When you yawn, someone next to you will highly likely yawn. But did you know that smile is also contagious? Be happy and other people around you will tend to be happy. Surround yourself with a jolly batch and you will find yourself smiling.
Researchers from Harvard and other universities studied how social networks affect someone’s happiness. The study concluded that happiness behaves like a virus and spreads from one person to another even without direct contact.
Five thousand subjects participated in the survey together with their 50000 connections of family, officemates, friends, and other acquaintances. The proponents asked these people about subjective perception of happiness for the last two decades.
The British Medical Journal cites in a study that the happiness of one person is affected by others around him. One can be happy towards a person and that person’s might spread to his uncle, auntie, and other people. Unhappiness on the other hand does not spread as fast.