Know your friends

doi:10.1136/bmj.b293

Published 28 January 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b293
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b293

Letters

Happiness networks

Know your friends

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The findings of Fowler and Christakis, that happiness seemsto spread through social networks, arise from an innovativeuse of the data of the Framingham Heart Study.¹ However, thequestion still remains to what extent apparent contagion ofhappiness to second degrees of separation could in fact be accountedfor by people not included in the Framingham study.

The original cohort consisted of only two thirds of the peopleof the town between the ages of 30 and 62.² Thus there willbe a sizeable number of socially influential people not includedin the social network whose impact may be being mistaken forthe impact of people at a second degree of separation.

There are enough data in the Framingham Heart Study to controlfor this effect. By only analysing those who do not refer tofriends outside the study’s participants, we could lookat a smaller but more complete . . . [Full text of this article]

Jonathan A Mellon, student¹

¹ St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX2 6HS

jonathan.mellon@st-annes.ox.ac.uk

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Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study: James H Fowler and Nicholas A Christakis
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