Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study
BMJPublished 4 December 2008Open access
James H. Fowler, Nicholas A. Christakis
Citations1,943
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
People’s happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected, providing further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomenon.
Abstract
People's happiness depends on the happiness of others with whom they are connected. This provides further justification for seeing happiness, like health, as a collective phenomenon.
Keywords
PsychologySocial Sciences
SIAM ReviewThe Structure and Function of Complex Networks
18,742 Citations2003Michael Newman
Developments in this field are reviewed, including such concepts as the small-world effect, degree distributions, clustering, network correlations, random graph models, models of network growth and preferential attachment, and dynamical processes taking place on networks.
Annual Review of SociologyBirds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks
18,576 Citations2001Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith‐Lovin +1 more
BiometrikaLongitudinal data analysis using generalized linear models
18,123 Citations1986Kung‐Yee Liang, Scott L. Zeger
Psychological BulletinThe Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?
7,082 Citations2005Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King +1 more
The results reveal that happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes, as well as behaviors paralleling success, and the evidence suggests that positive affect may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness.
American Journal of SociologyPower and Centrality: A Family of Measures
5,205 Citations1987Phillip Bonacich
New England Journal of MedicineThe Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years
4,982 Citations2007Nicholas A. Christakis, James H. Fowler
Network phenomena appear to be relevant to the biologic and behavioral trait of obesity, and obesity appears to spread through social ties, which has implications for clinical and public health interventions.
American Journal of Political ScienceMaking the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation
3,233 Citations2000Gary King, Michael Tomz +1 more
This article offers an approach, built on the technique of statistical simulation, to extract the currently overlooked information from any statistical method and to interpret and present it in a reader-friendly manner.
Journal of Mathematical SociologyFactoring and weighting approaches to status scores and clique identification
3,129 Citations1972Phillip Bonacich
Journal of Public EconomicsSatisfaction and comparison income
2,970 Citations1996Andrew E. Clark, Andrew J. Oswald
NatureEvolution of indirect reciprocity
2,788 Citations2005Martin A. Nowak, Karl Sigmund
The evolution of cooperation by indirect reciprocity leads to reputation building, morality judgement and complex social interactions with ever-increasing cognitive demands.
Information Processing LettersAn algorithm for drawing general undirected graphs
2,771 Citations1989Tomihisa Kamada, Satoru Kawai
The Economic JournalUnhappiness and Unemployment
2,530 Citations1994Andrew E. Clark, Andrew J. Oswald
Cambridge University Press eBooksModels and Methods in Social Network Analysis
2,444 Citations2005Peter J. Carrington, Peter J. Carrington +13 more
This work focuses on the development of models and methods for studying the diffusion of innovations in the context of social network measurement, using data from the J. J. van Duijn Index as a guide.
New England Journal of MedicineThe Collective Dynamics of Smoking in a Large Social Network
2,401 Citations2008Nicholas A. Christakis, James H. Fowler
Despite the decrease in smoking in the overall population, the size of the clusters of smokers remained the same across time, suggesting that whole groups of people were quitting in concert.
ScienceEmpirical Analysis of an Evolving Social Network
1,743 Citations2006Gueorgi Kossinets, Duncan J. Watts
This work analyzed a dynamic social network comprising 43,553 students, faculty, and staff at a large university, in which interactions between individuals are inferred from time-stamped e-mail headers recorded over one academic year and are matched with affiliations and attributes.
Psychological ScienceHappiness Is a Stochastic Phenomenon
1,719 Citations1996David T. Lykken, Auke Tellegen
American Journal of EpidemiologyAN INVESTIGATION OF CORONARY HEART DISEASE IN FAMILIES
1,656 Citations1979William B. Kannel, Manning Feinleib +3 more
There is little evidence that coronary heart disease (CHD) experience and CHD risk factors differ in parents of those who volunteered for this study and the parents ofThose who did not volunteer.
Annual Review of SociologySocial Networks and Health
1,653 Citations2008Kirsten P. Smith, Nicholas A. Christakis
It is concluded that the existence of social networks means that people's health is interdependent and that health and health care can transcend the individual in ways that patients, doctors, policy makers, and researchers should care about.
