Happiness - an Infectious Emotion!

i think everyone should agree with this study, because each has experienced a situation when a company of happy and joyful friends made him feel happy as well, when he wa out of mood.

I think generally speaking I would score high on your four-point scale. But, as you mentioned, "surface level" happiness changes depending on what's going on hour by hour or even minute by minute throughout the day. But as long as you have a pretty steady level of happiness on any given day, even the daily stressors won't take that much of a toll.

Of course, as I write this, I'm in the throes of pre-Christmas chaos. Prozac, anyone??!?

When I read studies like this, especially those that measure something like happiness in terms of how healthy people are or how well they rebound from something serious in their lives, I wonder who the people are who are deemed not happy. It's sort of the same question you asked, Alison, though in reverse. I wonder how you measure happiness with anything other than an answer given by the person themselves, and whether you ask the question more than once over a given period of time.

I know that for me, my self-described happiness would probably change from day to day, depending on the question. If someone asked, "Are you happy right now?" vs. "Are you happy in general?" the answers might be two different things. If someone asked, "Would you generally describe yourself as a happy person?" the answer might be different than if the question was "Are you always happy?" If a person's answer to one of these questions was "I consider myself a happy person but I have been depressed since I lost my job," how would that answer count?

For this study, here was the happiness index:

"These participants had filled in questionnaires about their mental health, including a four-point depression scale that asked them the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with the statements "I felt hopeful about the future", "I enjoyed life", "I was happy", and "I felt that I was just as good as other people". Using this four-point scale, the authors defined happiness as a perfect score on all four items and then used statistical tools to measure how the social ties correlated with the various scores."

That means that a person might have agreed with the statements that they feel hopeful about the future, they enjoy life and that they were happy, and yet if they disagreed with the statement "i felt that i was just as good as other people," they'd have less of a happiness score.

Tell us
How would you rank yourself on the four statements asked in the study?

I read this same story, and the article did not tell us how "happiness" was operationally defined in the study.

The reader is left to assume that "happiness" is defined by just the presence of a positive mood, a kind gesture and/or positive facial expression (smile) from the people physically near to us. That makes this interesting, as there is so much discussion of "happiness", so many books and women's magazines that tell us to question if we really are "happy", and perhaps just naturally being a resilient and optimistic person is what "happiness" is all about, as well as being kind to others. How easy is it to smile at someone as your heading off to work, especially that we now know that it is contagious!

This is fairly true in most instances. I like being around people that are happy and are in good moods. When people tend to be in bad moods, my demeanor tends to change to match their behavior. It almost reminds me of my British friend. I tend to speak with a British accent, by accident, when I am around her. It depends on the company I guess.

This fact also reminds me of a book I read called, “The Secret.” If anyone has also read this book, the premise is that if you have a good attitude, others around you will. It also explains that what happens to us is pretty much in our subconscious. If we wake up and decide that it will be a good day, than it will.

I know at work, I am called, “the call of sunshine” and people around me are in a good mood most of the time. Maybe it is contagious. Either way you think about it, it is a pretty interesting concept.

Susan C, thank you for sharing this link and your commentary about the topic of Happiness. There is so much written about the topic of happiness and how people around us influence how we feel and the other way around. There is also more attention being paid by the medical community on this subject as more evidence now shows that "happy" people experience better outcomes when going through an illness. Robert Halden, PhD wrote a book called: HAPPINESS NOW based on the Happiness Project which took place in 1996 when the BBC broadcast an outstanding QED documentary called "How to be Happy". I highly recommend Robert's book and any opportunity to attend one of his lectures.

The question remains, what is happiness? Is it professional success? Is it recognition and fame? Is it financial success? Is it awakening and enlightment of the spiritual ME? Or is it just simple, straight forward LOVE? I would be curious to see if there are any differences on perceptions of happiness either by those who we live with, interact with, etc . Are all levels of happiness at the same universal energy frequency?