Money is the cheapest thing

Screenshot from website for the film Bill Cunningham New York, a documentary by Richard Press

“You see, if you don’t take money they can’t tell you what to do. That’s the key to the whole thing, don’t touch money! It’s the worst thing you can do. Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty is the most expensive.”

—Superstar NY Times Street Fashion Photographer Bill Cunningham explaining why he didn’t accept payment for the 100 page spreads of photographs he shot for the original Details magazine in the late 80’s.

Secret to Happiness Quote of the Day:

"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it." Frank Howard Clark

What "The Happiest Man in the World" Thinks About Happiness

(Originally published in New York Magazine, September 19, 2010. Photo: Courtesy of Konchog)

The Happiness Workout: Advice from the guru.
By Eric V. Copage

Matthieu Ricard, happiness guru, has a new book, Why Meditate, a follow-up to his earlier how-to manual, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. He came to town to promote both it and the practice of happiness in general. Ricard is a 64-year-old Frenchman who, shortly after receiving a doctorate in cellular genetics, decided to become a Buddhist monk. Today he is wearing the yellow-and-burgundy robes of his calling at an event in the West 17th Street loft offices of the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation. He is conducting a daylong meditation workshop for 57 quietly—and spiritually—affluent-looking men and women. He is also signing a few books.

Neuroscientists studying meditation have done numerous brain scans and brain-wave measurements on Ricard; they found that the parts of his brain associated with positive emotions were unusually active. In 2007, a British paper nicknamed him “The Happiest Man in the World,” which stuck.

In person, Ricard does seem to chuckle a lot. He says that while often people think of happiness as the absence of conflict, it’s actually “a cluster of qualities: altruism, compassion, inner peace, inner freedom, and inner strength.” And it can be cultivated. “It’s not, in principle, different from any skill. Instead of going to a gymnasium for fitness, you go to a compassion gymnasium, which is sitting in the morning and, for twenty minutes, bringing love and kindness to your mind.” Eventually, “It will raise your baseline.”

I confront him with the basic type-A New Yorker’s suspicion of bliss: Wouldn’t someone lose their mojo, their creative spark and ambition, if they were too happy? “You don’t become dull like a vegetable,” he promises. “You’ll still have your ups and downs, but where you come back after winning the lottery or losing, your response will be different.”

Wouldn’t a person too steeped in good feelings become vulnerable to being taken advantage of? “Altruism and compassion doesn’t mean stupidly letting everyone step on your toes,” he says. “When you meet someone, have an open attitude—an a priori trusting. If you smile, smile—but you don’t have to smile like you’re crazy. If you value others, you are concerned with their happiness and suffering. That doesn’t mean you’re weak.”

I ask him if he thinks unhappiness is romanticized. “When my book on happiness was published in Paris, many said, ‘We don’t care for happiness, so leave us alone!’ They say suffering is so interesting, it’s always changing. But I think for some reason you are lost and can’t see how you cultivate happiness. And you make a whole romantic theory about unhappiness, rather than remedy the cause of that suffering.”

So what irritates him? “I don’t feel irritation,” he responds haltingly, after a beat. “Irritation has to do with a self-centered attitude: ‘This bugs me! I can’t stand that!’ It’s not like indignation, which is a noble form of anger. It says, ‘This is not acceptable that there is a massacre, that there is an injustice.’ It comes from compassion that there is something here that has caused a lot of suffering and should be remedied. But irritation is basically when you’re not in control of your mind.”

Happy Days

New York City, NY June 4, 2009:

Happiness is here again.

After a far-too-long break from blogging (three months!), I’m returning to posting and presenting what makes us happy—here at The Art of Happiness.

Moreover, it also happens to be a topic of frequent reflection, introspection and earnest discussion in the media these forlorn days.

Before I left for a short trip to the sunshine state this last weekend I picked up the current issue of The Atlantic, which promised to divulge the secrets of WHAT MAKES US HAPPY (in cocky big and bold pink letters), as you can see above, on its cover.

Written by Joshua Wolf Shenk the article is “an inside look at an unprecedented seven-decade study of a group of Harvard men suggests that one thing, above all, truly makes a difference.”

It was good reading for the plane ride to Northern California (the happiest place on earth, at least for me) and those early mornings when I was alone in the kitchen drinking coffee, while others were still asleep—but I wouldn’t recommend buying the magazine, especially if you’re looking to save money, like everyone else these days.

Because, not only can you read the entire article online here, but I will reveal the most important point as follows:

What allows people to work, and love, as they grow old? By the time the Grant Study men had entered retirement, Vaillant, who had then been following them for a quarter century, had identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically.

Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80.

