Can you catch a case of happy? It will be a rousing “YES!!!” if speaking with a member of the research team, headed by Dr. Nicholas Christakis, social scientist from the Harvard Medical School and Dr. James Fowler, political scientist from the University of California, San Diego. Inquiries began with medical researchers investigating infectious diseases. Experts say that contagious diseases operate like a giant infectious network, spreading like the latest YouTube clip among friends of friends online. After all, we are social animals; we share. Public Health experts began to wonder whether certain health-related behaviors are just as contagious as microbes – both the positive and negative ones (behaviors). They stretched that query to include moods and mental states, and whether they worked the same way. The results of a 20-year study, led by Doctors Christakis and Fowler, showed, surprisingly, that emotion can pass among a network of people up to three degrees of separation away. The study showed that happiness spreads through social networks, sort of like a virus – meaning that your happiness could influence the happiness of someone you’ve never even met! The happiness quotient is more powerful if two people not only know each other, but also are equally fond of each other. Dr. Fowler states, “We have known for a long time that there is a direct relationship between one person’s happiness and another’s. But this study [involving approximately 5000 participants, from 1983-2003] shows that indirect relationships also affect happiness.” He also concluded that “sadness spreads too, but much less efficiently.” He goes on to say that the findings do not mean you should avoid unhappy people, but that you should make an effort, whenever you can, to spread happiness.

To that end, I invite you to visit the revised LIBRARY LITE hotlist, and give your funny bone a tickle: http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listlibraryma.html.  I have categorized the humor links (which were formerly listed by publication semester of LISMA INK), and have added some new ones. Hopefully, something you read will cause you to smile, maybe chuckle or, perhaps, produce a full-throated guffaw. Remember, the happiness you feel can be transmitted to your friends’ friends’ friends, causing an epidemic. Wouldn’t that be grand?!