" at every turn.

*

And it is not until now, upon this epistolary reflection, that I see that the raising of my deity and my response to my son’s hypothetical inquiry were in fact, indeed, connected.

Because, as I have surmised before, I do believe (indubitably I do) that a strong current of optimism runs through me—one that empowers me to believe in self-actualization, the fearsome force of the individual will, and the belief that there is a little good in almost everyone and everything. Moreover, if not more importantly, it is both my belief and my will to share this positive energy with others, if only to alight much the same power in them.

See the original post, with over 90 comments from fellow flickr users:
This is My God, August 5, 2005

See Related Story: Men For Others, November 7, 2008