Category: Happiness

Could changes in society by behind shifts in happiness seen in latest research?

Americans over 30 are less happy than they used to be, new research finds.

But teens and young adults in the US are happier than previous generations.

It used to be that older people had a happiness advantage, but that could be disappearing.

That’s the result of surveys of 1.3 million Americans aged 13 to 96 carried out between 1972 and 2014.

Professor Jean M. Twenge, the study’s first author, said:

“Our current culture of pervasive technology, attention-seeking, and fleeting relationships is exciting and stimulating for teens and young adults, but may not provide the stability and sense of community that mature adults require.”

The number of people over 30 who said they were “very happy” has declined from 38% in the 1970s down to 23% in the 2010s.

The equivalent percentage for those aged 18 to 29 has gone up from 28% to 30% over the same timespan.

Teens have also become happier, on average, over the same period.

Professor Twenge said:

“American culture has increasingly emphasized high expectations and following your dreams– things that feel good when you’re young.

However, the average mature adult has realized that their dreams might not be fulfilled, and less happiness is the inevitable result.

Mature adults in previous eras might not have expected so much, but expectations are now so high they can’t be met.”

This drop in happiness was already detected in 2008, but only for women.

Professor Twenge said:

“A previous study in 2008 got quite a bit of attention when it found that women’s happiness had declined relative to men’s.

We now find declines in both men’s and women’s happiness, especially after 2010.”

The study was published in the journal Social Psychological Personality Science (Twenge et al., 2015).

Happiness image from Shutterstock

It reduces depression, ADHD and fights cancer, obesity and more…

Being in nature relaxes the mind, which in turn enhances the immune system, new research finds.

This may explain why nature has a remarkably beneficial effect on a wide range of diseases including depression, ADHD, cancer, diabetes, obesity and many more.

Dr Ming Kuo, who carried out the research, explained how nature helps:

“When we feel completely safe, our body devotes resources to long-term investments that lead to good health outcomes — growing, reproducing, and building the immune system.

When we are in nature in that relaxed state, and our body knows that it’s safe, it invests resources toward the immune system.”

Being happy and relaxed are obviously good for your immune system in any case.

So relaxing indoor activities are also good for you, but probably not to the extent of being in nature, Dr Kuo said:

“If you are absorbed and relaxed, chances are your parasympathetic system is happy and your immune system is going to get a boost.

That said, these enjoyable indoor activities don’t provide the phytoncides, mycobacterium vaccae, negative air ions, vitamin D-producing sunlight, and other active ingredients found outdoors.

So we’d expect a smaller boost than you’d get from being in nature.”

To reach these conclusions, Dr Kuo reviewed a large range of studies on the connection between nature and good health.

She described nature as a sort of magical multivitamin:

“I pulled every bit of the research in this area together that I could find, and was surprised to realize I could trace as many as 21 possible pathways between nature and good health–and even more surprised to realize that all but two of the pathways shared a single common denominator.

The realization that there are so many pathways helps explain not only how nature promotes health, but also why nature has such huge, broad effects on health.

Nature doesn’t just have one or two active ingredients.

It’s more like a multivitamin that provides us with all sorts of the nutrients we need.

That’s how nature can protect us from all these different kinds of diseases–cardiovascular, respiratory, mental health, musculoskeletal, etc. — simultaneously.”

The research was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology (Kuo, 2015).

Mental plasters image from Shutterstock

Why exercise feels so rewarding.

The so-called ‘runner’s high’ is down to more than just endorphins, a new study finds.

A neurotransmitter called dopamine — which is involved in motivation — is also responsible for the feeling of well-being.

Professor Stephanie Fulton, the study’s lead author, said:

“We discovered that the rewarding effects of endurance activity are modulated by leptin, a key hormone in metabolism.

Leptin inhibits physical activity through dopamine neurons in the brain.”

It’s fascinating that leptin — known as the satiety hormone — is involved in both exercise and food.

The theory is that in the past humans had to run to increase their chance of getting food — hence the connection.

Indeed there is even a link between leptin and athletic ability, as Dr Maria Fernanda Fernandes, the study’s first author, explained:

“Previous studies have clearly shown a correlation between leptin and marathon run times.

