A friend of a friend of a friend

A recent study published in the British Medical Journal (or, if you prefer a summarized version look here) has used twenty years worth of data to assess the way happiness can be spread to other people. Previous studies have tried to deal with the pathology of happiness, but this study used data from the US Framingham Heart Study to study how happiness is able to attach itself to new hosts, and because of the amount and quality of the data were able to discover previously unknown vectors for happiness infection.

The basic results of the study included that happy individuals tend to be among us in clusters, and that they found that happiness spreads through existing social networks rather than the networks rearranging when happy people seek each other out. Also, the risk of infection from happiness is greatly elevated when a person is co-resident with a happy person, and is somewhat elevated when living within 1.6km (1 mile) of a happy person. It also concluded that simply living near a happy person does not cause infection. The key elements are proximity and relationships. Two neighbors who never speak to each other are unlikely to spread happiness. Perhaps the most interesting result of this study is that even the happiness of a friend of a friend of a friend can affect you.

We applaud the work done by James H Fowler and Nicholas A Christakis, and would like to point out that it supports a study we commissioned years ago about the infectious properties of "support for a cause". At the GNU Public Dictatorship we have found that our influence extends far beyond our friends, and far beyond their friends. We would like to encourage all of our supporters to redouble their efforts in spreading their support to their friends. If all of us do so, the results will be great!