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Some investigators have linked states of happiness to beneficial health effects, although the mechanisms underlying the association remain elusive. These researchers conducted a novel social-network analysis to examine whether social contagion promotes happiness. Twenty years of data came from 4739 participants in the longitudinal Framingham Heart Study, who had 53,228 social ties with other study participants. Happiness was measured with four items from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale.
Social clusters of happy and unhappy subjects were clearly identifiable and were much larger than would be expected by chance. The happiness of index subjects was reliably associated with the happiness of their close social contacts. The…