Where is THAT coming from?

You might have an idea of why someone around you is upset. They could be having a bad day because of worries about bills, the economy, health, family, relationships, etc., but there is another factor you probably have not considered.

Recent research shows that people's moods are far more strongly influenced by those around them than they tend to think. Not only that, they are also influenced by the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of friends - people three degrees of separation away from them who they have never met, but whose disposition has the power to cause an effect on them.Their moods ripple through networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work.

To see how this works, take Christakis's findings on the spread of happiness, which were published last month.

His team looked at a network of several thousand friends, relatives, neighbors and work colleagues who form part of the Framingham Heart Study, an ongoing multi-generational epidemiological survey that has tracked risk factors in cardiovascular disease among residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, since 1948.

They found that happy people tend to be clustered together, not because they naturally orientate towards each other, but because of the way happiness spreads through social contact over time, regardless of people's conscious choice of friends (BMJ, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.a2338).

Christakis also found that a person's happiness is dependent not only on the happiness of an immediate friend but - to a lesser degree - on the happiness of their friend's friend, and their friend's friend's friend.

Furthermore, someone's chances of being happy increase the better connected they are to happy people, and for that matter the better connected their friends and family. "Most people will not be surprised that people with more friends are happier, but what really matters is whether those friends are happy," says Christakis.

It is a bit discouraging to discover that our own happiness is not only affected by those around us, but also by those around the people that are around us, and so on. On the other hand, it is a good thing to know because then we can take steps to counter the effect of the social contagion.

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