Happiness and Sadness Spread Just Like Disease

July 16, 2010

istock 000005349409xsmall 300x299 Happiness and Sadness Spread Just Like Disease

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There may be a literal truth underlying the common-sense intuition that happiness and sadness are contagious.

A new study on the spread of emotions through social networks shows that these feelings circulate in patterns analogous to what’s seen from epidemiological models of disease.

Earlier studies raised the possibility, but had not mapped social networks against actual disease models.

“This is the first time this contagion has been measured in the way we think about traditional infectious disease,” said biophysicist Alison Hill of Harvard University.

Read More : Wired Science

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