Dynamic spread of happiness

in a large social network:

Longitudinal analysis over 20 years
in the Framingham heart study

Fowler, James H. and Christakis, Nicholas A.

BMJ 2008;337:a2338
Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com
 To evaluate whether happiness can
spread from person to person and
whether niches of happiness form
within social networks.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

•Happiness is a fundamental object of human existence,
determined by a complex set of voluntary and involuntary factors.

•WHO is increasingly emphasising happiness as a component of

health.

•Researchers in biological and social sciencies have identified a

broad range of stimuli to happiness (or unhappiness); however,
have not addressed a possibly key determinant of human
happiness: the happiness of others.

•People can “catch” emotional states they observe in others over

time frames ranging from seconds to weeks.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

Little is known about the role of social networks in happiness
or about whether happiness might spread, by a diverse set of
mechanisms, over longer periods or more widely in social
networks.

We were particularly interested in whether the spread of

happiness pertains not just to direct relationships (friends) but
also to indirect relationships (friends of friends) and whether
there are geographical or temporal constraints on the spread
of happiness through a social network.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 This study began in 1948, under the direction of the
National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Has been
committed to identifying the common factors or
characteristics that contribute to cardiovascular disease.

By recruiting an Original Cohort (5,209). Since that time the

Study has added an Offspring Cohort in 1971 (5,124), the
Omni Cohort in 1994, a Third Generation Cohort in 2002
(4,095), a New Offspring Spouse Cohort in 2003, and a
Second Generation Omni Cohort in 2003.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 Network ascertainment
Used the offspring cohort 5124
“egos.”
Each ego is connected to other
people for diverse relationships.
Each relationship is a “social tie.”
Each person who has a
relationship with an ego was
called an “alter.”
There were 12.067 individuals
who were connected at some
point in 1971-2003.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

• Computerised information about the offspring cohort (since 1971).
•The ascertainment of social ties was wide and systematic.

Include:
• All first order relatives (alive or dead).
• At least one close friend (7 examinations 1971 to 2003).
• Home address- geocoded to determine neighbour relationships.
• Place of employment- identify ties to coworkers.

•One ego, One alter category.

•There were 53.228 observed social ties between the 5124 egos and
any other alters. Average 10.4 ties.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 Because friendship identifications are directional, 3 different
types: ego perceived friend, alter perceived friend and mutual
friend.
Capture the network links among participants longitudinally.
At inception, 53% of the egos were women; the egos’ mean age
was 38 years (21-70); and their mean education was 1.6 years of
college (0-≥17 years of education).
We studied 4739 of the 5124 egos who were alive in 1983 (first
time happiness was measured). All participants were followed
until 2003 (at exam 7), as were any ties to alters noted during the
time period 1983-2003.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 Measures of Happiness
• Instrument: Center for Epidemiological Studies depression scale (CES-D) in
1983- 2003 at times corresponding to the 5th, 6th, and 7th examinations of the
offspring cohort.
Defined happy with perfect score:
• 0=rarely or none of the time (<1 day/week),
• 1=some or a little of the time (1-2 days/week),
• 2=occasionally or a moderate amount of the time (3-4 days/week)
• and 3=most or all the time (5-7 days/ week).

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 Changes in their happiness over time

We used the previous wave as a baseline measure and

evaluated the probability of an ego being happy at a
succeeding wave.

At follow-up, the prevalence of happiness was 61% in exam 6

and 59% in exam 7.

Between exams 6 and 7, 16% of individuals became happy,

13% became unhappy, 49% remained happy, and 22%
remained unhappy.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 Network analysis Glossary
Homophily: the tendency for people to choose relationships with people who have
similar attributes.

Component: a group of nodes that is a subset of a full network and in which each node is
connected by at least one path to every other node in the same component.

Cluster: a group of nodes of a certain type that is a subset of a full network and in which
each node is connected by at least one path via nodes of the same type to every other
node in the same .

Degree of separation: the social distance of two individuals as measured by the smallest
number of intermediary ties between one individual and the other within the network.
“Geodesic distance”.

Centrality: is a count of the number of friends of a ego.

Topology: the fundamental pattern of ties in a social network.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 Fig 1. Happiness clusters in the Framingham social network.
Kamada-Kawai algorithm . Pajek.

Exam 6.
1181 ind.

Node:
circles are female
squares are male.
Ties: black for
siblings,
red for friends
and spouses.
Node colour:
Blue: least happy
Green:
intermediate,
Yellow: most
happy.

Exam 7.
1020 ind.

Copyright ©2008 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.

 Statistical analysis
The association could be attributed to at least three processes:
•Induction, Homophily and Confounding:

To distinguish between these effects requires repeated measures of happiness,

longitudinal information about network ties, and information about the nature
or direction of the ties.

Regression models (logistic: 1=happy, 0=isn’t happy) of ego

happiness as a function of ego’s age, sex, education, and happiness
in the previous exam, and of the happiness of an alter in the
current and previous exam.

Inclusion of ego happiness in the previous exam helps to eliminate serial

correlation in the errors and also substantially controls for ego’s genetic
endowment and any intrinsic stable predilection to be happy.
Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com
 Fig 2 Social distance and happiness in the Framingham social network.

Copyright ©2008 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.

 Statistical analysis
Alter’s happiness in the previous exam helps to control for homophily.

We evaluated the possibility of omitted variables or contemporaneous events

or exposures in explaining the associations by examining how the type or
direction of the social relationship between ego and alter affects the
association between them.

If unobserved factors drive the association between ego and alter happiness,
then directionality of friendship should not be relevant. We also examined
the possible role of exposure to neighbourhood factors by examining maps.

