Happiness and Sadness Spread Just Like Disease

There may be a literal truth underlying the common-sense intuition that happiness and sadness are contagious.

A new study on the spread of emotions through social networks shows that these feelings circulate in patterns analogous to what’s seen from epidemiological models of disease.

Earlier studies raised the possibility, but had not mapped social networks against actual disease models. “This is the first time this contagion has been measured in the way we think about traditional infectious disease,” said biophysicist Alison Hill of Harvard University. Data in the research, in the July 7 Proceedings of the Royal Society, comes from the Framingham Heart Study, a one-of-a-kind project which since 1948 has regularly collected social and medical information from thousands of people in Framingham, Massachusetts.Earlier analyses found that a variety of habits and feelings, including obesity, loneliness, smoking and happiness appear to be contagious. (Read More)

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    There may be a literal truth underlying the common-sense intuition that happiness and sadness are contagious. A new...