Happiness is Contagious (E8)

Happiness for Cynics podcast

Did you know that happiness and laughter are both contagious? We present the research to back up that ludicrous statement and some tips on how to get you some happiness and laughter in your life. Plus we present a secret crazy study about happy sweat.

In this episode, Marie mentions that smiling at people has different meanings in different cultures, here are a few articles about that:

• The Meaning of a Smile In Different Cultures
• Why Some Cultures Frown on Smiling – The Atlantic
• What Smiling Means in Different Cultures

Transcription

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer, speaker and expert in change, and my co-host is Peter Furness.

P: Hi there I’m Peter Furness and I’m a health practitioner, unicorn lover and wanna-be handstand achiever. Each week we will bring you the latest news and research in the field of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness. Marie, you’ve got a blog.

M: Yes, I do. It’s at marieskelton.com, which is a site about major life changes and how to cope with them. And the site uses a lot of the research that we talk about here on the podcast and has some really practical tips for bringing happiness and joy into your life. And when I say practical, I’m talking about science backed tips.

P: Always science with Marie Skelton.

M: [Laugh]

P: Never the fluff.

M: Yep, never the fluff. You can also find me on Twitter. My handle is @marieskelton.

And on to today’s episode, which is about the contagion off laughter…

P: [Laughter]

M: Wait, what are we talking about today?

P: The contagion of happiness. There’s a great example there. [Laugh]

M: Well there’s a bit more to it. It’s about contagion in general.

P: In general, yes, yes, as much as you can sneeze it on someone and give them influenza, you can sneeze on someone or laugh on them and give them happiness.

[Laughter]

M: We’ll get into that…

Welcome to today’s show.

P: [Laugh]

M: What are we calling this one?

[Happy music]

M: So welcome to today’s show. I’m here with Peter and, as we mentioned before the little interlude, we’re here to talk about contagious-ness and contagion just missed.

P: Contagious-ness, that’s a good one [laugh].

M: Yep, yep, yep. You’ve really thrown me through a loop and I’m not sure what to call this episode.

[Laughter]

M: But we are going to talk about how happiness is contagious and then there’s some other great studies that I’m fascinated with that we want to share with our listeners today, so maybe we can start with the evolution of smiling and laughter. So the smile can be traced back over 30 million years of evolution to a fear grin, which stem from monkeys and apes who often used barely clenched teeth, to portray to predators that they were harmless. So humans over time have turned this into a form of greeting, and there’s a lot of contention as to the exact origins of smiling and laughter. And there isn’t really one true theory that everyone agrees on. But there is a little bit of research indicates that the smile has evolved over time into a way of attracting mates in early humans.

P: So basically showing a demeanour of joy or happiness makes other people trust you more it makes people be more receptive to you and know that you aren’t threatening. So, get the sunglasses off people.

[Laughter]

M: More than that, you know if everyone’s got their face in their phone we’re not smiling at each other.

P: Absolutely.

M: So one of the things that my mom used to lament when we moved to a big city, Canberra, which is not a city but she came from Newcastle, which was slightly smaller at the time was that people didn’t smile and say hello when they passed each other on the sidewalk.

P: Yes, it’s the country NSW’s thing as well and then think well, it’s the recognition of someone as your walking past the tip of the hat, a finger in the air, just that twinkle in the eye. It’s the recognition of, yep I see you.

M: But when you move to a bigger city, the people who have that twinkle in their eye and say hi, are normally creepy and will follow you.

P: [Laugh]

M: So, there’s maybe a little bit of a defence mechanism going on there.

P: True, true.

M: It’s like when you’re the only person on the bus and that person comes and sits right next to you.

P: Oh, yes…

[Laughter]

M: Anyway so maybe that’s what happens when you get to bigger cities. Also, you don’t know far more people. But the other thing that I found out was that smiling when you pass people is also cultural, and I’d have to look this up, I’ve just come to this in my mind and haven’t done any research into this before right now.

