Nicholas Christakis
Recently I wrote a short summary of Christakis’s research for Time magazine 100 people of 2009. Here is my summary of the research:
Social scientists used to have a straightforward, if tongue-in-cheek, answer to the question of how to become happy: Surround yourself with people who are uglier, poorer and shorter than you are – and who are unhappily married and have annoying kids. You will compare yourself with these people, and the contrast will cheer you up.
Nicholas Christakis, 47, a physician and sociologist at Harvard University, challenges this idea. Using data from a study that tracked about 5,000 people over 20 years, he suggests that happiness, like the flu, can spread from person to person. When people who are close to us, both in terms of social ties (friends or relatives) and physical proximity, become happier, we do too. For example, when a person who lives within a mile of a good friend becomes happier, the probability that this person’s good friend will also become happier increases 15%. More surprising is that the effect can transcend direct links and reach a third degree of separation: when a friend of a friend becomes happier, we become happier, even when we don’t know that third person directly.
This means that surrounding ourselves with happier people will make us happier, make the people close to us happier – and make the people close to them happier. But social networks don’t transmit only the good things in life.
Christakis found that smoking and obesity can be socially infectious too. If his thesis proves out, then the saying that you can judge a person by his or her friends might carry more weight than we thought.
Very interesting study and findings. I do believe that happiness is contagious and affects us more than we realize.
Great study and very interesting findings.
im stunned that something as obvious as “you can judge a person by his or her friends” was ever in question.
Maybe the interesting point is to explain the interaction of these two ways of social influence (comparison and contagion) on feelings of happiness.
Contagion could be more likely when the focus of social interaction is sharing or there is an absence of competition and comparison when the focus is on status competition.
So to get the best of both research streams, what you need to do is surround yourself with a few happy, skinny, happily married, close friends among a sea of poorer, uglier, shorter folks that you can compare your social group to.
My mother always said, ” Tell me who you hang out with and I will tell you who you are”. She was right. I am a retired teacher.
I made sure that my class was fun. Where there is no joy there is NO LEARNING.
Disagree
This series of studies has SERIOUS methodological problems. Using the same methods, other researchers have found the same “social network effects” for acne, height, and headaches.
This seems very plausible
But wasn’t there a Harvard study a while ago which claimed that if your friend is fat chances are you are fat too, even if the friend is 2 continents away?
So I guess Bernie Madoff knew what he was doing when he surrounded himself with very rich people…or was it that he gravitated toward people like himself…Hmmm,I will need to re-think this social infection hypothesis.
Marc:
That was freaking hysterical.
And isn’t that just exactly what people do?
Isn’t that the foundation of nationalism?
Too funny.
The justification probably needs more profundity. When one is among people who are unhappy, uglier, poorer and shorter you feel happy by means of a consolation to self that you don’t suck (which is because others around you suck). But this happiness may not sustain when the person realizes that it was just consolation and will promptly jump to depression when encountered with better and happier people.
On the other hand, keeping company with happy people may not make you happy when there is a chance of a comparison. For example, let’s take an example of two software engineers. Engineer X works for company A, which is one of the world’s most innovative companies churning new products every month and changing the world. He also gets paid very handsomely apart from numerous other unheard of benefits. Engineer Y works for one of the world’s largest companies which seems to have past its prime but is still making money by means of reaping benefits of early years of innovation. X and Y are friends. X is very happy and content with his life and also has a wonderful family. What are the chances of Y being happy because of that? Are human beings that altruistic that they can be happy if they see others happy?
To summarize my argument, happiness may be contagious but only when the room for comparisons is as small as possible. However, the chances of a comparison are less when we talk about a third degree of separation.
I would be quite interested in reviewing the results of a well designed comprehensive research project designed on the concept of the “Wisdom of Crowds” applied to the publications of current experts: scientists, economists, philosophers, psychologists, medical doctors, linguists, founders of early religion, etc. and theories published by their predecessors. I suspect that all aspects of life are, or at the very least have the potential to be, interconnected on every level: subatomic, paralinguistic, moral decision making, social & economic development, migration, immigration, birth & mortality rates, technological advances, etc. When one thing is changed, it has the potential to change everything.
Regarding emotional responses to comparisons, results will directly correlate to the mindset from which they are viewed: win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose. When information/knowledge is gained, it can be applied a variety of ways. Inspiration and hope can be derived from any experience if negative emotional reactions/ judgments are suspended and depersonalized so all factors, courses of action, and possible outcomes may be considered.
Thanks for distilling this work into a quick read, and good work keeping the humor intact. As a “practical optimist,” this is the kind of thing that makes my teaching at least appear authoritative. When I speak tomorrow in front of a herd of professionals, I’ll point to this post when I tell them that by learning online communication, they are raising the collective applicable intelligence of their community. Now, what juxtaposition do I avail when learning pi, and why does it make me so happy?
Suzanna Stinnett