Billions of words analysed in 10 world languages and this mood keeps shining through.
The best personality traits for happiness differ for work and play.
The best personality traits for happiness differ for work and play.
The personality trait most strongly linked to happiness right across the lifespan is emotional stability, research finds.
People who are high in emotional stability, which is the opposite of being neurotic, tend to be positive, have high self-control along with the ability to manage psychological stress effectively.
Looking specifically at work and social satisfaction, though, other personality traits were also important along with emotional stability.
For work satisfaction, the best personality trait was conscientiousness, a trait linked to being self-disciplined and aiming for achievement.
For social satisfaction, though, extraversion and agreeableness were most strongly linked to happiness.
The conclusions come from a study exploring how the link between personality and happiness might change with age.
Dr Gabriel Olaru, the study’s first author, said:
“Many studies have shown that people with certain personality profiles are more satisfied with their life than others.
Yet, it had not been extensively studied whether this holds true across the lifespan.
For example, extraverted—that is sociable, talkative—people might be particularly happy in young adulthood, when they typically are forming new social relationships.
We thus wanted to examine if some personality traits are more or less relevant to life, social and work satisfaction in specific life phases.”
The study included over 9,000 Dutch adults of all ages who were tracked over more than a decade.
The results showed that the connections between life satisfaction and personality remained much the same over the lifespan.
Dr Manon van Scheppingen, study co-author, said:
“Our findings show that—despite differences in life challenges and social roles—personality traits are relevant for our satisfaction with life, work and social contacts across young, middle and older adulthood.
The personality traits remained equally relevant across the adult lifespan, or became even more interconnected in some cases for work satisfaction.”
People’s personality also interacts with the environment, explained Dr van Scheppingen:
“A good example of how personality interacts with the environment can be found in the work context.
One of our findings was that the link between emotional stability and work satisfaction increases across age.
This might be explained by the fact that emotionally stable people are less scared to quit unsatisfactory jobs and more likely to apply for jobs that are more challenging and perhaps more fulfilling and enjoyable in the long run.”
Despite what many believe, personality is capable of change, said Dr van Scheppingen:
“While we did not examine what caused these changes, [the research] shows that our personalities and our happiness are not set in stone.
Perhaps we may even be able to influence how we change: If we try to become more organized, outgoing, friendly, this might increase life, social or work satisfaction as well.”
→ Related: How To Change Your Personality
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Olaru et al., 2023).
Even James Dean looked cooler when he smiled.
Even James Dean looked cooler when he smiled.
People are rated as looking ‘cooler’ when they smile and show their emotions, research finds.
It rubbishes the popular idea that keeping an inexpressive poker face makes you look ‘cool’.
In fact, an inexpressive face makes people look colder, rather than cool.
Dr Caleb Warren, the study’s first author, said:
“We found over and over again that people are perceived to be cooler when they smile compared to when they are inexpressive in print advertisements.
Being inexpressive makes people seem unfriendly or cold rather than cool.”
For the study people were shown a series of adverts in which celebrities were either smiling or not smiling.
It included well-know people, such as James Dean, Emily Didonato and Michael Jordan, alongside less well-known models.
People rated how cool the model seemed when they were smiling versus not smiling.
James Dean, for example, was rated ‘cooler’ in photographs where he was smiling, which surprised the researchers.
James Dean is an icon of cool and often pictured with a sultry, half-frown.
There was only one exception to the general rule that smiling was cool.
That was when mixed martial arts fighters were facing off at a press conference.
Then, it wasn’t cool to smile — better to look tough and serious.
A serious face is more dominant, and looks cooler when the situation demands dominance.
Dr Warren said:
“This inaccurate belief about how to become cool can influence the way we communicate with others, and being inexpressive can hurt relationships.
It also makes it more difficult to understand one another.
For these reasons, being inexpressive isn’t necessarily cool.”
The study was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology (Warren et al., 2018).
For about 20 percent of people, a higher income is linked to lower levels of happiness.
Young people who ‘spoke’ to an AI ‘therapist’ experienced improved well-being over six weeks.
40,000 combined years of marriage experience boiled down to these five points.
40,000 combined years of marriage experience boiled down to these five points.
The largest ever survey of long-term marriages has revealed the five keys to a happy marriage.
Over 700 people who have been married for a combined total of 40,000 years (!) took part.
They were asked how to find a suitable partner, how to get through difficult times and any other advice on love and marriage they had.
Professor Karl Pillemer explained his aims:
“Rather than focus on a small number of stories, my goal was to take advantage of the ‘wisdom of crowds,’ collecting the love and relationship advice of a large and varied cross-section of long-married elders in a scientifically reliable and valid way.”
The top five lessons for a happy marriage were:
Professor Pillemer explained:
“For a good marriage, the elders overwhelmingly tell us to ‘talk, talk, talk.’
They believe most marital problems can be solved through open communication, and conversely many whose marriages dissolved blamed lack of communication.”
Professor Pillemer said:
“Many of the elders I surveyed married very young; despite that fact, they recommend the opposite.
They strongly advise younger people to wait to marry until they have gotten to know their partner well and have a number of shared experiences.
