by Gilson Penny

Created on: December 11, 2008   Last Updated: January 13, 2009

Emerging research shows there could be a simple 3-step method to attaining happiness.

1) Surround yourself with happy people.

A Harvard Medical School and University of California study indicates a person's happiness could affect (and be affected by) the happiness of people in their periphery, showing happiness spreads through social networks the way a virus does.

James H. Fowler, PhD, of UC-San Diego says:

"There is a direct relationship between one person's happiness and another's, but this study shows that indirect relationships also affect happiness. We found a statistical relationship not just between your happiness and your friends' happiness, but between your happiness and your friends' friends' friends' happiness."

Researchers evaluated 5,000 individuals over twenty years, discovering that one person's happiness spreads to their friends, also spreading out to three degrees of separation. Conclusions showed people at the center of a happy social network were happier than individuals at the fringes.

Online and distance relationships were not as strong, however people at the center of Facebook groups tended to have happy-faced avatars in higher percentages than people at the edges.

2) To get that warm feeling of happiness, get warm.

John Bargh, Professor of Psychology at Yale University, and Lawrence Williams of University of Colorado tested statistical correlations between physical temperature and emotional warmth.

Bargh says: "Physical warmth can make us see others as warmer people, but also cause us to be warmer - more generous and trusting - as well."

In the experiments, peopled held hot or iced coffee. They were then directed to assess personality traits of another person, based on provided factual information. Those holding the warm cup indicated "warmth" as a personality trait significantly more frequently than cold subjects.

Another study was presented as a product evaluation. Subjects held ice packs or therapeutic heating pads. After their placebo evaluation, they were offered either a gift certificate for a friend or a gift for themselves. Warm subjects more frequently gifted a friend. Cold subjects usually kept the gift for themselves.

Williams says "These very subtle and relatively simple cues are capable of having a meaningful impact on people's behaviour." Imaging studies showed that physical and interpersonal temperature information are processed in the brain in the insular cortex, the same location where early childhood learning about physical bonding and love are registered.

3) Turn off the TV

A new study from the University of Maryland analyzing data on happiness from 45,000 participants over 34 years showed that watching TV was the only activity recorded that directly statistically correlated with unhappiness.

Sociology Professor John Robinson says, "When we asked people who say they are unhappy how many hours of TV per day they watch, they were reporting 4, 5 and even 10 hours a day."

Researchers could not conclude cause-and-effect, that is, whether people were unhappy because they watched TV, or vice versa. They did conclude that the volume of TV watched clearly increased with an increase in unhappiness.

Regardless of whether TV is "the chicken or the egg" in this phenomenon, researchers agree that turning off the TV and going out to interact socially would have a positive impact on increasing happiness levels.

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