HAPPINESS IS contagious and the closer you are to it the more likely you are to catch it, according to the latest research.
Just like spreading a bad cold, if your friend, partner or neighbour is happy you are more likely to be happy, according to a study published this morning in the prestigious British Medical Journal.
Two researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California San Diego joined forces to test the hypothesis that one person's happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected.
The researchers focused on 4,739 people who are members of the famous Massachusetts-based Framingham Heart Study, an ongoing analysis of more than 5,000 individuals that began way back in 1948.
They quizzed them about their social contacts and asked things like whether they were hopeful about the future, whether they were happy and enjoyed life, and how they felt compared to others.
They found that if you have a happy live-in partner then you are 8 per cent more likely to be happy too. Life partners, however, weren't nearly as good at spreading the cheer as neighbours, where knowing a happy neighbour meant you were on average 34 per cent more likely to be happy. They discovered that proximity to that neighbour is also a factor, with your happiness factor up by 22 per cent if they live less than two miles away.
Unexpectedly, the only place where happiness doesn't seem to rub off on others is at work. Happiness wasn't infectious there, no matter how happy those around you were, causing the authors to conclude that some social contexts could curtail the spread of emotional states.
Two naysayers were also asked to contribute a paper to the journal. They used a similar approach to show that if members of your social network had acne or were a certain height, you too would be that height and suffer those physical conditions.