Category: Happiness

How the triumphs and tragedies of our age affect national happiness.

The unhappiest period in the United States in the last two hundred years was in the early 1970s, during the Vietnam war, new research finds.

In the UK, the unhappiest period was during the 1978-79 ‘Winter of Discontent’ caused by strikes, bitter cold and worsening economy.

However, national happiness quickly bounces back and people soon forget the triumphs and tragedies of the age in which they live.

The conclusions come from a study that measured national happiness over the last 200 years by analysing millions of books and newspapers published at the time.

The study also found that increases in national income make people a little happier, but it takes a huge rise in income to have any measurable effect.

Avoiding one year of war, though, gave the equivalent boost to happiness of a 30 percent rise in GDP.

Researchers created a happiness index for the US, UK, Italy and Germany using linguistic analysis.

Professor Thomas Hills, the study’s first author, said:

“What’s remarkable is that national subjective well-being is incredibly resilient to wars.

Even temporary economic booms and busts have little long-term effect.

We can see the American Civil War in our data, the revolutions of 48′ across Europe, the roaring 20’s and the Great Depression.

But people quickly returned to their previous levels of subjective well-being after these events were over.

Our national happiness is like an adjustable spanner that we open and close to calibrate our experiences against our recent past, with little lasting memory for the triumphs and tragedies of our age.”

The Italians suffered most during fascism and in recent years following the financial crisis, said Professor Eugenio Proto, study co-author:

“Looking at the Italian data, it is interesting to note a slow but constant decline in the years of fascism and a dramatic decline in the years after the last crisis.”

National happiness has only been measured for a maximum of 50 years, and even then only in a few countries.

That is why researchers used data from Google Books, which contains 8 million books, over 6 percent of the books ever published.

Professor Daniel Sgroi, study co-author, said:

“Aspirations seem to matter a lot: after the end of rationing in the 1950s national happiness was very high as were expectations for the future, but unfortunately things did not pan out as people might have hoped and national happiness fell for many years until the low-point of the Winter of Discontent.”

Changes in word meaning had to be controlled for, said Dr Chanuki Seresinhe, study co-author:

“It was really important to ensure that the changing meaning of words over time was taken into account.

For example, the word “gay” had a completely different meaning in the 1800s than it does today.

We processed terabytes of word co-occurrence data from Google Books to understand how the meaning of words has changed over time, and we validate our findings using only words with the most stable historical meanings.”

The study was published in the journal Nature: Human Behaviour (Hills et al., 2019).

The drink activates the ‘feel-good’ dopamine receptors in the brain.

A component found in beer, quite apart from alcohol, also stimulates the brain’s reward centre, new research finds.

Hordenine, which is found in beer and malted barley, stimulates the brain’s dopamine receptors in the same way as dopamine.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that gives us that feel-good effect.

It makes us want to carry on consuming a food or beverage long after we are satiated.

The conclusions come from research that went through a database of 13,000 chemicals to find those that stimulate the dopamine pathway.

Out of all these chemicals, hordenine was found to be the most promising.

Professor Pischetsrieder, one of the study’s authors, said:

“It came as a bit of surprise that a substance in beer activates the dopamine D2 receptor, especially as we were not specifically looking at stimulant foodstuffs.”

The researchers are now looking at whether the levels of hordenine are sufficient to account for some of the mood-enhancing effects of drinking beer.

For the future, the advantage of hordenine may be that its effects are more long-lasting than other ways of boosting dopamine.

Drugs that stimulate dopamine could eventually be used to treat conditions like Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Sommer et al., 2017).

…and the 12 linked to the least satisfaction with life.

The clergy are the happiest and most satisfied workers in America, a large US survey finds.

87% of them reported being very satisfied with their work.

They are closely followed by physical therapists, 80% of whom were very satisfied with their work and firefighters, 78% of whom were very satisfied.

Dr Tom W. Smith, the study’s author, explained the common thread in these different jobs:

“The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching, and protecting others and creative pursuits.”

Here is the full list of the top 12 most satisfying jobs:

1. Clergy
2. Physical Therapists
3. Firefighters
4. Education Administrators
5. Painter, Sculptors, Related
6. Teachers
7. Authors
8. Psychologists
9. Special Education Teachers
10. Operating Engineers
11. Office Supervisors
12. Security & Financial Services Salespersons

Rev. Cynthia Lindner, Director of Ministry Studies at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, said:

 “Persons engaged in ministry have great opportunity to live and work out of their deepest convictions, oftentimes in the midst of communities of faith who share their concern for meaning, compassion and justice.

This congruence of belief, values, and actions in one’s daily work can be immensely satisfying.”

Across all the occupations, 47% of people reported being very satisfied with their jobs and 33% said they were very happy with their lives in general.

Down at the bottom of the list, the 12 least satisfying jobs were:

1. Roofers
2. Waiters/Servers
3. Laborers, Except Construction
4. Bartenders
5. Hand Packers and Packagers
6. Freight, Stock, & Material Handlers
7. Apparel Clothing Salespersons
8. Cashiers
9. Food Preparers
10. Expediters
11. Butchers & Meat Cutters
12. Furniture/Home Furnishing Salespersons

These jobs are generally low-paid and often involve manual labour.

Customer service and food/beverage preparation was also particularly unsatisfying, according to the survey.

Over 27,000 people were interviewed for the survey across a wide variety of social classes and occupations.

The study was published by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (Smith, 2007).

The real reason some people enjoy listening to sad music.

Music that makes you cry gives pleasure, new research finds.

This might help to explain the enduring popularity of sad music.

The results come from a study that tested the cathartic effect of sad music.

Participants in the study were divided into two groups based on their responses to four questions:

“While listening to music, how frequently do you (1) get goose bumps, (2) feel shivers down your spine, (3) feel like weeping, and (4) get a lump in your throat?”

The researchers dubbed these the chills group (first two questions) and the tears groups (second two questions).

Then both groups listened to music that invoked their favourite feeling: either the chills or the tears.

The study’s authors explained the results:

“A song that induced chills was perceived as being both happy and sad whereas a song that induced tears was perceived as sad.

A tear-eliciting song was perceived as calmer than a chill-eliciting song.

These results show that tears involve pleasure from sadness and that they are psychophysiologically calming…”

It’s pretty easy to see why music that invokes chills would be pleasurable.

However, the study’s authors were slightly at a loss to explain what is so special about sad music:

“…sad songs induced strong pleasure.

It is difficult to account for why people feel sad music as pleasurable; however, the current results suggested that the benefit of cathartic tears might have a key role in the pleasure generated by sad music.”

One answer could be that music is such an ambiguous form, that it is easy to see your own life reflected in it.

The authors write:

“…listeners could identify with the sad character of the sad song and felt as if the singer knew their own sad experiences, making them feel understood and bringing pleasure…”

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports (Mori & Iwanaga, 2017).