9.14.2009

So, go and be nice to someone already.

Call that friend up from high school you haven't seen in fifteen years. Get in touch with your college roommate.

Am I being nutty? Nope, I've got the power of social science to back me up!


And special thanks to my happy friends who are supposedly each increasing my happiness by 9%. You can theoretically spread joy throughout your spouse's office just by making sure you both leave for work happy. This stuff is great.

By the way, it also appears to influence your weight, but I have different opinions on why that might be true than the researchers in this article put forth. Most simply, if you have active friends, you're more likely to spend time with them doing active stuff like walking, hiking, biking, or even doing triathlons (that's how I got started!). If you have sedentary friends, you'll probably tend to sit around and visit. Also, adults tend to congregate over food so there's a big difference between going out for sushi and going out to the all-you-can-eat chophouse which is probably strongly influenced by your companions' dining preferences. And spouses don't have the same influences that friends do, apparently. Can't wait for further research into these ideas to separate out the correlation from causation (if that's possible).

1 comment:

Staci said...

I'm intrigued! Thanks for sharing. I look forwarding to increasing each other's happiness in about a week and a half!