I remember reading an article with people asking ‘What is it with everyone smiling at me?’

P: [Laugh]

M: ‘You’re all creepy.’

So, I think there’s a cultural element to that.

P: I’m going to put myself out here, I do smile at people on the street a lot actually and I find it interesting to play with because some people really don’t like it. [Laugh] and I’m terrible if someone’s got a dog I’m instantly like, I’m smiling at the dog because I like dogs but then I always make a point of making sure I look at the owner because too often the owners of dogs are ignored. You know you should at least say isn’t he or she beautiful.

M: Yeah, don’t start patting the owner, though.

P: Oh, that could be fun.

[Laughter]

M: I think that’s harassment.

P: I think that’s the definition of the creepy person on the bus.

[Laughter]

M: So you had a study that you want to talk about just about happiness in general. Right?

P: Yes. The study was published in the British Medical Journal and this is all around happiness contagion.

This study took 4700 people stayed on them for over 20 years from 1983 to 2003 and it promotes that happiness, like a cold in winter, spreads. So it is passed on to people that are around you. It assed people’s emotional well-being and they took questionnaires of participants feelings of well-being and general demeanour. They also gave these studies to the participants spouse’s, friends, relatives, people they knew in their daily life, creating a network of more than 50,000 subjects, which is a pretty decent sized research project to be honest.

M: Absolutely.

P: It kind of came out some interesting findings. The really interesting one is that, yes happiness does spread and they even get percentages. So when one person is happy, they raised the odds of their spouse being happy by 8% their sibling by 14% and their neighbour by 34%.

And I found this really interesting because it talks about the close proximity of people in their daily interactions. So one big happy person, if you meet that person once the effect of that happiness being passed on to you might be short term, whereas when you’re involved in a daily contact with people, when you’re involved in intimate contact over the fence, as you are with neighbours, and I’m thinking, particularly of my mother in this instance, happiness flow on effect is more than a third. That’s pretty high.

M: I’m still thinking about you having intimate moments with your neighbour. How many people that you meet do you have-

• [Laughter]

P: Well, I’m the hands on person so… no I’m very respectful honestly.

M: And I think, I think deep down humans know this. We gravitate to the positive, energetic people in our classes at school and to the exuberant and dynamic personalities. And I think that’s a natural subconscious thing in general.

So something in that research that I thought was really interesting as well, though, was that work spaces were a happiness free zone.

[Laughter]

So to explain what I mean by that, so that the researches don’t call me up and go ‘what have you said?’ So, happiness didn’t appear to spread amongst co-workers. So the researchers attributed that to the sometimes competitive nature of our work relationships. But if you think about it, a happy person will increase their spouse’s odds of being happy by 8%, their siblings odds of being happy by 14%, their neighbours odds of being happy by 34% and their co-workers odds of being happy zero.

P: Zero [laugh]

M: Nothing, nada. So having happy or not happy people around your work? Maybe not, not happy, but having happy people around you makes no impact at all.

P: Possibly more focused on other things… Or all that other stuff that we have to focus on when we’re working.

M: Yeah, a bit depressing really.

And then the other thing, just to point out on that study was that the proximity thing that you’re talking about. So this is why I think you can have a big impact on your neighbours but family siblings they’ve got to be close by. So anyone that’s more than a mile away, really didn’t get much of the impact.

P: Yes, however, just to go further into that as well, the research also says that there are three degrees of separation for this network effect, so it might not even be the person that’s directly associated with you that you are affecting. But, the researchers found, is that the people who know that person and the people that know that person’s person are also directly affected by someone’s happiness. And I think that’s an interesting point as well is that your happiness can spread.

Just in support of that research as well a Harvard research professor [Medical Sociology and Medicine], Nicholas Christakis researched the contagion of emotions in terms of the larger context of social networks.

M: I told you we were talking about contagion.

P: [Laugh] He found that, in support of what Marie said in that having a happy friend within a mile of you increased the probability that you will be happy and that that close social network is the most prevalent factor in terms of buying into someone else’s happiness and having that affect you.

