File this one under further research in the science of Kumbaya –

In a paper titled “Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network“, a professor of political science from UCSD and Sociology from Hahvad are reporting that happiness is contagious within social networks, but only to the 3rd degree. Which is to say if you hear of a friend of a friend coming into some good fortune, that good fortune is yours as well in the way of a little emotional pick-me-up.

Now neither political science or sociology should ever be construed as real science. Disciplines? Ok. I’m sure they even follow systematic rules that make internal sense. Unfortunately they publish papers with graphs that have error bars so large you could pretty much prove any point you decide is in vogue at the moment.

They do publish some slick plots like this one showing ‘happiness connections’:

happiness connections

And lest you all think me overly cynical, I do believed that the esteemed professors I mock are onto something that very likely taps into the way our brains are wired. Think evolution – we are not so removed from our knuckle dragging ancestors that our neural make-up is indistinguishable from what drove them. It would have been advantageous for our ancestors to have grouped together for both protection and sharing of resources. One could reason that the success of any within the group would be a boon to the entire group. Happy people are more productive. Happy people are more reproductive. Combine those two facts (with some other stuff, I’m sure) and you have a conduit for a certain type of mind to move forward in the species.

And this is all apropos in our hyper connected society. I write here and you read or skim these words. You may know me simply through my words or perhaps we’ve partied in Vegas. Through the hyper-hyper connectivity of Twitter and your network within 3 degrees becomes greater and greater. I can honestly say that I feel happy when one of the people I know through these types of connections has some success. It’s cool to see someone go deep in a big tourney or land an awesome new job or see some similar bit of fortune. Likewise it sucks when someone runs into a bit of trouble – but for the most part that doesn’t push me down as much as success buoys me up.