Social Networks & Happiness

But might emotions spread more widely than this in social networks—from person to person to person, and beyond? Might an individual's location within a social network influence their future happiness? And might social network processes—by a diverse set of mechanisms—influence happiness not just fleetingly, but also over longer periods of time?

--Profs. N.A Christakis & J. Fowler

The answer to all these questions is, yes. Those are the conclusions reported by the good Professors Christakis and Folwler in this article in Edge magazine, "Social Networks and Hapiness." It is based on their research published in a paper in the British Medical Journal . In summary, the authors conclude as follows:

We found that social networks have clusters of happy and unhappy people within them that reach out to three degrees of separation. A person's happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends' friends, and their friends' friends' friends—that is, to people well beyond their social horizon. We found that happy people tend to be located in the center of their social networks and to be located in large clusters of other happy people. And we found that each additional happy friend increases a person's probability of being happy by about 9%. For comparison, having an extra $5,000 in income (in 1984 dollars) increased the probability of being happy by about 2%.

Happiness, in short, is not merely a function of personal experience, but also is a property of groups. Emotions are a collective phenomenon.

So, if you want to feel happier and develop a happier disposition, it would seem you are well advised to find more happy people and spend more time with them. I don't know that this is a profound revelation, or even news to most people. Most of us sense that this is the case, don't we? But don't we also understand that our life experience and understandings are notably incomplete, and our opportunities to meaningfully serve people and society are significantly limited, if we fail to include in our lives some of those unhappy people and understand the reasons for their unhappiness?

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/christakis_fowler08/christakis_fowler08_index.html