Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

 WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF HAPPY PEOPLE? 
Research on the subject of well-being shows that happy people share several character-
istics (Myers, 2000; Diener & Seligman, 2002; Otake, Shimai, & Tanaka-Matsumi, 2006): 
• Happy people have high self-esteem. Particularly in Western cultures, which 
emphasize the importance of individuality, people who are happy like 
subjective well-being
People’s own 
evaluation of their lives in terms 
of both their thoughts and their 
emotions.
Positively framed messages suggest that 
a change in behavior will lead to a 
health-related gain.
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themselves. They see themselves as more intelligent and better able to get 
along with others than the average person. In fact, they often hold positive 
illusions or moderately infl ated views of themselves as good, competent, and 
desirable (Taylor et al., 2000; Boyd-Wilson, McClure, & Walkey, 2004).
• Happy people have a fi rm sense of control. They feel more in control of events in 
their lives, unlike those who feel they are the pawns of others and who 
experience learned helplessness.
• Happy individuals are optimistic. Their optimism permits them to persevere at tasks 
and ultimately to achieve more. In addition, their health is better (Peterson, 2000).
Applying Psychology 
in the 21st Century
Catching Happiness: 
The Contagion of Emotions 
and Health
The next time you get the fl u, there will 
almost certainly be someone you can 
blame for your pain. There’s the inconsid-
erate co-worker who decided to drag 
himself to the offi ce and spent the day 
sniffl ing, sneezing and shivering in the 
cubicle next to yours. Or your child’s best 
friend, the one who showed up for a 
playdate with a runny nose and a short 
supply of tissues. Then there’s the guy at 
the gym who spent more time sneezing 
than sweating on the treadmill before you 
used it. (Park, 2008, p. 74)
It’s often reasonable to blame someone else 
if you get sick. Contagious diseases, such 
as colds or fl u, tend to work their way 
through social networks moving from one 
person to another.
Similarly, if you’ve ever used Facebook, 
you already know how social networks op-
erate: You have a circle of friends, and each 
of them has a circle of friends, and the 
many connections among all these people 
form a network. Moreover, if you’ve ever 
shared a web link with your Facebook 
friends, you’ve seen just how quickly infor-
mation can spread through this network.
But what else might spread from person 
to person? Can we “infect” others with our 
emotions or our behaviors?
New research suggests that in fact emo-
tions are contagious and that the effect can 
even spread beyond our immediate social 
circles to people we don’t even know. Re-
searchers Nicholas Christakis and James 
Fowler (2009) studied emotions in a very 
large group of interrelated people. They 
found that friends of happy people were 
15% more likely to be happy themselves, 
and that the friends of friends of happy 
people were 10% more likely to be happy—
even if they didn’t even know the happy 
person directly. The infl uence of the happy 
person could even be found in unknown 
people who were three degrees of separa-
tion away—their friend’s friend’s friend.
Christakis and Fowler also found evi-
dence that behaviors can spread across so-
cial networks in a similar way. People with 
obese friends are more likely to be over-
weight themselves, and people who are 
trying to quit smoking are more successful 
if their friends also quit. They even noticed 
that people who are smiling in their Face-
book photos tend to have friends who do 
the same. The social contagiousness seems 
to be stronger in mutual friendships than it 
is in one-sided ones (Christakis & Fowler, 
2007, 2008).
What this means is that people who ac-
quire healthy behaviors or outlooks for 
themselves might “spread the wealth” to 
their friends and beyond. Efforts to map 
and use social networks in order to help 
people live healthier lives are already un-
derway (Park, 2008).
• Why do you think happiness and other emotions might be contagious?
• What could explain the fi nding that obese people are more likely to have friends 
who are obese?
RETHINK
Happiness can spread beyond our immediate social circles to people we don’t even know.
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