I'm sure many of you have noticed how emotions can spread like the plague. There is an article in time magazine for december 12, 2008, called the happiness effect, and it shows how emotions and behaviors can spread.

"in their most recent paper, published in the British Medical Journal, Christakis and Fowler explored the emotional state of nearly 5,000 people and the more than 50,000 social ties they shared. At three points during the long study, all the participants answered a standard questionnaire to determine their happiness level, so that the scientists could track changes in emotional state. That led to their intriguing finding of just how contagious happiness can be: if a subject's friend was happy, that subject waws 15% more likely to be happy too; if that friend's friend was happy, the original subject was 10% more likely to be so. Even if the subject's friend's friend's friend--entirely unknown to the subject--was happy, the subject still got a 5.6% boost. The happiness chain also worked in the other direction, radiating from the subject out to her friends.

"We have a collective identity as a population that transcends individual identity," says Christakis. "This superorganism has an anatomy, physiology, structure and function that we are trying to understand."

link please?

It's not that it is contagious.

We as humans have the ability to feel pain, love, fear, ect. Because of this, we are able to sense when we are causing pain, love, fear, ect. Intrinsicly, humans embrace things that make them feel good and avoid things that make them feel bad. We learned early on about pain and what caused it, so we attempted to avoid it. We also attempted to avoid causing it, because we could sense what the pain we were causing felt like.

Basically, I'm trying to say that we as humans have empathy. We are able to feel what others feel, or what we think other's feel.

That's pretty interesting. Emotions have always fascinated me.

Yes, I agree, but how do you explain this: "subject's friend's friend's friend--entirely unknown to the subject--was happy, the subject still got a 5.6% boost."

"On a more macro level, we think of our body as real. However, if our organs could talk to us they would say that the body is an illusory construction based on the organs functioning together. And at a lower level the cells could say that the organ is an illusion, that the real function is in the cells working together. Then we might hear the molecules say that the cells are illusions because they are the function of molecules working together. The atoms would point out that the molecules are the functions of atoms working together. And subatomic particles would say that atoms are apparitions caused by the congregation of angular momentum.

Each order of reality would consider the higher order to be an illusion with regard to the grouping of its members. Even at the level of humans we consider the concept of community to be an illusion created by the congregation of humans. Yet there may be some form of complex consciousness among human communities, which communicates with each other and considers humans to be mere components."

EDIT: If you're one of those people who think that consciousness is only for those who have 'brains', then you're wrong, no offense.

This is from the most recent discover magazine, janurary 2009:
" Single-celled slime molds demonstrate the ability to memorize and anticipate repeated events, a team of Japanese researchers reported in Janurary. The study clearly shows "a primitive version of brain function" in an organism with no brain at all." - Artcile: Slime Molds Show Primitive Smarts
Link: http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/071/?searchterm=slime%20molds

This post was edited by AEtheric on Dec 17 2008 09:22pm

It`s possible that the happiness was being moved along a clean axis--that is to say:

x,y,z all = different individuals, - means contact

x - y - z
z- y - x

x & z don`t need direct contact because the happiness is mediated. I`m not sure if the study was saying anything else, but my questions would revolve around when the happiness was taking place It`s interesting if it`s happiness starting at the same time; otherwise it`s uninteresting.

Reminds me of that one commercial where everyone in an office start fighting with each other and the less enjoyable ones where they have the good deeds going from person to person.

I HEARD THIS FROM A RADIO STATION

that just expanded my mind futher than it wanted to go

what about solar systems, galaxies, space in it's entirety, deminsions....are they cognizant?
are cells, atoms, molecules, communities cognizant also?
and for that matter are animals w/ brains cognizant?
are we as humans also aware...not just of our surroundings but of our place in the cosmos

Yes.