The work and leisure of happy people: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reports increased quality of life when work and leisure engage one's skills. Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and the boredom of being underwhelmed lies the unself-conscious, absorbed state of flow.
The relationships of happy people: Humans are social animals, with an evident need to belong. For most people, solitary confinement is misery. Having close friends, and being with them, is pleasure. In National Opinion Research Center surveys of more than 42,000 Americans since 1972, 40 percent of married adults have declared themselves very happy, as have 23 percent of never married adults. The marital happiness gap also occurs in other countries and is similar for men and women. The causal arrows between marriage and happiness
appear to point both ways: an intimate marriage, like other close friendships, offers social support; but happy people also appear more likely to attract and retain partners.
The faith of happy people: The same National Opinion Research Center surveys reveal that 23 percent of those never attending religious services report being very happy, as do 47 percent of those attending more than weekly. In explaining the oft-reported greater happiness and ability to cope with loss among people active in faith communities, psychologists have assumed that faith networks may offer social support, meaning, and assistance in managing the "terror" of one's inevitable death.
Wealth and Well-Being
In the early 21st century, economists and environmental sustainability advocates came
to share psychologists' interest in the extent to which money and consumption can buy happiness. Three in four entering American college and university students (in annual UCLA surveys) say that it is "very important or essential" to "be very well off financially," and 73 percent of Americans in 2006 answered "yes" when Gallup asked "Would you be happier if you made more money?"
In their scientific pursuit of happiness, psychologists and sociologists have asked three questions:
Are people happier if they live in rich countries? There is some tendency for prosperous nations to have happier and more satisfied people (though these also tend to be countries with high literacy, civil rights, and stable democracies). But the correlation between national wealth and well-being tapers off above a certain level.
Within any country, are rich people happier? Although many researchers have found the correlation between personal income and happiness "surprisingly weak" (as Ronald Inglehart report in 1990), recent surveys indicate that across individuals as across nations, the relationship is curvilinear: the association between income and happiness tapers off once people have sufficient income to afford life's necessities and a measure of control over their lives.
Does the happiness of a people rise over time with rising affluence? The answer is plainly no. Americans love what their grandparents of a half century ago seldom knew: air conditioning, the Internet, MP3 players, and bigger houses. Yet they are no happier. The same is true in other countries, economist Richard Easterlin has reported. Economic growth in affluent countries has not demonstrably improved human morale. Ditto China, where Gallup surveys since 1994 reveal huge increases in households with color TV and telephones, but somewhat diminished life satisfaction. Such results have led Ed Diener and Martin Seligman to collaborate with the Census Bureau in devising new "national indicators of subjective well-being."
Psychologists have sought to explain why objective life circumstances -- especially positive experiences -- have such modest long-term influence on happiness. One explanation is our human capacity for adaptation. Sooner than we might expect, people will adapt to improvements in circumstances and recalibrate their emotions around a new "adaptation level." Thus, finds Daniel Gilbert in his studies, summarized in Stumbling on Happiness, emotions have a shorter half-life than most people suppose. Nevertheless, some psychologists, such as Sonja Lyubomirsky and her colleagues, draw from happiness research in designing interventions that aim to increase happiness.
Happiness reflects not only our adaptations to recent experiences but also our social comparisons.
As people climb the ladder of success, they tend to compare upward. And with increasing income inequality, as in contemporary China, there will likely be more available examples of better off people with whom
to compare. In experiments, people engaged in comparing downward─by comparing themselves with those impoverished or disfigured─express greater satisfaction with their own lives.
First published in
SUNDAY FREAK -
17th Edition - PEACE/LOVE/HAPPINESS
PSYCHOLOGY OF HAPPINESS