The main coefficient of interest in these regression models is the one related
to contemporaneous happiness in alters—that is, the extent to which an
alter’s present happiness, net of the alter’s previous happiness, is associated
with an ego’s present happiness, net of the ego’s previous happiness.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 Fig 3. Happy alters in Framingham social network.
Generalised estimating equation regression models confirm relation is strongly
significant, even with numerous controls.

Copyright ©2008 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.

 Statistical analysis

We used generalised estimating equation procedures to account for multiple

observations of the same ego across waves and across ego-alter pairings.

The generalised estimating equation regression models provide parameter

estimates in the form of β coefficients whereas the results reported in the text
and in figures 4 and 5 are in the form of risk ratios, which are related to the
exponentiated coefficients.

Mean effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals.

We explored the sensitivity of our results by conducting numerous other

analyses but none of which yielded substantially different results from those
presented here.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 Fig 4. Alter type and happiness in the Framingham social network.

Copyright ©2008 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.

 The networks
Networks are only partially observed. Therefore, there will be
measurement error in individual network attributes.

If there is a correlation between this measurement error and happiness, it

could bias our results.

We evaluated this potential source of bias by measuring the Pearson

correlation between the number of social relations named outside the
Framingham Heart Study and subject happiness.

The association was both small and not significant (P=0.33), suggesting
that the unobserved parts of the network do not bias the inferences we
make within the observed network.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

Fig 5 Physical and temporal separation and spread of happiness in FSN.

Copyright ©2008 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.

 • Happy people tend to be connected to one another.
• The clusters of happy and unhappy people seen in the
network are significantly larger than expected by chance.
• The association between ego and alter happiness is significant
up to three degrees of separation.
• No differences between spouses and friends, and gender of
spouses.
• Relation between happiness and centrality remained
significant even when we controlled for age, education, and
the total number of family and non-family alters.
• Happiness itself does not increase a person’s centrality at
subsequent time points.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

• The social network effect of happiness is multiplicative and
asymmetric.
• Having additional social contacts is helpful to ego’s happiness
only if the extra social contacts are happy themselves .
• The principal determinant of a person’s happiness was their
previous happiness; individuals who were happy at one wave
were roughly three times more likely than unhappy people to
be happy at the subsequent observation.
• Age, sex, and education had effects consistent, with women
being less happy then men and educated people being slightly
happier.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

• If the associations in the social network were merely caused
by confounding, these effect sizes for different types of
friendships should be more similar.
• That is, if some third factor were explaining both ego and alter
happiness, it should not respect the directionality of the tie.
• All these relations indicate the importance of physical
proximity, and the strong influence of neighbours suggests
that the spread of happiness might depend more on frequent
social contact than deep social connections.
• Happiness spreads significantly more through same sex
relationships than opposite sex relationships.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 • + Conected alter 15.3% (IC95%
12.2-18.8%)
• + Two alters 9.8% (7.0% to 12.9%)
• + Three alters 5.6% (2.4% to 9.0%).
• + Spouse 0.08 (95% CI: 0.002 to
0.16)
• + Each happy alter 9% (P=0.001)
• - Each unhappy alter 7% (P=0.004).
• + Nearby friends 25%(1% to 57%).
• Distant friends have no significant
effect.
• + Nearby mutual friends 63% (12%
to 148%)
• Nearby alter perceived friends is
much weaker and not significant
• +Coresident spouses 8% (0.2% to
16%)
Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com
• Non-coresident spouses have no
significant effect
• + Nearby siblings 14% (1% to 28%)
• + Next door neighbours 34% (7%
to 70%)
• Neighbours on the same block
have no significant effect.
• No effect of the happiness of
coworkers .
• + Friend who lives less than half a
mile 42% (6% to 95%)
• + For friends who live less than
two miles away 22% (2% to 45%)
• + A friend examined in the past
half year 45% (4% to 122%)
• + Friends examined within the past
year 35% (6% to 77%)
 • 1. When the information was collected it was not intended that it
would be used to measure happiness, analyse social networks, or
explore this hypothesis. Consequently, the original data collection
was not biased by the researchers’ desire to confirm this
hypothesis or by the participants’ wishes to give socially desirable
answers.

• 2. Although social network analysis is complex and unfamiliar to

many, this research method is commonly used by sociologists,
community psychologists, and others.

• 3. Despite the sometimes large and overlapping confidence

intervals, the results are internally consistent and robust to
sensitivity analyses.

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

 We should be cautious, however, for several reasons.
1. A single community and a single database that was not designed to tackle
this hypothesis was studied— perhaps Framingham is unique in someway;
perhaps the data collection incorporated an unknown systematic bias that
produced these results.
2. The findings concerning friends must be viewed cautiously because the
name generator used seems unlikely to have encouraged respondents with
several close friends to name more than one.
3. The measure of happiness is well validated as a measure of “positive affect,”
but it will be interesting to see if similar results are produced with different
measures of happiness. Happiness is not everything; unhappy
acquaintances may contribute something other than happiness to our lives.
In summary, Fowler and Christakis have produced valuable, exciting, and
reasonably robust results that will stimulate new and productive lines of
enquiry in happiness studies. However, we must not expect all the details of
their findings to be confirmed in subsequent work.
Don’t drop your unhappy friends yet.
Commentary: Understanding social network analysis by Peter Sainsbury BMJ 2008;337:a1957

Sandra Milena Agudelo Londoño- Estudiante Maestría en Epidemiología- sandragesis@gmail.com

CONTAGIA FELICIDAD!!!

25/08/2010