Strangers Influence Mood more than Intimates
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/05/health/05happy-web.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
The researchers analyzed information on the happiness of 4,739 people and their connections with several thousand others — spouses, relatives, close friends, neighbors and co-workers — from 1983 to 2003…
How happy you are may depend on how happy your friends’ friends’ friends are, even if you don’t know them at all.
And a cheery next-door neighbor has more effect on your happiness than your spouse’s mood…
[T]heir research found that “if your friend’s friend’s friend becomes happy, that has a bigger impact on you being happy than putting an extra $5,000 in your pocket”…
In a separate study of 1,700 Facebook profiles, they found that people smiling in their photographs had more Facebook friends and that more of those friends were smiling…
[W]hen people changed from unhappy to happy in self-reported responses on a widely used measure of well-being, other people in their social network became happy too. Sadness was transmitted the same way, but not as reliably as happiness. Professor Cacioppo believes that reflects an evolutionary tendency to “select into circumstances that allow us to stay in a good mood.”
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