Code Red: Happiness Is Contagious

Head for the bunkers everyone! New research shows that happiness spreads through networks like badly controlled bird flu. If several of your friends are happy, chances are high you'll get infected too!

Logically you stand the biggest chance of being infected when a close friend is happy and the effect lessens the larger amount of people inbetween (if a friend nearby is happy you are 42% more likely to become happy too, a friends friend friend gives a 6% increase chance). However, it is still surprising that the happiness of a friend of a friend of a friend can statistically predict your own happiness. 

This study is great due to its large number of partipants (about 5000) and in that it followed these people to see how emotions changed over time. Aditionally is important because it makes predictions on effects of our extending networks these days due to internet like facebook, myspace & twitter.

 

The good news is that sadness spreads too but at a slightly lower rate, but I'm not surprised, because, how down can you get?

Again we are confronted with the fact that while we feel we are in control of our own life & happiness much of this is already set by the social context we live within, so remember to bail out of your knitting network if someone gets a child or promoted. And before you know it you'll tell your psychiatrist you need no more sessions because Brian's girlfriend's uncle won $500 in a lottery.

 

Lnk: Original BMJ article

Lnk: CNN article

Lnk: Social Capital Blog with a quite thorough analysis of the research

The Nihi-List

L Psychology Today on this trend of putting your bad luck, depression and how life sucks on twitter and blogs. Seems especially the French love complaining. Stay with us & stay sad.

L What is the biggest gender difference you ask? Is it aggression? Map reading skillz? Frequency of masturbation? No! It's that girls are bad with balls. Neuroanthropology has the story.

L Even chickens prefer beautiful humans. What more can I say. You're fucked.

L In case you were still doubting; panic in the media as it becomes clear the pharmaceutical industry owns medical science. 149 Harvard med. school faculty members get paid by drug giants Pfizer. This is just the tip of the ice-berg though, read the cold hard facts on pharma involvement in psychological and medical research in the blog Furious Seasons.

I'm personally shocked as I run experiments for Pfizer as we speak, sorry guys. I'll try to keep it real.

L Depressed hamsters shed light on seasonal disorder. Shed... get it?

L TAKE THE BLUE PILL, NEO! Amsterdam researchers show fear and anxiety can be "deleted" with a pill in a nature article. Fortunately some scientists warn it could delete good memories too.

L Finally, the wait is over. We can now genetically alter mice to stop sniffing cocaine.

L The Dutch start an official suicide hotline. Government funds it with a staggering 1.4 million euro. Interestingly the number to call will be 113, not to be confused with 112 which will get you the police. Call now for only 99cent per minute.

L Junk-food makes you want to kill yourself (and other people). Go stack up on those McFatties! (side note; the solution seems to be ingesting more Omega-3, easy as that?!)

The Moral of Oral: "Macbeth Effect" Explained

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual

~Nietzsche

Fresh of the bat: A not yet published article in Science (magazine extrordinaire) by Ronzin and his buddies says disgust experienced by tasting bad foods is the same as experiencing moral disgust.

This is how the story goes; In another article in the same Science issue four experiments are presented that show the same facial disgust activation (through muscle contraction that raises the upper lip and wrinkles the nose, see image on right which muscle) when tasting horrible stuff (Experiment 1), seeing disgusted faces (Experiment 2), and being morally mistreated (Experiment 3).

SO: The article first mentioned suggests this is evidence that our current reactions to moral injustice are linked to our basic disgust taste reactions: Our old disgust warning system developed to include items that are bad for us without us having to taste it (e.g. la cucaracha) and from there on to include societally bad bad actions (like incest) and people who are not very nice to us (like Hitler).

Interestingly, they also connect this to a great 2006 Science study about washing your hands (as you should, especially before dinner). This study found that after thinking unethically, people were more likely to think of cleaning (Exp. 1) and they wiped their hands more with alcohol tissues (Exp. 3). Even weirder, after cleaning their hands they were more likely to support people morally (Exp. 4). These findings were called the "Macbeth Effect", the idea that after being morally impure, we need to clean ourselves (if you do not know who Macbeth is, please feel free to rethink your life).

The Rozin article argues that this is a nice example of how moral thoughts link to classic disgust avoidance related behavior.

In Sum: Oral Disgust = Moral Disgust. Morals are not a nice new philosophical concept that reason makes us evaluate like: "That, dear Sir, is morally dubious" but more as "Ewww....!"

Topic Tip:

Just eat horribly tasting food, in addition to tasting bad it will make you feel the world is morally despicable. You will retreat to that dark corner of your room and after crying yourself to sleep night after night, the realization that everything is rotten and horribly askew makes you read Nietzsche and Schoppenhauer. As a consequence you understand that moral thinking is everything that is wrong with society and you either become a Nihilist or make an appointment with your psychatrist every wednesday evening.

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Lnk: Article in Science, From Oral to Moral

Lnk: Article in Science, In Bad Taste

Lnk: Article in Science, Wash Away Your Sins