Happiness?

A few news sources (The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, among others) are reporting the recent publication of a British Medical Journal article which suggests that happiness is caused by participation in social networks and is therefore contagious.  Purportedly, the study suggests that if you merely associate yourself with enough people who are happy, you too will be happy!

Seeing as how I only associate myself with law students this could explain why I have been called a "Corporate Monster" and "Scrooge" over the past 24 hours.  It's not my fault, I blame my associates!

However, this post on the freakonomics blog - a pretty fascinating blog by the way - shows that the while the article's research necessarily supports the correlation between increased happiness and social networking, the notion that happiness is caused by social networking is a bit more shaky.  The research methods the study used would also suggest that if you want to be taller or have more headaches you should also participate in social networking.  Clearly, the better proposition is that similar people who participate in life together are subjected to similar environments and therefore share in similar emotional responses.

Sadly, I suppose I can no longer depend on my Facebook addiction for true happiness.

Then again, I particularly enjoyed Colbert's analysis of the study: Threat Down!

(You have to wait to the end, but the whole clip is funny.)