There were a few other tidbits of interesting conclusions and anecdotal evidence in the article, but I’ll let you read those yourself.

This morning, I also came across a new New York Times column that focuses specifically on the art of happiness titled Happy Days: The Pursuit of What Matters in Troubled Times.

(Speaking of troubled times, much like other papers, The Times has introduced human (people) interests sections like these, veering away from its traditional hardcore “all the news that is fit to print” and make you feel like we are doomed, because they are desperate to attract readers (and advertisers) in order to survive. You can read about their woes here— Lack of Vision To Blame for Newspaper Woes—and here— Newspapers plot survival as quietly as they can.)

Anyway, The Times’ column has good intentions and its mission is as follows:

The severe economic downturn has forced many people to reassess their values and the ways they act on them in their daily lives. For some, the pursuit of happiness, sanity, or even survival, has been transformed.

Happy Days is a discussion about the search for contentment in its many forms — economic, emotional, physical, spiritual — and the stories of those striving to come to terms with the lives they lead.

Moreover, I was pulled in to read the column by one particularly popular piece posted two days ago called Reprieve by Tim Kreider, who reflects on the value of life after experiencing a near death stab in the throat with a stiletto. It is an article worth reading which can be summed up with the following quote about his year after the incident: “It’s easy now to dismiss that year as nothing more than a sort of hysterical high. But you could also try to think of it as a glimpse of grace.”

Also, read-worthy are many of the 200+ comments which follow the article and reflect on their own near-death experiences, a few of which can be read here: More Light!

IT’S THE POWER OF LOVE

(Source: FIT, AMNY)

By Roxanne Anderson

Many of us diet and exercise but just can’t seem to get to our own personal level of optimum health. The missing ingredient could be love, which is part of something that many health counselors call “primary food.” Health and love are fundamentally linked.

Love makes you live longer
Studies done by Dr. Dean Ornish, founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, have shown that love actually helps us live longer. He believes that the time we spend with friends and family is essential for survival. In addition, research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health shows that people who never marry are almost two-thirds more likely to suffer from premature death. This finding suggests that marriage represents an effective social connectedness to another person.

Hugs are good for the heart
A team from the University of North Carolina studied the effects of hugging on both partners in 38 couples. The study showed hugs increased levels of oxytocin, a “bonding” hormone, and reduced blood pressure — which cuts the risk of heart disease. Most adults today are starved for touch, but a little bit goes a long way.

Satisfying relationships help fight cancer
The University of Iowa found that cancer patients with satisfying relationships had more white blood cell activity than those with few social connections. Also, the work of Dr. Bernie Siegel, author of “365 Prescriptions for the Soul,” cites studies that reveal that among cancer patients married men live longer than single men, and that married male smokers have fewer cases of lung cancer than their single counterparts. Being well connected with people is an essential part of life. Bring more love into your life by strengthening your current relationships. Think about what you really want from other people, and experiment with the amount of alone time versus social time that is right for you and your social network. Most important, don’t forget plenty of hugs.

Be

If you want to be happy, be.

Leo Tolstoy

You’ll hear the same message from me over and over again—Happiness is an action verb and not simply a present tense. In other words, happiness requires a pro-active effort.

As per many of the conclusions from the scientific studies I’ve presented here in this blog, happiness is determined by three primary factors—1. a genetic proclivity toward this state of being and disposition, 2. advantageous or conducive circumstances, and perhaps most importantly, 3. a concerted effort.

For what comes naturally for some of us, doesn’t always come. You’ve got to meet happiness head on if you want to be happy more often than not.

That’s why the Constitution guarantees the right to pursue happiness and doesn’t simply guarantee happiness outright.

In Benjamin Franklin’s own words, “You have to catch it yourself.”

Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.

Palmer Sondreal

Happiness is a an Episode of Family Guy

December 23, 2008, New York City:

Happiness is a an Episode of Family Guy

For the last twenty years I have been one of those freaks who makes it a point not to watch television.

However, as there are always exceptions to the rule in my world, especially when you’re the one making up the rules and you happen to rule your world.

So, from time to time I have let myself enjoy a show or two.

Toward the end of my marriage my ex and I spent the last year we were together watching every episode of all six seasons of Six Feet Under on DVD.

My latest TV fix is 30 Rock. I recently saw the first 7 episodes one night with my ex via Netflix on demand and found it to be hilarious, especially since it stars my hero, Alec Baldwin.

And, there was a time where I often broke down and watched Family Guy on youtube. Comically-genius, irreverent and occasionally shocking when pitted against today’s PC-standards, the show is a must see for anyone who needs a dose of good-old fashioned laughter.