M: The best example of the laughter contagion is, and if you haven’t seen it, I encourage you get onto Google or YouTube and look up the Skype laughter chain, and it currently has 32 million views on YouTube and the premise behind this laughter chain was, we watch someone laughing and someone else watches that person laughing and you filmed them, and that person starts laughing at the first person. And then you film a third person watching the second person laughing at the first person and then a fourth and fifth and a sixth. And so you end up with series of people laughing, one after the other, and I dare you not to laugh at this, at this chain of people laughing. It is contagious.

P: Yep

M: Now they have magically found people with unique laughs and it is truly, it’s hilarious. So we’re going to play you a short, clip. So without infringing on anyone’s copyright, here it is the Skype laughter chain. And here is a short listen.

[Sound clip of Skype laughter chain]

P: It’s quite funny when we were watching that we were walking down the street at Brighton Le-Sands. As I was effusively laughing, as I tend to do, people that were walking past us started to crack a smile.

[Laughter]

P: So it just shows that, that expression of happiness is actually a key as well in that you can affect someone’s small little day, and I find that myself if I’m walking past people that are having a great old time and being stupid. I’ll walk past a have a little smile.

M: I think I’m getting old. Sometimes I judge now.

P: Oh well, you’re the cynic here. [Laugh] See I’m the fluffy one and you’re the cynic.

M: I think it depends [on] what they’re doing. And also I find if kids are laughing. That’s just far more innocent and cute.

P: Oh, see I’m probably on the other foot on that one. I’m like ‘go away’. Small children aagghh. [Laugh]

Now coming back to the chimpanzee research it’s the mimicry it’s the decree that researchers found that harkens back to our ape like ancestors is that we mimic people’s laughter and they did a study on this, with the American Psychological Association publishing a study by the University of Portsmouth, where they watched a group of 57 chimpanzees. And these chimpanzees were mimicking the laughs that were coming out and the laughs that were coming out second were slightly different, but it had that flow on effect.

M: So we’ve seen that feelings of happiness can be transferred through vision and hearing. But did you know that happiness is also contagious via our sense of smell?

P: You’re going to love this one. This is Marie’s favourite bit. [Laugh]

M: I had to find a way to get this into one of the episodes. [Laugh] So I’m referring to a study which suggests that happy people give off an odour that makes other people smile.

P: In essence sweaty people are happy people?

M: No, sweat makes you happy.

P: OOhh!

M: But only some types of sweat.

[Laughter]

M: So it gets better, let me explain how researchers did this study. So they collected samples from male participants as they watched videos like bare necessities and funny clips and pranks. Guys watch these funny and or fun light-hearted clips. They also had another group that watched movies that were made to make them feel afraid or no emotional response at all. And they collected sweat off all of these people. The sweat samples were then presented to female participants-

P: [Laugh]

M: Which I find kind of a bit strange. And then the female participants were recorded while they were smelling the sweat samples for their facial expressions and when sniffing sweat from someone who felt happy that we’re more likely to smile.

P: Is it wrong that I just had an image of a room full of men with their armpits in the air and these women walking along having a good long draw. That’s kind of how I think they should have done the experiment.

[Laughter]

M: I don’t know but this experiment just, it’s hilarious to me, absolutely hilarious. They get a whole bunch of men, they take their sweat then they get a bunch of woman in and they film their reactions to them smelling the sweat.

P: [Laugh]

M: But what it does do is that supports the idea that surrounding ourselves with happier people, and their scents –

P: and their scent.

M: – can bring more positive emotion into our lives.

P: It’s all about sniffing each other when it comes down to it. Look at dogs they’ve got it right. They say hello by sniffing someone’s butt.

M: I knew you would take it there.

P: [Laugh]

M: I told you, you couldn’t pat people on the street, now you want to go sniff them.