Journal of Personality and Social PsychologyThe effect of age on positive and negative affect: A developmental perspective on happiness.
1,518 Citations1998Daniel K. Mroczek, Christian M. Kolarz
Findings lend support to recent life span theories of emotion and indicate that personality, contextual, and sociodemographic variables, as well as their interactions, are all needed to fully understand the age-affect relationship.
SLEEPThe Sleep Heart Health Study: Design, Rationale, and Methods
1,340 Citations1997Stuart F. Quan, B. V. Howard +9 more
The study provides sufficient statistical power for assessing OSA and other SDB as risk factors for major cardiovascular events, including myocardial infarction and stroke.
NatureThe web of human sexual contacts
1,318 Citations2001Fredrik Liljeros, Christofer R. Edling +3 more
Promiscuous individuals are the vulnerable nodes to target in safe-sex campaigns.
Academy of Management JournalSERVICE WITH A SMILE: EMOTIONAL CONTAGION IN THE SERVICE ENCOUNTER.
1,295 Citations2001S. Douglas Pugh
ScienceWould You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion
1,266 Citations2006Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger +3 more
It is argued that people exaggerate the contribution of income to happiness because they focus, in part, on conventional achievements when evaluating their life or the lives of others.
BiometrikaLongitudinal Data Analysis Using Generalized Linear Models
1,250 Citations1986Kung‐Yee Liang, Scott L. Zeger
ScienceProspection: Experiencing the Future
1,244 Citations2007Daniel T. Gilbert, Timothy D. Wilson
Scientists are beginning to understand how the brain simulates future events, how it uses those simulations to predict an event's hedonic consequences, and why these predictions so often go awry.
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesExplaining happiness
963 Citations2003Richard A. Easterlin
A better theory of happiness builds on the evidence that adaptation and social comparison affect utility less in the nonpecuniary than pecuniary domains.
Preventive MedicineThe framingham offspring study. Design and preliminary data
955 Citations1975Manning Feinleib, William B. Kannel +3 more
Comparison of age-specific means for the original cohort in 1950 and the offspring in 1972 show apparent reductions in blood pressure, serum cholesterol, and cigarette smoking in the offspring, but in contrast, height in men and women and relative weight in men show significant increases in the children.
Annual Review of Political ScienceT<scp>IME</scp>-S<scp>ERIES</scp>–C<scp>ROSS</scp>-S<scp>ECTION</scp>D<scp>ATA</scp>: What Have We Learned in the Past Few Years?
930 Citations2001Nathaniel Beck
Journal of Happiness StudiesExperience Sampling: Promises and Pitfalls, Strengths and Weaknesses
822 Citations2003Christie Napa Scollon, Chu Kim‐Prieto +1 more
American Journal of SociologyChains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks
802 Citations2004Peter Bearman, James Moody +1 more
The Quarterly Review of BiologyTHE EVOLUTION AND FUNCTIONS OF LAUGHTER AND HUMOR: A SYNTHETIC APPROACH
573 Citations2005Matthew M. Gervais, David Sloan Wilson
It is hypothesized that Duchenne laughter became fully ritualized in early hominids between 4 and 2 mya as a medium for playful emotional contagion and postulate that a generalized class of nonserious social incongruity would have been a reliable indicator of such safe times and thereby came to be a potent distal elicitor of laughter and playful emotion.
Journal of Health EconomicsMoney and mental wellbeing: A longitudinal study of medium-sized lottery wins
563 Citations2006JONATHAN GARDNER, Andrew J. Oswald
New evidence is offered by using longitudinal data on a random sample of Britons who receive medium-sized lottery wins of between 1000 pounds and 120,000 pounds to show that individuals go on eventually to exhibit significantly better psychological health.
Social Science & MedicineHealth concordance within couples: A systematic review
544 Citations2007Deanna Meyler, Jim P. Stimpson +1 more
The research overwhelmingly suggests evidence for concordant mental and physical health, as well as health behaviors among couples, and each area of health concordance research offers room for greater research and deeper understanding for the causes of health Concordance.
ScienceSocial Components of Fitness in Primate Groups
530 Citations2007Joan B. Silk
Research in the field and laboratory shows that sophisticated social cognition underlies social behavior in primate groups and a growing body of evidence suggests that the quality of social relationships has measurable fitness consequences for individuals.
