Category: Happiness

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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Study tests which memories can make us happy in the future.

People rarely miss a chance to record the highlights of their lives.

Phones, albums and social media sites are full to bursting with holiday snaps, wedding videos, baby photos, and all the rest.

But even the more mundane, everyday experiences can provide unexpected joy down the line, psychological research finds.

A series of studies, published in the journal Psychological Science, was inspired by the finding that we are surprisingly poor at predicting what will make us feel happy in the future (Zhang et al., 2014).

In one study, 135 students were asked to create a time capsule at the start of the summer which included:

• a recent conversation,
• the last social event they’d attended,
• an extract from a paper they’d written,
• and three favourite songs.

At the time, they also predicted how they’d feel about these items when they opened the capsule three months later.

Despite being relatively mundane, the students significantly under-estimated how surprised and curious they would be when they opened it.

They also found the capsule much more meaningful to them than they had predicted.

Ting Zhang of Harvard Business School who co-authored the research, said:

“We generally do not think about today’s ordinary moments as experiences that are worthy of being rediscovered in the future.

However, our studies show that we are often wrong: What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future — and more extraordinary than we might expect.”

Another study found that, in comparison, people were pretty accurate at judging the value of more stand-out events, like what they did on Valentine’s Day.

Taken together, the studies are a reminder of how we tend to undervalue the happiness we can get from everyday events.

Zhang continued:

“People find a lot of joy in rediscovering a music playlist from months ago or an old joke with a neighbor, even though those things did not seem particularly meaningful in the moment.

The studies highlight the importance of not taking the present for granted and documenting the mundane moments of daily life to give our future selves the joy of rediscovering them.”

This doesn’t mean that we should continuously take pictures of anything and everything, because that would interfere with enjoying the moment, Zhang warned.

Still, it’s worth bearing in mind our tendency to undervalue the pleasure we will get in the future from what seem like everyday moments right now.

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Giving makes us feel connected to others and reinforces a positive self-image.

The joy of giving does not fade like the joy of getting, new research reveals.

Usually when people repeat pleasant experiences, happiness fades after each one.

However, when people keep on giving to others, the happy feeling remains powerful.

In fact, people in the study were just as happy giving money away after the fifth time as they were the very first time.

It may be because giving makes us feel connected to others and reinforces a positive self-image.

Dr Ed O’Brien, the study’s first author, said:

“If you want to sustain happiness over time, past research tells us that we need to take a break from what we’re currently consuming and experience something new.

Our research reveals that the kind of thing may matter more than assumed: Repeated giving, even in identical ways to identical others, may continue to feel relatively fresh and relatively pleasurable the more that we do it.”

For the study, people were asked to either spend $5 per day on themselves or to give it away to others.

Those that spent the money on themselves saw a pattern familiar to psychologists.

The first day they got a kick out of it, but that quickly faded as the days past (this is called ‘hedonic adaptation’).

But, for those that gave their money away, the joy was just as strong on the fifth day as it was on the first.

Dr O’Brien said they tested all sorts of alternative explanations for their results.

For example, perhaps people thought longer and harder when giving the money away.

This did not explain the effect, though:

“We considered many such possibilities, and measured over a dozen of them.

None of them could explain our results; there were very few incidental differences between ‘get’ and ‘give’ conditions, and the key difference in happiness remained unchanged when controlling for these other variables in the analyses.”

The study is to be published in the journal Psychological Science (O’Brien & Kassirer, 2018).

Study on rituals before eating reveals why they should be observed.

Every family has their Christmas rituals: it may be who hands out the presents, what songs are played or sung, what is watched on TV or where you sit at the table.

While these may all have special significance as making it your particular Christmas, are they just regular routines that have evolved over the years or do they have a psychological impact?

In fact, a study finds, rituals performed before eating or drinking can indeed enhance the pleasure we get (Vohs et al., 2013).

Professor Kathleen Vohs, who led the study said:

“Whenever I order an espresso, I take a sugar packet and shake it, open the packet and pour a teeny bit of sugar in, and then taste.

It’s never enough sugar, so I then pour about half of the packet in. The thing is, this isn’t a functional ritual, I should just skip right to pouring in half the packet.”

In the study some people were given very specific instructions for how they should eat a chocolate bar:

 “Without unwrapping the chocolate bar, break it in half.

Unwrap half of the bar and eat it.

Then, unwrap the other half and eat it.”

Compared with another group who ate the bar how they wanted, those who performed this ritual rated the chocolate more highly and savoured it more.

So perform all those Christmas rituals just as you always have: that way you’ll enjoy and savour it more.

And if your Christmas lunch is a little late, then take heart from the second part of the study, which found that a longer wait after the ritual and before eating increased the pleasure even more…

…even when people were only eating carrots!

Happy Holidays!

• Read on: The 12 Psychology Studies of Christmas

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How to have a happy Christmas according to psychology, the best type of chocolate, when gifts go wrong and more…

1. How to have a happy Christmas

We all want a happy Christmas (or cultural equivalent), but how do we get it?

This research into the psychology of happiness and Christmas suggests that a focus on spending and consumption is associated with less happiness while family and religious experiences are associated with more happiness.

Not exactly earth-shattering, but satisfying to quote to little Billy when he complains about his presents.

2. What’s the best type of chocolate?

Should we find ourselves unhappy at Christmas (shock! horror!), perhaps a little chocolate will help rectify the situation?

But what to choose for maximum pleasure: normal chocolate, milk chocolate or dark chocolate?

For the answer we turn to the Chocolate Happiness Undergoing More Pleasantness study.

That’s right, the CHUMP study.

