When I worked in an office, I loved that Friday-night feeling of the weekend stretching ahead of me. I once had a fantastic boss who would get us together last thing on a Friday afternoon to share a glass of wine and congratulate ourselves on a great week of work. He understood that it’s as important to celebrate your achievements this week as it is to make a list of ‘to do’s’ for next week. He also knew that happiness ‘rubs off’.

There would always be a special atmosphere in the office on Friday afternoons as people chatted, told funny stories about their week, shared their worst moments and relived their best moments. I always went away feeling energised by my colleagues and ready to work hard alongside them the next week (clever boss!).

Today, this article on BBC News online reports on a Harvard-led study of 5,000 adults published in the British Medical Journal that shows that happiness really is infectious.

The article reports:

‘The researchers used data on adults who took part in the US
Framingham Heart Study – set up to look at the risks leading to future
heart disease – between 1971 and 2003.

Participants were asked to identify their relatives, close
friends, place of residence, and place of work and were followed up
every two to four years.

They were also asked whether they agreed with statements on whether
they enjoyed life, felt hopeful about the future, were happy and felt
they were just as good as other people.

It was found that live-in partners who become happy increased the
likelihood of their partner being happy by 8% and similar effects were
found for siblings living close by (14%) and neighbours (34%).

The relationship between people’s happiness levels seemed to
extend up to three degrees of separation – to the friend of a friend of
a friend.’

The analysis also showed that close physical proximity was important for the spread of happiness.

A person was 42% more likely to be happy if a friend who lives less
than half a mile away becomes happy – an effect that declined with
greater distance.

Study leader Professor Nicholas Christakis said the results suggest
clusters of happiness occur because happiness spreads and not just
because of a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals.

“Most important from our perspective is the recognition that
people are embedded in social networks and that the health and
wellbeing of one person affects the health and wellbeing of others.”

Professor Andrew Steptoe, a psychology expert from University
College London, said: “It makes intuitive sense that if people around
you are happy that might have an impact on your own happiness.

“What’s a bit more surprising is that it’s not just the people
who you closely come into contact with but people a step removed as
well.”

The article also reports that the study found that ‘the mood of work colleagues did not have an effect.’ This is curious as my subjective experience is that the mood in my old office was very sensitive to our invividual experiences – perhaps because many of us became friends as well as colleagues. Of course, office morale is dependent on many other factors too – such as the health of the company as a whole, working environment, salary and reward  – but I know that one of the single most powerful influences on my own happiness at work was the well-being and attitude of my colleagues around me.

This is what I now call the ‘hypnotic effect’ that those we care about or admire have on our own well-being. But perhaps this isn’t just about people we know and care about. I am sure you can remember a time when you came off the phone feeling really good about the positive, friendly and helpful person with whom you just had a conversation.

There is a more detailed commentary on the study and the social network analysis methodology that it used at the BMJ’s web site here.

Peter Sainsbury, director of Population Health at the BMJ concludes: ‘Fowler and Christakis have produced valuable, exciting, and reasonably robust results that will stimulate new and productive lines of enquiry in happiness studies. However, we must not expect all the details of their findings to be confirmed in subsequent work. Don’t drop your unhappy friends yet.’

This Friday, what better way might there be to experiment with these findings than to spread a little happiness around? Why don’t you turn around to the person nearest to you and give them your biggest and warmest smile? Then see what happens. Go on, I double-dare you.