Saturday, December 6, 2008
Laught && the World Laughs TOO
Yessss~
If you've ever wondered what happy people have that you dont, it's happy friends.
"That's the conclusion of researchers from Harvard and the University of California at San Diego, who report in the British Medical Journal online that happiness spreads among people like a salubrious disease. Dr. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler studied nearly 5,000 people and their more than 50,000 social ties to family, friends and co-workers, and found that an individual's happiness is chiefly a collective affair, depending in large part on his or her friends' happiness — and the happiness of their friends' friends, and even the friends of their friends' friends. The merriment of one person, the researchers found, can ripple out and cause happiness in people up to three degrees away. So if you're happy, you increase the chance of joy in your close friend by 25%; a friend of that friend enjoys a 10% increased chance. And that friend's friend has a 5.6% higher chance."
Haha, wow, should've known, huh? If you're ever having a bad day, you should go hang out with your more optimistic friennnnds. According to a study, happy people tend to cluster together, similar to how people who are the same height, or suffer from acne, or headaches, (etc) group up.
(Also, it seems that unhappiness isn't as contagious, although things like quitting smoking and obescity are~)
"The researchers' hope is that a better understanding of how people pick up and pass on behaviors will help health officials create more targeted public-health messages. Antismoking campaigns aimed at teens, for example, might be more powerful if they were geared toward the most socially connected students in a high school — rather than individual smokers. "We are always looking for areas to invest in, promising new areas of research that will give us new levels of ability to help people, and without a doubt I see this as a very promising area," says Suzman."
Park, A (2008, December, 4). Laugh and the World Laughs Too: Happiness is
Contagious. TIME, Retrieved December 6, 2008, from
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1864519,00.html?cnn=yes
If you've ever wondered what happy people have that you dont, it's happy friends.
"That's the conclusion of researchers from Harvard and the University of California at San Diego, who report in the British Medical Journal online that happiness spreads among people like a salubrious disease. Dr. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler studied nearly 5,000 people and their more than 50,000 social ties to family, friends and co-workers, and found that an individual's happiness is chiefly a collective affair, depending in large part on his or her friends' happiness — and the happiness of their friends' friends, and even the friends of their friends' friends. The merriment of one person, the researchers found, can ripple out and cause happiness in people up to three degrees away. So if you're happy, you increase the chance of joy in your close friend by 25%; a friend of that friend enjoys a 10% increased chance. And that friend's friend has a 5.6% higher chance."
Haha, wow, should've known, huh? If you're ever having a bad day, you should go hang out with your more optimistic friennnnds. According to a study, happy people tend to cluster together, similar to how people who are the same height, or suffer from acne, or headaches, (etc) group up.
(Also, it seems that unhappiness isn't as contagious, although things like quitting smoking and obescity are~)
"The researchers' hope is that a better understanding of how people pick up and pass on behaviors will help health officials create more targeted public-health messages. Antismoking campaigns aimed at teens, for example, might be more powerful if they were geared toward the most socially connected students in a high school — rather than individual smokers. "We are always looking for areas to invest in, promising new areas of research that will give us new levels of ability to help people, and without a doubt I see this as a very promising area," says Suzman."
Park, A (2008, December, 4). Laugh and the World Laughs Too: Happiness is
Contagious. TIME, Retrieved December 6, 2008, from
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1864519,00.html?cnn=yes
Labels: school work
itsyourtimeso
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