*

I recently began reading Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert and he proposes that there is no such thing as "happiness," that it is a state of mind that is too hard to define and that it is merely an inascertainable emotional state-of-being.

Moreover, Gilbert writes that happiness is so wholly subjective that there is no way to derive a universal formula or secret for satisfaction.

In one example he purports that if you were talking with an alien from outer space at a bar that you could not successfully describe what happiness was.

I completely disagree.

I think that if you simply smiled or laughed that people from all over the world (if not the universe), from practically every culture at various points in human history would understand what you meant by happiness.

Now, we all may not laugh or smile at the same things, but I think for the most part the vast majority of the human race laughs or smiles because they feel happy.

And so, since I recently was re-introduced to Family Guy via my kids who introduced me to hulu.com this weekend, if you happen to need something funny to cheer you up today, I highly recommend watching one of the “most popular” episodes of Family Guy on hulu.com.

Click HERE to watch.

Happy Quote of the Day

Joy is not in things; it is in us.

Richard Wagner

Happiness is Giving (not getting)

Can Money Make You Happy?
Money may not buy love, but it can buy happiness…

(As Published in Scientific American, March 21, 2008, by Larry Greenemeier)

The catch is: you have to spend it on someone else. Researchers at the University of British Columbia (U.B.C.) and Harvard Business School report in Science that people who lavish gifts on others and give to charity are happier than their peers. As part of the study, U.B.C. psychologists gave volunteers a wad of cash to spend; half of them were told to splurge on themselves and the other half to spend it on others. The givers rated themselves as being happier, on average, than the self-spenders. The findings mesh with those of a Harvard B-school survey of 16 people who were asked to measure their happiness before and after receiving cash bonuses. Those who spent more of their loot on others rated themselves as happier than their co-workers who had failed to spread the wealth. "These findings suggest that very minor alterations in spending allocations, as little as $5," says study author and U.B.C. psychologist Elizabeth Dunn, "may be enough to produce real gains in happiness on a given day." (Boston Globe, The New York Times' Tierney Lab)

Happy Quote of the Day

Success is not the key to happiness.
Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Albert Schweitzer

Science Says: Its the Small Things That Count

Make Yourself Happy
Small acts that create immediate pleasures can add up to long-term satisfaction

(As published in Scientific American, March, 2005, by Maja Storch)

Little events sometimes have far-reaching consequences. For example, the reason I'm no longer driving a delightful but temperamental Alfa Romeo is because of a chocolate Easter bunny. I used to bring my car to a repair shop that employed a mechanic with whom I was most pleased. Then one day he phoned to inform me that he had resigned. "But why?" I asked him. "A new owner has taken over," he replied. "The working atmosphere isn't like it used to be. I just didn't feel good there anymore."

Immediately the psychologist in me was intrigued. "So what was different?" I wanted to know. "Well, I guess it was just little things," he said. "Like, at Easter, the owner's wife would always slip a chocolate bunny into everyone's toolbox. It made you feel like someone out there was making an effort." The Easter bunny didn't come anymore, the esteemed mechanic left, and my next car was a reliable but less glamorous Saab.

Behind this trivial story lurks a central topic of psychology: how personal happiness originates. Psychologists hope that once we understand this, we might be able to create these feelings at will.

Short-Term Joys
Personal happiness has two components: one is short-lived and immediate, and the second is long-term and "habitual." The instant variety could best be described as an intense experience of joy. These feelings range from sensual pleasures to so-called flow experiences--brought on by acts in which we become totally immersed and lose all sense of self. Instant happiness can also emerge when you are just relax-ing on your balcony after a hard day's work, with your feet up as you watch the sun go down. Short-term pleasures create a stirring of emotions that psychologists refer to as positive affect.

Many people can motivate themselves before beginning an unpleasant task by anticipating the good feeling of success they will get when the job is completed. And simple acts of social caring can create positive affects for others: a smile, a word of praise, a kind letter--or a chocolate Easter bunny.
Also in this issue of Mind

* Illusions Mind the Gap
* Features What's Wrong with This Picture?
* Features Unleashing Creativity

Most individuals underestimate the power this factor can have in both their private and professional lives. One extravagant annual company picnic does not create a healthy working environment; it takes many immediate, smaller happy moments to achieve this atmosphere. All employers should demonstrate to their employees that they care. Even if employers are focused only on the bottom line, for only minimal time and expense they can noticeably increase job satisfaction and, therefore, productivity. The same applies to family relationships and partnerships. Each person--alternating each week, for instance--can take a turn "being responsible" for positive feelings by bringing home owers, getting tickets for a movie, or planning a weekend outing together.