An important part of this advice is a lesson that was endorsed in very strong terms: Never get married expecting to be able to change your partner.”
Professor Pillemer said:
“Rather than seeing marriage as a voluntary partnership that lasts only as long as the passion does, the elders propose a mindset in which it is a profound commitment to be respected, even if things go sour over the short term.
Many struggled through dry and unhappy periods and found ways to resolve them — giving them the reward of a fulfilling, intact marriage in later life.”
Professor Pillemer said:
“The elders urge us to apply what we have learned from our lifelong experiences in teams — in sports, in work, in the military — to marriage.
Concretely, this viewpoint involves seeing problems as collective to the couple, rather than the domain of one partner.
Any difficulty, illness, or setback experienced by one member of the couple is the other partner’s responsibility.”
Professor Pillemer said:
“Marriage is difficult at times for everyone, the elders assert, but it’s much easier with someone who shares your interests, background and orientation.
The most critical need for similarity is in core values regarding potentially contentious issues like child-rearing, how money should be spent and religion.”
The research is published in Professor Pillemer’s book.
Feeling purposeful is critical because it stokes optimism and hope and has all sorts of other benefits for mental and physical health.
In an unhappy marriage often one partner fails to speak up about problems affecting them both, but why?
In an unhappy marriage often one partner fails to speak up about problems affecting them both, but why?
People with low self-esteem are more likely to stay in an unhappy marriage, a study finds.
They are also likely to keep quiet about any problems in the relationship.
This is probably due to concerns about being rejected.
Dr Megan McCarthy, the study’s author, said:
“There is a perception that people with low self-esteem tend to be more negative and complain a lot more.
While that may be the case in some social situations, our study suggests that in romantic relationships, the partner with low self-esteem resists addressing problems.”
The study tested the effects of low self-esteem on relationships.
The researchers found that not speaking up about problems led to more overall dissatisfaction with the relationship.
Dr McCarthy said:
“We’ve found that people with a more negative self-concept often have doubts and anxieties about the extent to which other people care about them.
This can drive low self-esteem people toward defensive, self-protective behaviour, such as avoiding confrontation.”
Dr McCarthy said:
“If your significant other is not engaging in open and honest conversation about the relationship it may not be that they don’t care, but rather that they feel insecure and are afraid of being hurt.”
The study also found that people with high self-esteem who are agreeable tend to disclose their emotions more readily.
The reason is that they are more trusting of their partner’s caring nature.
In contrast, those with with low self-esteem found it harder to admit difficult emotions like sadness or to share risky thoughts with their partner.
Dr McCarthy said:
“We may think that staying quiet, in a ‘forgive and forget’ kind of way, is constructive, and certainly it can be when we feel minor annoyances.
But when we have a serious issue in a relationship, failing to address those issues directly can actually be destructive.”
Dr McCarthy concluded:
“We all know that close relationships can sometimes be difficult.
The key issue, then, is how we choose to deal with it when we feel dissatisfied with a partner.”
The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (McCarthy et al., 2017).
Surveys carried out over 30+ years reveal the age at which people are happiest.
Surveys carried out over 30+ years reveal the age at which people are happiest.
People get happier as they get older, research finds.
Surveys of Americans carried out between 1972 and 2004 show that older people are the nation’s happiest.
Across the different generations, around 50 percent of people over the age of 80 said they were ‘very happy’.
It may be because older, more mature people are likely to be more at ease with themselves and to have higher self-esteem.
Dr Yang Yang, the study’s author, said:
“Understanding happiness is important to understanding quality of life.
The happiness measure is a guide to how well society is meeting people’s needs.”
For the series of surveys a representative cross-section of Americans was asked the following question:
“Taken all together, how would you say things are these days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?”
The responses also teased out some interesting wrinkles.
The so-called ‘baby boomer’ generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, were less happy than other equivalent generations.
Dr Yang said:
“This is probably due to the fact that the generation as a group was so large, and their expectations were so great, that not everyone in the group could get what he or she wanted as they aged due to competition for opportunities.
This could lead to disappointment that could undermine happiness.”
The study also found that African Americans are, on average, less happy than whites.
Among 18-year-olds, just 15 percent of black men said they were very happy in comparison to 33 percent of white women.
In fact, women were more happy than men overall, across racial and class divides.
Over the years, needless to say, having a significant other and having your health make you much more happy.
One surprise, to some perhaps, is that having no children increases the chances of being happy over the lifetime.
The study was published in the journal American Sociological Review (Yang, 2008).
Feeling that life is meaningful is crucial for good psychological and physical health.
Feeling that life is meaningful is crucial for good psychological and physical health.
People who feel that life is more meaningful tend to have more purpose, stronger values, greater efficacy and self-worth.
Psychologists repeatedly find that feeling that life is meaningful is important:
Meaning in life is particularly important to people in their 20s and 60s, although most adults can feel when it is missing.
So, below are 7 psychology studies, some from the members-only section of PsyBlog, that reveal how to increase meaning in life.
(If you are not already, find out how to become a PsyBlog member here.)
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