Shigehiro Oishi, a University of Virginia psychologist who studies the causes and consequences well-being, said the importance of geography was a profound finding.
"Although we are connected with friends and family members who live far away via cellphone and the Internet, these results indicate that there is nothing like a face-to-face interaction," Oishi said. "We are told to get connected by cellphone companies, but in order to get connected you really have to live close by and interact face to face."
Fowler and Christakis said they didn't know the mechanism by which happiness spreads. One possibility is that happy people spread their good fortune directly by being generous with their time and money. Evolution may have encouraged infectious happiness if it helped hominids and early humans enhance their social bonds so they could form successful groups, the researchers said.
UC Irvine sociologist Katherine Faust, who studies social networks, said the study might overstate the role of social ties in transmitting happiness. Many of the Framingham volunteers are the parents, siblings and children of other volunteers, and their propensity toward happiness could be grounded in their genes, she said.
But Richard Suzman, director of behavioral and social research at the National Institute on Aging, said Fowler's and Christakis' work was persuasive enough to force policymakers to rethink the importance of social ties when contemplating happiness or obesity or smoking.
"You can't just treat individuals; you have to treat networks or communities," he said.
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karen.kaplan@latimes.com