A very different tactic can also elicit immediate feelings of happiness--the reduction of anything that makes you unhappy. Let us say you are in a meeting at work at which another employee shoots down one of your proposals with an unannounced set of statistics. Because he did not submit his figures before the meeting, you have not prepared a reply. Everyone is impressed with his pie chart, even though you are sure no one really understands it. You are overtaken by a wave of anger, and, worse, you can think of nothing to say.

By becoming aware of your somatic markers, you can build a foundation of positive thoughts.

To dissipate the unhappiness that will most likely stay with you after such a meeting, you can use a device we have developed at the University of Zurich called the idea basket. Imagine that there is a basket in front of you and that you are going to fill it with suggestions from your colleagues and friends. Begin by making a detailed list of which situations, circumstances and triggers have led to specific negative emotional experiences. Then ask as many trustworthy and discreet people as you can to come up with appropriate ways to respond.

Try to get ideas from people in as many different social groups as possible. Certainly ask your favorite co-worker, but also approach your son's kindergarten teacher, the neighborhood bricklayer, even your 14-year-old daughter--despite her adolescent behavior that sometimes leaves you wondering how sound her thinking really is. Often those whose minds have stored experiences through very different connections produce the most surprising and helpful ideas. Once your suggestion basket is full, choose several options that could reduce the negative aspects and then resolve to act on them. Even if you cannot fully transform the negative into a positive in a given situation, curing it even halfway can greatly improve your happiness.

Long-Term Satisfaction
By creating an ongoing series of short-term highs and reversing lows, you are already on your way to long-term, habitual happiness. This state expresses itself as an all-encompassing feeling of satisfaction with life. According to psychological surveys, factors that can strongly contribute to this state are financial security, a well-ordered social environment and a trusting relationship. And yet many people experience a "dissatisfaction dilemma"--they just do not feel happy even when they have in place favorable life circumstances, such as the ones just mentioned. The way to resolve the dilemma is to squeeze into each day as much immediate happiness as possible. By using every opportunity to feel happy, you awaken positive feelings that can buoy your spirits.

Here are just a few possibilities:

# In the morning, become aware of the rising sun; at breakfast deeply inhale the fragrance of your coffee.

# While riding to work on the train, watch the landscape rather than pointlessly riing through papers from the office.

# When you get to work, greet your co-workers with a "good morning" before you check your e-mails.

# After an hour or two, take a small break; you will feel better, and it will improve your concentration on the next task as well.

# Buy a flower during lunchtime and beautify your desk.

There is only one important rule here: the more the better. It is the number of such happiness motivators that count--not their quality. Many seemingly trivial acts add up to the joy of living.

You can also stimulate long-term satisfaction intellectually. If you maintain positive thoughts, you will indeed start to feel happier. This is not to say that habitual happiness can be grounded in figments of the imagination. It must be based on a solid foundation, which means fulfilling your desires, hopes and expectations as best as you can. But to do so, you first have to know what you want. On this score, somatic markers can help.

Scientists now know that sensory information is under permanent scrutiny by an automatic, internal process that promptly monitors experiences that pour in from our external world. The ability of an individual to know what is good for him or her is relative to how carefully the person can perceive and heed this internal commentary of somatic markers. Such markers are perceived either as a physical sensation or as a feeling, or a mixture of both. They originate in our emotional memory of experiences, which is a group of brain structures that store and evaluate every meaningful moment we have gone through. Bad experiences send out negative somatic markers; pleasant ones produce positive signals.

You can train yourself to be consciously aware of your somatic-marker signals. By doing so, you will build that intellectual foundation of positive thoughts. In the long run, only individuals who have the self-confidence to guide their lives by their own system of values, regardless of public opinion or fashionable trends, can find true satisfaction. Somatic markers can provide invaluable guidance, helping you make the right decisions, realize long-term goals, and find the necessary motivation to transform your resolutions into action. In the process, you will create the preconditions that ensure long-term happiness.

Happy Song of the Day

Don't Worry, Be Happy
by Bobby Mcferrin

Happiness and Artistic Genius

Happiness: Good for Creativity, Bad for Single-Minded Focus
Happy people are open to all sorts of ideas, some of which can be distracting

(As published in Scientific American, December 18, 2006, by JR Minkel)

Despite those who romanticize depression as the wellspring of artistic genius, studies find that people are most creative when they are in a good mood, and now researchers may have explained why: For better or worse, happy people have a harder time focusing.

University of Toronto psychologists induced a happy, sad or neutral state in each of 24 participants by playing them specially chosen musical selections. To instill happiness, for example, they played a jazzy version of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. After each musical interlude, the researchers gave subjects two tests to assess their creativity and concentration.

