Unit 11 The Media Ⅰ.阅读理解 A Are you feeling blue?An American study suggests that being surrounded by happy friends and neighbors could have more of an effect on your happiness than money.That is the finding of researchers from Harvard University and the University of California at San Diego. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler studied the emotional health of more than four thousand seven hundred people.They used information from the Framingham Heart Study. That study began sixty years ago in the American community of Framingham ,Massachusetts.It was started to learn more about the risks of heart attack and stroke.For the new study,the researchers examined the emotions of the men and women in the Framingham Heart Study.The information was gathered from 1983 to 2003. The researchers found that friends of happy people had a greater chance of being happy themselves.That means that happiness spreads,or has a contagious effect,among people.And,the smaller the physical distance between friends,the larger the effect they had on each other's happiness.For example,a person was twenty percent more likely to feel happy if his/her friend living within one and a half kilometers was also happy.Having a happy neighbor who lived next door increased an individual's chance of being happy by thirtyfour percent.The effects of friends' happiness lasted for up to a year. |