Joy Germ Day

What the day is

Joy Germ Day is observed on January 8. It was started in 1981 by Joan White of Rome, New York, who founded a loose organization of Joy Germs dedicated to deliberately spreading good cheer.

Origin and background

The metaphor holds up better than most. Emotional contagion is a documented process with a described mechanism. People automatically and unconsciously mimic the facial expressions, posture and vocal tone of those around them, within fractions of a second and without deciding to. That mimicry then feeds back: adopting the expression of an emotion nudges you toward feeling a version of it. The emotion travels through the copying.

There is a catch that matters for a day about spreading cheer. Not all smiles are the same signal. A smile driven by genuine enjoyment engages the muscle ringing the eye, which most people cannot contract voluntarily, and produces the creasing that distinguishes it. A deliberate social smile uses the mouth alone. Observers detect the difference reliably even when they cannot say what they are detecting, and the two produce different responses. Performed cheer transmits poorly, which is why relentless forced positivity so often lands flat.

The other awkward finding is an asymmetry. Unpleasant emotions are generally more contagious than pleasant ones and travel further through a group, which is consistent with a broader tendency for negative information to carry more weight than positive.

None of which argues against the day. It argues for a smaller, more honest version of it: one real interaction transmits more than a great deal of manufactured brightness.

How to take part

• Find something you actually find funny and share that, rather than performing cheerfulness.
• Say the specific nice thing you noticed instead of a general pleasantry.
• Notice your own mimicry when you are with somebody in a foul mood.
• Go first. Contagion needs a source, and most people are waiting.
• Do not push it at anyone having a genuinely bad day, which backfires.