If you’re feeling great today, you may end up inadvertently spreading the joy to someone you don’t even know.
New research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly [...]

What is it about the Web that might make it literally irresistible? Clues are offered by research conducted by Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, who is interested in the evolutionary and biological basis of the human need for information.
Dr. Biederman first showed a collection of photographs to volunteer test subjects, [...]

Bohnke and Kohler published in January of 2008 a fascinating study about “Well-being and Inequality“. A survey among 18.000 people across Europe combined a selfreported form of subjective well-being with factors like income, eduation, health, environment and so on.
Abstract
An objective and a subjective approach to study well-being is introduced. The objectiveapproach is particularly useful to [...]

Testing the Stimulation Versus the Displacement Hypothesis

Patti M. Valkenburg
Jochen Peter
The Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
University of Amsterdam

Abstract
The aim of this study was to contrast the validity of two opposing explanatory hypotheses about the effect of online communication on adolescents’ well-being. The displacement hypothesis predicts that online communication reduces adolescents’ well-being because it displaces [...]

This study examines the relationship between use of Facebook, a popular online social network site, and the formation and maintenance of social capital. In addition to assessing bonding and bridging social capital, we explore a dimension of social capital that assesses one’s ability to stay connected with members of a previously inhabited community, which we [...]