Social Science & MedicineHow people get into mental health services: Stories of choice, coercion and “muddling through” from “first-timers”
488 Citations1998Bernice A. Pescosolido, Carol Brooks Gardner +1 more
This paper combines the use of qualitative and quantitative methods to examine data from the Indianapolis Network Mental Health Study, a longitudinal study of individuals in treatment at the largest public and voluntary facilities in the city, to systematically consider the different social processes through which people come to enter psychiatric treatment.
ScienceAmygdala Response to Happy Faces as a Function of Extraversion
486 Citations2002Turhan Canli, Heidi Sivers +3 more
Cognitive neuroscience aims to delineate principles of brain-behavior relations by characterizing both common mechanisms across, and individual differences among, individuals, and both approaches are relevant for the study of the amygdala.
Journal of Applied PsychologyMechanisms linking employee affective delivery and customer behavioral intentions.
444 Citations2002Wei‐Chi Tsai, Yin‐Mei Huang
Results showed that the influence of employee affective delivery on customers' willingness to return to the store and pass positive comments to friends was indirect through the mediating processes of customer in-store positive moods and perceived friendliness.
American Political Science ReviewAnalyzing Incomplete Political Science Data: An Alternative Algorithm for Multiple Imputation
436 Citations2001Gary King, James Honaker +2 more
This work adapts an algorithm and uses it to implement a general-purpose, multiple imputation model for missing data that is considerably faster and easier to use than the leading method recommended in the statistics literature.
Quality of Life ResearchWhose quality of life? A commentary exploring discrepancies between health state evaluations of patients and the general public
427 Citations2003Peter A. Ubel, George Loewenstein +1 more
Decisions about whose values to measure for the purposes of economic analyses, and how to measure discrepancies, should take these potential contributing factors into account.
Journal of Family PsychologyUsing Diary Methods to Study Marital and Family Processes.
424 Citations2005Jean‐Philippe Laurenceau, Niall Bolger
The authors review applications of diary designs in marital and family research and detail the types of research questions that can uniquely be asked of dyadic/family diary data.
The Journal of Economic InequalityInequality and happiness: Insights from Latin America
420 Citations2005Carol Graham, Andrew Felton
Social NetworksName generators in surveys of personal networks
420 Citations1991Karen E. Campbell, Barrett A. Lee
Journal of Personality and Social PsychologyA study of laughter and dissociation: Distinct correlates of laughter and smiling during bereavement.
393 Citations1997Dacher Keltner, George A. Bonanno
Journal of Personality AssessmentThe Measurement Structure of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale
340 Citations1995T. Joseph Sheehan, Judith Fifield +2 more
Researchers can now more confidently use the CES-D to examine how distress changes in chronic physical disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis.
ScienceEmotion and Facial Efference: A Theory Reclaimed
253 Citations1985Robert B. Zajonc
The theory of emotional expression, developed by Israel Waynbaum, hypothesizes the subjective experience of emotions as following facial expression rather than preceding it, and answers Darwin's question of why different muscles contract or relax in different emotions better than Darwin's own theory.
International Journal of PsychophysiologyFacial and emotional reactions to Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiles
235 Citations1998Veikko Surakka, Jari K. Hietanen
Facial and emotional reactions while viewing two different types of smiles and the relation of emotional empathy to these reactions were investigated and empathy was correlated to the rated experiences of pleasure and interest after the Duchenne smile block.
Journal of Health EconomicsEstimating peer effects on health in social networks: A response to Cohen-Cole and Fletcher; and Trogdon, Nonnemaker, and Pais
230 Citations2008James H. Fowler, Nicholas A. Christakis
An analysis of the Add Health data is conducted, additional evidence from the Framingham Heart Study on the social spread of obesity is provided, and Monte Carlo simulations are used to test the econometric methods used to model peer effects.
Journal of Epidemiology & Community HealthCovariation in the socioeconomic determinants of self rated health and happiness: a multivariate multilevel analysis of individuals and communities in the USA
219 Citations2005S. V. Subramanian, Daniel Kim +1 more
Poor health and unhappiness are highly positively correlated within individuals, and communities that are healthier tend to be happier and vice versa.