In one test, participants in a happy mood were better able to come up with a word that unified three other seemingly disparate words, such as "mower," "atomic" and "foreign." Solving the puzzle required participants to think creatively, moving beyond the normal word associations--"lawn," "bomb" and "currency"--to come up with the more remote answer: "power."

Interestingly, induced happiness made the subjects worse at the second task, which required them to ignore distractions and focus on a single piece of information. Participants had to identify a letter flashed on a computer screen flanked by either the same letter, as in the string "N N N N N," or a different letter, as in "H H N H H." When the surrounding letters didn't match, the happy participants were slower to recognize the target letter in the middle, indicating that the ringers distracted them.

The results suggest that an upbeat mood makes people more receptive to information of all kinds, says psychologist Adam Anderson, co-author of the study published online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. "With positive mood, you actually get more access to things you would normally ignore," he says. "Instead of looking through a porthole, you have a landscape or panoramic view of the world."

Researchers have long proposed that negative emotions give people a kind of tunnel vision or filter on their attention, Anderson says. Positive moods break down that filter, which enhances creativity but prevents laserlike focus, such as that needed to recognize target letters in the second task, he says.

As for the myth of the depressed but brilliant artist, Anderson speculates that creativity may be a form of self-medication, giving a gloomy artist the chance to adopt a cheerful disposition.

Happy Quote of The Day

Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you.

Fran Leibowitz

5 Quotes to Remember in Times like These

Following are the opening paragraphs from a piece that my friend, Steve Williams, Executive Director of RainTiger.com, just posted. Like Steve, I write a monthly column for RainTiger.com called Expressions.

Click HERE to read this month's post: Plotting My Escape

5 Quotes to Remember in Times like These
By Steve A. Williams

With all the negative things that have been happening in our world, it has become harder and harder to watch the news. You turn on the television and there is an onslaught of information on the world's economic crisis, or the state of global unemployment, or of warring countries. Stocks seem to be fall more than rain these days. Finding something positive to hold on to has been as scarce as water in the Sahara.

No matter where you live, the current events of the world have affected everyone. Our world use to be more compartmentalized and negative news didn't seem to stretch across seas or even to neighboring countries. But because of the interwoven connectivity of today's world, the proverbial butterfly effect has a greater magnitude of consequence. Nevertheless, no matter where you find yourself, here are five quotes to remember in times like these...

Click HERE to continue reading 5 Quotes to Remember in Times like These

Happy Quote of the Day

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.

Edith Wharton

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."

Happy Quote of the Day

"Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be."
Abraham Lincoln

Happiness Is Contagious

Happiness: It Really Is Contagious by Allison Aubrey
(posted on NPR.org, December 5, 2008)

Turns out, misery may not love company — but happiness does, research suggests.

A new study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego documents how happiness spreads through social networks.

They found that when a person becomes happy, a friend living close by has a 25 percent higher chance of becoming happy themselves. A spouse experiences an 8 percent increased chance and for next-door neighbors, it's 34 percent.

"Everyday interactions we have with other people are definitely contagious, in terms of happiness," says Nicholas Christakis, a professor at Harvard Medical School and an author of the study.

Perhaps more surprising, Christakis says, is that the effect extends beyond the people we come into contact with. When one person becomes happy, the social network effect can spread up to 3 degrees — reaching friends of friends.

To study the spread of emotion, the researchers plotted out the social connections of about 5,000 individuals enrolled in the ongoing Framingham Heart Study.

On three separate occasions between 1984 and 2003, the participants filled out a questionnaire designed by the Center for Epidemiological Studies to assess depression and emotional health.

To measure happiness, Christakis relied on people's answers to four questions in the survey, including: "How often during the past week would you say: I enjoyed life? I felt hopeful about the future?"

When he and his colleagues plotted out how the happy and unhappy participants were connected in social space, an interesting picture emerged.

"We find that people at the center of the social network tend to be happier," says co-author James Fowler, a political science professor at U.C. San Diego.

Imagine a birds-eye view of a party: "You may see some people in quiet corners talking one-on-one," Fowler says. Others would be at the center of the room having conversations with lots of people. According to the study findings, those in the center would be among the happiest.

"We think the reason why is because those in the center are more susceptible to the waves of happiness that spread throughout the network," Fowler explains.

Of course, it's true that emotions can be fleeting; happiness is elusive and sometimes it's situational. For these reasons, emotional states are difficult to measure, says Robert Provine, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "There are lots of challenges."

Nonetheless, Provine, who has studied the contagion of laughter, says this study is impressive in showing that moods can be contagious, too.

Happy Quote of the Day

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mohandas K. Gandhi