Teenagers can ‘catch’ moods, study reveals

And other stories from the stranger side of life

Senior schoolchildren hug outside their school
(Image credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

A study by Oxford and Birmingham universities has found that teenagers can “catch” moods from their friends. Researchers investigated “emotional contagion” among teens, to see the impact of individuals’ moods within a shared social network and found that moods become similar to those of the people they spend time with. Dr Per Block, of Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, said: “Mood is contagious, and though both positive and negative moods are ‘caught’, bad moods are more potent.”

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Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.