[Laughter]

P: Alright, I’ll behave. Anyway, so putting this into practise. How do we make ourselves open to the contagion of happiness? Essentially, find happy people. Find the people in your life or around you that are happy that are that effusive celebratory kind of personality, be around them, put yourself in their vicinity even when you’re feeling low or quiet. Sometimes the best thing is to, is to shake yourself off and go ‘No, I’m going to go to that party because I know that such and such is going to be there and I know I’ll key into what they’re actually offering and their vibe and they’re always a fabulous person so I’m going to go along and be a part of that. The other that I love is laugh out loud people. Sometimes people are, they don’t want to laugh, they don’t want to express their happiness. I’m all for being in a movie theatre and having a good old giggle. Performance friends of mine used to love me in the audience because I actually react, sometimes in the middle of this very serious drama theatrical performance they would hear this big guffaw from the audience because I thought it was funny.

M: [Laugh] Great, right in the middle of the serious part.

P: Case and point. Uncle Vanya, Sydney Theatre Company production about five years ago, Richard Roxburgh and Hugo Weaving on stage, it’s meant to be this dark serious Russian play. Ugh, ugh. Not with those two. It was hilarious.

[Laughter]

P: So don’t, don’t stifle your laughter allow yourself to express it because it’s not just you, it’s someone else is going to feel the permission to laugh. And I think that’s a really important one allow yourselves the permission the laugh. The other thing is hosting, host a party, host a barbeque, host a film night. Host a laughter circle where you all lie on the floor with your heads on each other’s stomachs. Do you remember doing that at camps in high school?

M: We did, I actually hosted a laughter workshop at my old work and people loved it we just don’t laugh enough at work.

P: The science proves it, we don’t because of our competitive nature.

[Laughter]

M: The other thing I’ll add to this as far as things you can do, something that I found I had to grow up in order to do it. It was cut negative people out of my life and I don’t want people to jump to cutting people out of their lives just because they having about time. I do believe in loyalty to friends and sticking with them through hard times. There are some people, however, who take far more than they give and will not change. And at some point in my late twenties, I realised who those people were on and felt OK with not calling them to go have coffee or lunch or whatever it was and not making the effort to maintain a relationship. Some of them are were a little bit more abrupt, and others just trailed off. And I let them deliberately trail off, those relationships. And I think that’s really important. On the flip side, you surround yourself with happy people. But you also need to at times protect yourself.

P: I think protection is very vital. If a person is that negative there is a certain amount of loyalty and concern, no one wants to be shutting anyone off. But, ah, you have to look after number one. You have to look after the self-first. And if, if you’re feeling it, then sometimes it’s best to limit that exposure.

M: Yep. OK. Is that it for this week?

P: I think so.

M: I think it is. All right, well there you go. Go sneeze happiness all over people.

P: Go sniff people!

[Laughter]

M: They are the two take outs for this episode.

Thank you for joining us. If you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe. And like this podcast.

P: We will see you next week.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Marie Skelton is an Australian writer, speaker, and change and resiliency expert. She started her career in journalism before working in public affairs and then specialising in organisational and culture change for some of the world’s largest tech and financial services companies, both in Australia and the U.S. She also played volleyball for Australia and on scholarship at a D1 university in the U.S. and she captained the NSW Women’s Volleyball team in the Australian Volleyball League.

Following a motorbike accident that nearly took her life, and leg, she began researching change and resiliency to find out how people cope with major life changes and why some people are really good at dealing with whatever life throws at them, while others struggle. She is passionate about mental health and writes about how to cope with today’s Change Storm and maintain mental wellness.  

Peter Furness is just plain awesome. He loves unicorns and champagne. Pete is the owner of Max Remedial, and a qualified remedial therapist and has worked all over the world with professional athletes, dancers, sporting organisations and medical professionals. Peter’s practice is influenced by his interest in Eastern philosophy and he works closely with Chinese and Ayurvedic practitioners, approaching the body from the principles of ancient medicine.

Peter has practiced Asstanga Yoga for 20 years and combines these principles with his approach to health.

Peter was also an award-winning contemporary dancer in Australia and in the UK.