BMJSocial networks and collateral health effects
169 Citations2004Nicholas A. Christakis
Have been ignored in medical care and clinical trials, but need to be studied.
Social Cognition“How Happy Was I, Anyway?” A Retrospective Impact Bias
160 Citations2003Timothy D. Wilson, Jay Meyers +1 more
EmotionSmiling in the face of adversity: The interpersonal and intrapersonal functions of smiling.
120 Citations2008Anthony Papa, George A. Bonanno
D Duchenne (genuine) smiles predicted better long-term adjustment and this effect was mediated independently by both social integration and undoing of negative emotion during the monologue, while non-Duchenne smiles were not related to psychological adjustment.
Journal of Aging and HealthThe Effect of Spousal Mental and Physical Health on Husbands' and Wives' Depressive Symptoms, Among Older Adults
118 Citations2004Michele J. Siegel, Elizabeth H. Bradley +2 more
The findings suggest that health care providers treating older adults should be sensitive to the possibility that spouses may be affected when clients suffer poor mental or physical health.
Journal of Personality and Social PsychologyInduction of depressive affect after prolonged exposure to a mildly depressed individual.
96 Citations1985Mary J. Howes, Jack E. Hokanson +1 more
In comparison with control subjects, the roommates of persistently depressed persons displayed a progressive increase in BDI score over the course of the study.
BiostatisticsRegression analysis of longitudinal binary data with time-dependent environmental covariates: bias and efficiency
71 Citations2005Jonathan S. Schildcrout
The purpose of this paper is to study the bias-efficiency trade-off associated with working correlation choices for application with binary response data and finds that the impact of covariance model choice depends highly on the specific structure of the data features, and that key aspects should be examined before choosing a weighting scheme.
Scandinavian Journal of StatisticsGoodness‐of‐fit Tests for GEE with Correlated Binary Data
69 Citations2001Wei Pan
Medical Entomology and ZoologyDirect-line distances--international edition
67 Citations1986Gary L. Fitzpatrick, Marilyn J. Modlin
American Journal of Geriatric PsychiatryThe Emotional Toll of Spousal Morbidity and Mortality
66 Citations2007Kara Zivin, Nicholas A. Christakis
Findings can identify which individuals are at greatest risk for emotional distress and should be targeted for interventions to relieve caregiver burden that can arise separately and additively from both spousal illness and death.
The International Journal of Aging and Human DevelopmentSpousal Characteristics as Predictors of Well-Being in Older Couples
49 Citations1992Cécile Quirouette, Dolores Gold
The study supported the hypothesis of differential responsiveness of men and women to spousal variables and highlighted the importance of marital adjustment for the psychological well-being of older wives.
The British Journal of PsychiatryMental Illness in Married Pairs in a Total Population
40 Citations1974Olle Hagnell, Norman Kreitman +1 more
Several surveys of mental illness in husband-wife pairs have concluded that sick couples occur in the general population with a frequency significantly in excess of the number to be expected by chance, but these authors' arguments suggest that the relative excess of conjoint illness has, if anything, been under-estimated.
arXiv (Cornell University)Network effects in service usage
37 Citations2006Gábor Szabó, Albert-Ĺaszló Barabási
It is found that usage highly correlates with the structure of the communication network, and the coexistence on the same social network of two distinct usage classes is demonstrated, network effects being responsible for the quantifiable differences between them.
Psychological ReportsFactor Analysis of the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale
25 Citations1995Stephen Joseph, Christopher Alan Lewis
Factor analysis with varimax rotation based on the responses of 187 students yielded 4 factors of depressed affect, somatic disturbance, positive affect, and interpersonal difficulties, which do not replicate the 5-factor work of Thorson and Powell but do largely confirm the previous research.
Journal of Epidemiology & Community HealthHealth, happiness, and higher levels of social organisation
11 Citations2005Noah Ross
RePEc: Research Papers in EconomicsISCO: Stata module to recode 4 digit ISCO-68 occupational codes
9 Citations2002John Hendrickx
The isco package contains programs to recode ISCO-68 (International Classification of Occupations) codes into other occupational scales using Stata versions of the SPSS recode files by Harry B.G. Ganzeboom and Donald J. Treiman.