Category: Happiness

Survey of 160 countries finds the age at which people are the least satisfied with life.

Life satisfaction dips in middle age, after which it starts going up again beyond the age of 54, a study of worldwide well-being finds.

The dip in life satisfaction occurs around the age of 45 until 54, and is seen across many wealthy English-speaking countries, including the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia.

There were similar findings in these countries for the emotional aspects of happiness.

This was likely because people experienced higher levels of stress, worry and anger in middle age than they do in old age.

Professor Angus Deaton, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“This finding is almost expected.

This is the period at which wage rates typically peak and is the best time to work and earn the most, even at the expense of present well-being, so as to have increased wealth and well-being later in life.”

Not a universal pattern

Economics is only one of many possible factors.

Western, wealthy countries have better healthcare systems, which are better able to ameliorate some of the problems of ageing.

The U-shaped pattern for life satisfaction was not universal, though, as many poorer countries show a simple decline in life satisfaction with age.

In the former Soviet Union, for example, life satisfaction declines with age, as it does in Latin American countries.

The only exception was African countries where average life satisfaction remained low throughout the lifespan.

Here are the graphs for how average life satisfaction changes with age for four different areas of the world:

Professor Deaton said:

“Economic theory can predict a dip in well-being among the middle age in high-income, English-speaking countries.

What is interesting is that this pattern is not universal.

Other regions, like the former Soviet Union, have been affected by the collapse of communism and other systems.

Such events have affected the elderly who have lost a system that, however imperfect, gave meaning to their lives, and, in some cases, their pensions and health care.”

Sense of purpose

The data the findings are based on comes from 160 countries which represents over 98 percent of the world’s population (Steptoe et al., 2014).

When the researchers looked at happiness and mortality, the key to a long life appeared to be a sense of purpose.

When older people feel their life has purpose, their chance of dying was dramatically reduced.

The study’s authors conclude:

“Even though the results do not unequivocally show that eudemonic well-being is causally linked with mortality, the findings do raise intriguing possibilities about positive well-being being implicated in reduced risk to health.”

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People felt significantly happier afterwards and were less likely to take days off work sick.

Becoming happier makes people healthier, research finds.

People who used standard psychological techniques to feel happier over 12 weeks subsequently felt healthier and were less likely to be off work sick.

Participants worked at improving their core self, experiential self and social self over 12 weeks.

The approaches taught to people during the study included increasing feelings of gratitude, focusing on personal strengths and learning to be more mindful.

Dr Kostadin Kushlev, the study’s first author, said:

“Though prior studies have shown that happier people tend to have better cardiovascular health and immune-system responses than their less happy counterparts, our research is one of the first randomized controlled trials to suggest that increasing the psychological well-being even of generally healthy adults can have benefits to their physical health.”

The study included 155 people aged 25-75, half of whom worked at boosting their happiness over 12 weeks.

They were taught three different psychological techniques for boosting their happiness.

The first, which they focused on for 3 weeks, was ‘core self’.

This involves identifying personal strengths, goals and values.

People who identify and practice their personal strengths — in other words, do what they are good at — tend to feel happier.

For the next 5 weeks, people focused on their experiential self.

This involved practising mindfulness and emotional regulation.

For the final 4 weeks, people cultivated their social selves, looking at ways to improve their feelings of gratitude and to increase positive social interactions.

Dr Kushlev said:

“All of the activities were evidence-based tools to increase subjective well-being.”

The results showed that people in the intervention group felt significantly happier afterwards and were less likely to take days off work sick.

People who were taught the happiness techniques online improved just as much as those taught face-to-face.

Dr Kushlev said:

“These results speak to the potential of such interventions to be scaled in ways that reach more people in environments such as college campuses to help increase happiness and promote better mental health among students.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Kushlev et al., 2020).

People who push themselves to feel happy can end up feeling worse.

Putting too much value on being happy, paradoxically makes that happiness more difficult to achieve, research finds.

In fact, a greater need to enjoy experiences is linked to more depressive symptoms.

In other words, people who push themselves to feel happy can end up feeling worse.

One reason is down to disappointment.

Imagine listening to some music and trying to force oneself to enjoy it more.

The disappointment felt if it does not work could make one feel worse than if they had not bothered trying to feel happier.

None of this means that pursuing happiness is a waste of time — it just has to be done in the right way.

A happiness culture

There is also a cultural factor to consider.

Culture plays an important part in how we think about happiness, the new study reveals.

Researchers carried out happiness surveys on groups of people in the UK and EU and compared them to previous results from people in the US.

The results showed that people in the US and the UK who valued happiness more also found it harder to focus on and savour positive experiences.

Dr Julia Vogt, study co-author, explained:

“We observed that the inability of participants to focus attention while feeling a range of emotions was a major factor in this idea of not being able to savor a positive experience.”

However, the link was not as strong in the EU, suggesting that culture is a factor.

Dr Vogt continued:

“The relationship between valuing happiness and depressive symptoms was seen far more significantly in UK [and US] participants than those from other nationalities or dual citizens.

We don’t go so far as to test what those differences are, but there seems to be a significant divide between English-speaking western cultures and other cultures when it comes to how our internal value of experiencing happiness shapes our experiences and mood.”

→ Read on about sustainable happiness.

The study was published in the Journal of Happiness Studies (Kahriz et al., 2019).

