Spreading of components of mood in adolescent social networks.

ABSTRACT: Recent research has provided evidence that mood can spread over social networks via social contagion, but that, in seeming contradiction to this, depression does not. Here, we investigate whether there is evidence for the individual components of mood (such as appetite, tiredness and sleep) spreading through US adolescent friendship networks while adjusting for confounding by modelling the transition probabilities of changing mood state over time. We find that having more friends with worse mood is associated with a higher probability of an adolescent worsening in mood and a lower probability of improving, and vice versa for friends with better mood, for the overwhelming majority of mood components. We also show, however, that this effect is not strong enough in the negative direction to l

SUBMITTER: Eyre RW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5627080 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature