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Being happy is a lifetime goal for some people.
The interest in the individual’s desire to become and stay happy is so great that researchers at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a study to see if they could track the spread of happiness.
Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times explained how the team researched the project and reported the findings.
They took data from the subjects used in the Framingham Heart Study, which was a long-term research project that tested subjects every two years using emotional and physical exams. Specifically, each subject was asked to describe themselves as either content, discontent or neutral.
The important part of the study, though, is how the researchers found that the subjects’ altered emotional states depended on the emotions of the people that they came into contact with.
To determine this relationship, researchers plugged the data into a traditional infectious-disease simulation that was modified to reflect emotional spread rather than infectious spread.
This is significant information for several reasons.
As a college student, you come into contact with hundreds of people.
The number of people you consider to be contacts could quickly add up between your classmates, teachers, parents, friends, co-workers and colleagues in clubs and organizations. There is also the fact that you could be considered a contact to all of those people, too.
If people can really catch emotions like diseases, then try to be happy.
This might sound like advice from a kindergarten teacher or something that your mom would say, but it is still useful.
If how happy one is directly influences how happy one’s contacts are, then it makes sense to try to be happy. Especially if your contacts can also influence your emotional state.
I am not saying a world of rainbows and sunshine is necessary, but at a time when our country is still in two wars, millions of people are out of work and the national debt is in the trillions, it makes sense to not add any additional stress on those around you.
A great place to ditch your unhappy, possibly nasty, emotional state is online.
Not only is it annoying to scroll through status updates or Web comments that belittle and humiliate others, but it can also damage the emotional state of those around you.
Expressing your opinion is your right, but name-calling is unnecessary and embarrassing to watch.
Another good piece of information from the study is the longevity of the happy “infection.”
A feeling of contentedness lasts about 10 years. If you happen to catch a discontent infection it only takes five years to recover.
Since the content emotional state lasts longer, you might as well get in the habit of being happy and surrounding yourself with similar individuals. If done early and often enough, you might be able to avoid the discontent emotional state for quite some time.
Don’t fret, even if you can’t escape those gloomy moods, they’ll vanish faster than the happy ones.
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