Yes, great news just in is that, like colds, happiness is catching.  Interestingly, it’s not just your immediate circle of family and friends that you can ‘infect’, and who can ‘infect’ you, but also your friends of friends.

US research reported in the British Medical Journal has found that cohabitees who become happy increase the likelihood of their partner becoming happy by 8%. The likelihood of siblings who live near by becoming happy is increased by 14% and neighbours by 34%. The article doesn’t explain why neighbours (who persumably know you less well) are more likely to become happy than your loved-ones (who presumably do), or why work-colleagues seem to be exempt -  If anyone knows the answer let me know!

Also of interest is that physical proximity matters – it seems that the closer you live to your happy friends the better. And, as we already know, happiness does indeed lead to better physical health.

Maybe social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace could include an application which enables you to make friends with happy people, or track down the nearest ones so that you could pay them a visit for a quick “happiness boost”.

….On the downside, presumably unhappiness is also catching?….

Reference: Fowler, J.H. & Christakis, N.A. (2008). Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network:longitudinal nalaysis of the Framlington Heart Study social network. BMJ 337:a2338.

Thanks to Janice Mount for the BMJ article

Image: Mussels

I was sent this advert today for a job with Google, which requires a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology qualification. Sounds great. You just need to move to California…

Thanks to Ilona Boniwell for the link

Image: Warrantedarrest

In my October Positive Psychology News Daily posting, I look at the application of positive psychology in today’s economic climate. It’s not as if British people like discussing emotions at the best of times, so it’s no wonder they don’t like talking about ‘happiness” when the world (the financial one at least) appears to be collapsing around their ears.

But I think there’s huge potential for PP to increase resilience and flexibity in times of unparalled change. It just needs to be used sensitively, with less emphasis on the sickening yellow Smileys and more on down-to-earth, practical applications.

More reports from the BBC on the lot of UK teachers, referring to the impending measurement of well-being in schools.

On the one hand, measuring well-being could be seen as no more than an extension of the ‘Every Child Matters’ policy, which looks at health, safety, educational achievement, contribution to society and economic well-being. On the other hand, the article mentions that schools will now have to to do opinion surveys of pupils and parents to find out how they think the school is doing on their well-being measures. Good grief. As if teachers don’t have enough to do….

Baker sums it up in the last four paragraphs of this article when he says that measuring in schools is becoming too mechanistic. When pay and benefits are linked to targets, people focus obsessively on achieving them, forgetting that the targets are there to ensure that the right things gets done.

…Now, if you could measure inspirational and creative teaching, that would be a different matter!

Image: *MarS

In my September Positive Psychology News Daily post, I look at the question of quantity versus quality of positive emotion, and which has the greater impact on well-being.

Research suggests that different nations expereince the same emotions differently, which means that context is more important than we might think.

On a more light-hearted note, you might like to visit Professor Richard Wiseman’s online “Earth Movement” calculator, which will show you by how much the earth moves for you: the answer, it seems, is always ‘yes’ but how much is partly dependent on where in the world you are at the time…