It’s a real thing, and it’s a randomised controlled trial.

Unfortunately the results were inconclusive so you’ll be forced to conduct your own research.

3. The psychology of when gifts go wrong

Giving and receiving gifts can be a no-win situation.

We assume people close to us know us well enough to get us good gifts.

So, when a bad gift comes it tends to reflect poorly on the relationship.

However, men and women seem to have different psychological defence mechanisms for dealing with poor gifts: women pretend the gift is just what they’ve always wanted whereas men are more likely to say what they think.

And then the arguments start.

4. Don’t give money!

And talking of poor gifts, this study finds money is probably a bad gift perhaps because it can’t send a meaningful message about intimacy and tends to send the wrong message about status differences.

Perhaps that’s why it seems to be OK to give money to children, but not adults.

5. It’s all about the giving

As you know, Christmas is not about the getting, it’s all about the giving.

This neat research found that spending money on others promotes our own happiness better than spending money on ourselves.

6. What do your decorations say about you?

Research in Christmas psychology suggests that decorations on a home’s exterior make other people think you’re more sociable and perhaps more integrated with the community and with its social activities.

7. The smell of Christmas psychology

It’s the season of rampant commercialism and the shops have gone into overdrive.

Christmas music has been playing everywhere for months, but have you encountered any Christmas smells?

According to this study Christmas music interacts with Christmas scents to boost our attitudes to stores and increase our likelihood of visiting them.

I can’t help wondering what a ‘Christmas smell’ is though…

8. Good food is mostly in the mind

We all do a lot of eating at Christmas but does the chef get enough credit?

Brian Wansink, a food psychologist, describes all sorts of cool tricks for boosting people’s perceptions of the food they are eating.

It’s all about harnessing the ‘halo effect‘.

Leave parsley and chervil lying around, talk about the organic turkey farmer you know, use evocative labels for the food you’re serving, tell them the wine is first rate, even if it’s all just talk.

9. Hallucinating

This isn’t alcohol related but a neat little study where participants were asked to listen to white noise and press a button when they heard Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’.

Almost one-third of the participants pressed the button at least once despite the noise being white-only with not a hint of Christmas.

To the researchers this suggested a link between auditory hallucinations and being prone to fantasy.

To me it suggests too much time spent in department stores.

10. Searching for the Christmas spirit

Again, not alcohol related but a asking the question: what exactly is the ‘Christmas spirit’?

According to this survey of 450 people, the Christmas spirit has five components:

1. bonhomie,
2. gay abandon,
3. ritual,
4. shopping
5. and little bit of dejection.

Yup, sounds about right to me.

11. Bad jokes

The unholy union of Christmas and bad jokes can be blamed on Londoner Thomas J. Smith who in 1847 invented the Christmas cracker.

Almost none of us find the jokes inside funny as an online survey of 2,000 people has confirmed.

The top rated joke raised a reluctant smile in just 12% of people.

For posterity here it is: “What do you call a penguin in the Sahara desert? Lost.”

*GROAN*

12. Santa Claus

This Christmas psychology study asks why we persist in promoting the myth of Santa Claus to children.

From the 318 parents surveyed, they found that it’s the myth and magic in the story that we like.

I don’t understand all this talk of myth and magic though, Santa Claus is clearly real.

Season’s Greetings to all!

Merry Christmas and season’s greetings to you all and thank you for the kind emails and support throughout the year.

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Are people who choose not to have children any less happy, or perhaps happier, than those who do have children?

Couples who choose not to have children are just as happy as those with children, a survey suggests.

Happiness in this study was measured in terms of life satisfaction.

Life satisfaction is an overall judgement about one’s life as opposed to moment-by-moment happiness.

In this sense, child-free couples are judging their lives as just as satisfying as those with children.

The term ‘child-free’ is intended to convey the idea of choice about child-bearing, explained Dr Jennifer Watling Neal, the study’s first author:

“Most studies haven’t asked the questions necessary to distinguish ‘child-free’ individuals — those who choose not to have children — from other types of nonparents.

Nonparents can also include the ‘not-yet-parents’ who are planning to have kids, and ‘childless’ people who couldn’t have kids due to infertility or circumstance.

Previous studies simply lumped all nonparents into a single category to compare them to parents.”

The conclusions come from a survey of 1,000 adults in Michigan.

Dr Zachary Neal, study co-author, explained the results:

“After controlling for demographic characteristics, we found no differences in life satisfaction and limited differences in personality traits between child-free individuals and parents, not-yet-parents, or childless individuals.

We also found that child-free individuals were more liberal than parents, and that people who aren’t child-free felt substantially less warm toward child-free individuals.”

The researchers were surprised by the number of child-free couples in Michigan, Dr Jennifer Watling Neal said:

“We found that more than one in four people in Michigan identified as child-free, which is much higher than the estimated prevalence rate in previous studies that relied on fertility to identify child-free individuals.

These previous studies placed the rate at only 2% to 9%.

We think our improved measurement may have been able to better capture individuals who identify as child-free.”

Child-free couples are happier

Other studies have suggested that child-free couples are happier, especially in the United States.

The happiness gap between parents and non-parents is greatest in the US across 22 industrialised countries.

This could be down to policies that are relatively unsupportive for families.

Many parents will naturally disagree with the finding that non-parents are happier.

One reason parents feel that children make them happier is the happiness boost from having a first and second child (but not a third — by then it is commonplace).

One study has found that it provides a happiness boost equivalent to getting married or getting a new job.

It is this increase in happiness early on that gives the impression that having children is linked to more happiness.

The boost is relatively short-lived, probably lasting only through the first year of the child’s life.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Neal & Neal, 2021).