Category: Happiness

It turns out that opposites do not attract, women’s libido is just as strong as men, and more…

Many of people’s beliefs about dating, sex and marriage are plain wrong, a new book claims.

Professor Matthew D. Johnson, a clinical psychologist and author of the new book, said:

“People assume that they know how relationships work.

It feels like love should be intuitive and not something that can be studied scientifically.

Not so!

Scientists have learned a lot about intimate relationships – much of it counterintuitive.”

Here are ten of the myths:

1. Myth: Opposites attract.
2. Myth: Having children brings couples closer.
3. Myth: Men have a stronger libido than women.
4. Myth: Having access to innumerable online profiles of potential partners increases the likelihood of finding Mr. or Ms. Right.
5. Myth: Children raised by other-sex couples are better off than children raised by same-sex couples.
6. Myth: Premarital counseling or relationship education programs prevent discord and divorce.
7. Myth: Good communication is the key to a happy relationship.
8. Myth: Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
9. Myth: Couples who are “matched” by online dating services are more likely to have satisfying relationships.
10. Myth: Living together before marriage is a good way to determine whether you’re with the right person.

There are, of course, many good reasons for couples to live together before marriage, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will help them choose the right partner.

Professor Johnson explained:

“People think that it makes sense to do a trial run.

‘Let’s see how well we get along when we’re living together.’

What could be more intuitive, right?

But, it turns out that living together before engagement increases the chances of dissatisfaction and divorce down the road.

Why?

The current thinking is that couples who move in together for convenience may end up drifting into marriage instead of making a purposeful decision to get married.

For example, maybe a couple is already spending several nights a week together and they don’t see the reason to write two separate rent checks every month, so they move in together.

Then, they’re living together for a while and their family starts asking: ‘When are you two getting married?’

Pretty soon the inertia of their relationship pulls them into marriage as opposed to making a deliberate decision to marry.”

The book “Great Myths of Intimate Relationships: Dating, Sex, and Marriage (Great Myths of Psychology)” is published by Wiley-Blackwell.

Study may also offer key insights into depression.

A massive study including hundreds of thousands of people has discovered the genetic variants which (partly) determine our happiness.

Dr Alexis Frazier-Wood, one of the study’s authors, said:

“We report that we found three genetic variants associated with subjective well-being – how happy a person thinks or feels about his or her life.

We also found two genes harboring variants associated with depressive symptoms and 11 genes where variation was associated with neuroticism.”

The study involved analysing data from many other studies.

The meta-analysis pooled data from 298,000 people.

Of course the genes themselves do not totally control how happy we feel.

Dr. Daniel Benjamin, one of the study’s authors, explained:

“Genetics is only one factor that influences these psychological traits [including happiness].

The environment is at least as important, and it interacts with the genetic effects.”

Professor Meike Bartels, another of the study’s authors, said:

“This study is both a milestone and a new beginning: A milestone because we are now certain that there is a genetic aspect to happiness and a new beginning because the three variants that we know are involved account for only a small fraction of the differences between human beings.

We expect that many variants will play a part.”

Locating these variants will also allow us to better study the interplay between nature and nurture, as the environment is certainly responsible – to some extent – for differences in the way people experience happiness.”

Professor Bartels continued:

“The genetic overlap with depressive symptoms that we have found is also a breakthrough.

This shows that research into happiness can also offer new insights into the causes of one of the greatest medical challenges of our time: depression.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Genetics (Okbay et al., 2016).

Before you go hell-for-leather for your next raise, consider this…

Getting more money does not make most people happier, a new study concludes.

However, losing money does make people less happy.

Losses matter much more, though, for people with a certain personality type.

Dr Christopher Boyce, who led the research, explained:

“It is often assumed that as our income rises so does our life satisfaction, however, we have discovered this is not the case.

What really matters is when income is lost and this is only important for people who are highly conscientious.”

The research involved over 18,000 people who were followed over a 9-year period.

No matter what people’s personality, increases in income did not increase their satisfaction with life, the scientists found.

People did get less satisfied with life, however, when they lost money.

Dr Boyce said:

“Continually increasing our income is not an important factor for achieving greater happiness and well-being for most people living in economically developed countries.

Instead, we should aim for financial stability to achieve greater happiness, while protecting those individuals who experience negative income shocks.”

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Boyce et al., 2016).

Money mind image from Shutterstock

People listen to their own voices, at least in part, to learn how they feel, study finds.

Listening to our own voices helps us discover how we feel, new research finds.

We take cues from what we hear in our own voice and this feeds back into our emotional state.

So, trying to change how your voice sounds may help you feel happier.

