Living With Happy Friends Has the Biggest Impact on Your Happiness.
Happiness is contagious, and friendship is magic: This is the lesson of 20 years of multi-generational research that concluded that the happiness of people depends on the happiness of those with whom we are connected.
Of all the types of relationships and social bonds that contribute to happiness, the Framingham Heart Study , which tracked people from 1983 to 2003, found that mutual friends who live within a mile of each other and neighbors in the neighborhood have the greatest impact on happiness:
People surrounded by many happy people and those who are central to the web are more likely to become happy in the future. Longitudinal statistical models suggest that clusters of happiness are the result of the spread of happiness, and not simply the tendency of people to associate with similar people. A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and becomes happy increases the likelihood that the person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to 57%). Similar effects are seen in resident spouses (8%, 0.2% to 16%), siblings living within a mile (14%, 1% to 28%), and neighbors (34%, from 7% up to 70%). There are no peer-to-peer effects. The effect diminishes over time and with geographical separation.
It is difficult to make friends as you get older , but it is worth the effort to make and maintain friendships, especially if your friends live nearby.
The Dynamic Spread of Happiness on a Large Social Network: A 20-Year Longitudinal Analysis in the Framingham Heart Study | PubMed via buffer