These experiences help reduce the effects of stress.

People who have more daily spiritual experiences are happier, research finds.

These regular experiences also help reduce the effects of stress.

It may be partly because spirituality promotes a greater sense of oneness and connectedness with the rest of the universe.

Spiritual experiences include both those related to God and transcendent feelings not linked to God.

For example, some people in the study agreed with the statement:

• “I feel God’s love for me directly or through others.”

Whereas, others endorsed a statement such as:

• “I feel a deep inner peace or harmony.”

The study tracked people’s moment-by-moment spiritual experiences like these through their phones over two weeks.

Dr Matt Bradshaw, study co-author, said:

“This study is unique because it examines daily spiritual experiences—such as feeling God’s presence, finding strength in religion or spirituality, and feeling inner peace and harmony—as both stable traits and as states that fluctuate.”

The study included 2,795 people who also answered questions which accessed positive and negative emotions.

Dr Bradshaw explained that…

“…these findings suggest that stable, consistent spiritual experiences as well as short-term periodic ones both serve as resources to promote human flourishing and help individuals cope with stressful conditions.”

Stressful events were also taken into account, explained Dr Blake Victor Kent, the study’s first author:

“The findings indicate, as you would expect, that the wear and tear of daily stressors are associated with increased depressive symptoms and lower levels of flourishing.

What this study really contributes is that daily spiritual experiences play an important role as well.

Essentially, if you take two people who have equal levels of stress, the one with more spiritual experiences will be less likely to report depressive symptoms and more likely to indicate feelings of flourishing.

That’s a comparison between two people.

But what about one person?

The unique thing about this study is we are able to show that when someone’s spiritual experiences vary day to day, the ‘above average’ days of spiritual experience are associated with better mental well-being than the ‘below average’ days.”

Reducing self-centredness

Previous studies have found that people who are more spiritual have better mental health.

Spiritual people feel a greater connection with the rest of the universe.

Being spiritual may boost people’s mental health because it reduces self-centredness.

The study was published in the The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (Kent et al., 2020).

Friends or family? Which group of people make us happiest?

People report feeling happier when they are with their friends than their family, research finds.

However, this is probably because of the type of activities that people tend to do with their friends compared with their family.

With friends, people do more enjoyable activities, such as going to restaurants, sports or visiting new places.

In comparison, with families people do more mundane tasks, like chores and caretaking.

The study reveals a positive view of the family, says Dr Nathan Hudson, the study’s first author:

“Our study suggests that this [feeling happier while with friends] doesn’t have to do with the fundamental nature of kith versus kin relationships.

When we statistically controlled for activities, the ‘mere presence’ of children, romantic partners, and friends predicted similar levels of happiness.

Thus, this paper provides an optimistic view of family and suggests that people genuinely enjoy their romantic partners and children.”

For the study, over 400 people were asked to think back to activities they had done and rate their happiness and sense of meaning.

Psychologists compared the amount of happiness people felt when around three different groups:

1. Friends,
2. children,
3. and romantic partner.

The results revealed that people were happiest when relaxing, eating and socialising.

People tended to do these activities more often when they were with their friends rather than their families.

Study participants spent 28 percent of their time with their partner socialising, but 65 percent of their time with friends socialising.

Time spent with children was often drudge work, involving housework and ferrying them from one place to another.

However, people viewed childcare positively.

Once the activity was taken out of the equation, people reported having just as much fun with friends as family.

Dr Hudson explains:

“It’s important to create opportunities for positive experiences with romantic partners and children—and to really mentally savor those positive times. In contrast, family relationships that involve nothing but chores, housework, and childcare likely won’t predict a lot of happiness.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Hudson et al., 2020).

How you can get that beautiful chills-down-the-spine feeling.

Upbeat music sounds better when you make a concerted effort to enjoy it, rather than just listening passively, psychological research finds.

While many people let music flow over them; making the effort to enhance your emotions can be an incredibly rewarding experience.

Across two studies, researchers at the University of Missouri looked at the effect of music on positive emotions (Ferguson & Sheldon, 2013).

In one experiment, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, people visited a lab five times over two weeks to listen to music they’d selected for 15 minutes:

• Half were told to just listen to the music and not think about their happiness.
• The other half were told to try and feel happier and think about their happiness.

Although both groups said they’d enjoyed the music equally, it was the group that tried to feel happier that actually felt happier after the two weeks.

Another experiment confirmed the results, with participants listening to upbeat music, and trying to make themselves happy, feeling better than those who just listened passively.

Crucially, though, trying to make yourself happier only worked when the music was upbeat.

The study’s lead author, Yuna Ferguson, pointed out a pitfall with actively seeking happiness from music.

She counsels against continually asking yourself “Am I happy?”:

“Rather than focusing on how much happiness they’ve gained and engaging in that kind of mental calculation, people could focus more on enjoying their experience of the journey towards happiness and not get hung up on the destination.”

The study’s co-author, Professor Kennon Sheldon, said the study demonstrates our potential to change our own levels of happiness:

“…we can intentionally seek to make mental changes leading to new positive experiences of life.

The fact that we’re aware we’re doing this, has no detrimental effect.”

Why not try it right now with your own favourites, or one of the upbeat pieces of classical music used in the study (Aaron Copland’s ‘Hoe-Down’ from the ballet ‘Rodeo’):

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