The conclusions come from a study which fed back people’s own voice to them, while changing the tone of it slightly.

Sometimes researchers made people’s voice sound happier, sometimes sad, and sometimes no adjustment was made.

People in the study were not aware that their voices were being manipulated.

The results suggest that people listen to their own voices, at least in part, to learn how they feel.

Dr Petter Johansson, one of the study’s authors, said:

“The relationship between the expression and experience of emotions has been a long-standing topic of disagreement in the field of psychology.

This is the first evidence of direct feedback effects on emotional experience in the auditory domain.”

The study was published in the journal PNAS (Aucouturier et al., 2015).

Voice image from Shutterstock

Unhappiness has frequently been linked to a shorter life — but is it really true?

A large new study suggests being happier does not contribute to longevity.

In fact, it’s more likely that being unhealthy causes unhappiness.

That is why unhappiness has been frequently linked in the past to a shorter life.

Dr Bette Liu, who led the study, said:

“Illness makes you unhappy, but unhappiness itself doesn’t make you ill.

We found no direct effect of unhappiness or stress on mortality, even in a ten-year study of a million women.”

The conclusions come from the UK Million Women Study, which asked women about their health, happiness and lifestyles.

Five out of six women said they were generally happy, while the rest said they were generally unhappy.

People who were most unhappy tended be deprived, single, smokers who did little exercise.

After taking account of their lifestyles, though, happiness was not linked to whether they died over the next 10 years.

Professor Sir Richard Peto, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Many still believe that stress or unhappiness can directly cause disease, but they are simply confusing cause and effect.

Of course people who are ill tend to be unhappier than those who are well, but the UK Million Women Study shows that happiness and unhappiness do not themselves have any direct effect on death rates.”

The study was published in The Lancet (Liu et al., 2015).

The study compared the effects of material purchases, like portable speakers and coffee makers, with experiential purchases, like tickets to a hockey game or a weekend ski trip.

Material purchases can bring as much happiness as experiential ones — it’s just of a different type, a new study finds.

The finding is fascinating because until now studies have suggested that experiential purchases are superior.

Experiential purchases include things like holidays, concert tickets or visits to a spa.

Material purchases, though, can provide just as much pleasure in the long-run, the new research suggests.

For the study, people were asked to keep track of their levels of happiness five times a day over two weeks.

The study compared the effects of material purchases, like portable speakers and coffee makers, with experiential purchases, like tickets to a hockey game or a weekend ski trip.

The results showed that experiential purchases provided short intense bursts of pleasure which tended to fade away.

In contrast, material purchases brought repeated smaller doses of happiness over the weeks.

However, when people looked back at their purchases six weeks later, it was the experiences that gave them more satisfaction.

So, perhaps experiences still have the edge.

Mr Aaron Weidman, the study’s first author, said:

“The decision of whether to buy a material thing or a life experience may therefore boil down to what kind of happiness one desires.

Consider a holiday shopper deciding between tickets to a concert or a new couch in the living room.

The concert will provide an intense thrill for one spectacular night, but then it will end, and will no longer provide momentary happiness, aside from being a happy memory.

In contrast, the new couch will never provide a thrilling moment to match the concert, but will keep the owner snug and comfortable each day throughout the winter months.”

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science (Weidman & Dunn, 2015).

Present image from Shutterstock

Some Chinese children are left with relatives while their parents travel for work.

Children living without their parents for a period may suffer delayed brain development, a new study finds.

The Chinese research looked at children who were left behind with relatives while their parents travelled for work.

Some parents left home for months at a time, others for years.

The shift is particularly acute in China where so many workers migrate for better jobs.

Mr Yuan Xiao, one of the study’s authors, said:

“We wanted to study the brain structure in these left-behind children.

Previous studies support the hypothesis that parental care can directly affect brain development in offspring.

However, most prior work is with rather severe social deprivation, such as orphans.

We looked at children who were left behind with relatives when the parents left to seek employment far from home.”

Brains scans were given to 38 ‘left-behind’ children between 7- and 13-years-of-age.

These were compared with children who lived with their parents.

Left-behind children had more gray matter in areas of the brain related to memory and the emotions.

The researchers think this may be a result of insufficient pruning of synapses, the connections between neurons.

Synaptic pruning is thought to be a vital developmental stage in adolescence.

Children who had higher gray matter volume in these areas tended to have lower IQs, the researchers found.

Mr Xiao said:

“Our study provides the first empirical evidence showing that the lack of direct parental care alters the trajectory of brain development in left-behind children.

Public health efforts are needed to provide additional intellectual and emotional support to children left behind by parents.”

The study was presented at the Radiological Society of North America.

Child image from Shutterstock