Nicholas A. Christakis’s and James Fowler’s research into social networks and the spread of happiness proves that happiness begets happiness.
Using research from the Framingham Heart Study, they looked at data from nearly 5,000 individuals spanning a network of over 12,000 people. Their analysis followed participants over two-decades from 1983-2003. Their conclusion is that each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%.
This impact was even more pronounced at a close distance. When a friend living close by (less than a mile away) had an increase in happiness, the probability that your own happiness would increase goes up by 25%, distant friends didn’t have this same impact. These effects were similar with spouses, siblings, and next-door neighbors.
And they spread. Happiness spreads up to three degrees of separation. This pattern matches what researchers have already found about the spread of obesity and smoking behavior. What we do impacts people we might never even meet. And while the effects do deteriorate as they disperse – meaning one person’s happiness won’t change the whole network – there is no question that they do spread.
This isn’t just about happy people finding other happy people either. The sheer time involved in this study showed that clusters of happiness spread. People who are in contact with happy people, who are central in the network, will become happy in the future. So what does this have to do with customer experience work? Everything.
On a business level we know there’s ROI in customer experience improvements, but what we’re doing is dramatically more important than that. Customer experience work is all about people, both employees and customers. When we make it easy for customers we’re also making it easy for employees. And if we can create an experience that makes employees happy this not only spreads to customers, it also spreads to their homes, their neighbors, their communities. And according to Nicholas A. Christakis and James Fowler there’s evidence that regardless of the industry you work in; if you work in the customer experience profession, you just might be in the business of changing the world.