The lower leptin levels are, the better the performance.

Our study on mice suggests that this molecule is also involved in the rewarding effects experienced when we do physical exercise.

We speculate that for humans, low leptin levels increase motivation to exercise and make it easier to get a runner’s high.”

In the research, some mice were genetically engineered to suppress the effects of leptin.

The results showed that these mice ran less, supporting the connection between leptin and exercise.

Effectively, the body’s hormones are telling the brain — if I’m hungry, it’s fun to run and get some more food.

The research was published in the journal Cell Metabolism (Fernandes et al., 2015).

Runner image from Shutterstock

Parents are often mistaken when guessing how happy their children are.

Fifteen and sixteen-year-olds are happier than their parents think, a new study finds.

However, ten and eleven-year-olds are not as happy as their parents think.

The children themselves reported being equally happy in both age-groups.

The difference is all down to how parents judge their children.

Parents of adolescents tend to be less happy than parents of younger children.

This leads them to assume their adolescent children are less happy.

The culprit is the ‘egocentric bias’: a tendency to rely too much on your own feelings to assess those of other people.

The conclusions come from a study of 357 children and adolescents in Spain, along with their parents.

The study also found that, on average, across both age-groups, children weren’t as happy as their parents assumed.

Dr Belén López-Pérez, the study’s first author, said:

“Being unable to read children’s happiness appropriately may increase misunderstanding between parents and children/adolescents, which has been shown to have negative consequences for parent-child relationships.

Furthermore, parents might not be able to provide the appropriate emotional support or attend to their children’s needs accurately.”

The research was published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology (López-Pérez & Wilson, 2015).

Grumpy child image from Shutterstock

How people feel, on average, most of the time, wherever they live in the world.

People are, on average, in a mildly good mood most of the time all around the world, a new study finds.

Researchers have reviewed evidence drawn from many different nations — rich and poor, stable and unstable.

As long as people have not just experienced a strong emotional event, even those in poor circumstances are likely to be in a mild positive mood.

The study’s authors write:

“According to our hypothesis, humans have been evolutionarily selected to have a positive mood offset, and the higher-than-neutral level of happiness is genetically transmitted from parents to children, while chronic depression and lack of positive affect have been selected out.

People are happy most of the time because they are descended from ancestors who were happier and engaged in fitness-maximizing behavior more frequently than their neighbors who were less happy.

Current good and bad events can move people temporarily away from their baseline levels, but people will return toward that level over time.

Long-term bad and good circumstances can move the baseline up or down, but only within a range.”

The reason being mildly happy is beneficial to our future?

Being happy makes you more likely to plan for the future, be creative, be social and, crucially, to mate.

The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Review (Diener et al., 2015).

• Read on: 10 Easy Activities Science Has Proven Will Make You Happier Today

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Answers to: whether happiness comes with age, whether it is better to be unemployed than in a job you hate, and more…

Americans are generally a pretty happy group.

People in the US are six times more likely to say they are happy than unhappy, according to a new poll by CivicScience.

Here are a few wise quotes about happiness from some big names.

Do their bon mots ring true?

“There is an unspeakable dawn in happy old age.” – Victor Hugo

True.

People really do get happier as they get older.

In the survey, people over 65 were 14 times more likely to be happy than unhappy.

From the age of around 30, people report feeling progressively happier, on average.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” ― Confucius

True.

The survey even found evidence that it may be better to be out of work than to be in a job that you hate.

Although, obviously, neither situations is ideal.

“Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.” ― Charlotte Brontë

True.

Married people consistently report being 20% happier than unmarried people.

There’s some evidence that parents are happier than non-parents.

“Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.” — Françoise Sagan

True up to a point.

And that point in the US is around $100,000 in earnings per year.

After that, more money seems to do little for happiness — indeed more may make you less happy.

If you’ve got enough money to be able to go to an upscale restaurant every now and then or to buy yourself the odd trinket, then perhaps you’ve got enough?

“Happy girls are the prettiest.” ― Audrey Hepburn

Sort of true, but not as true as you might imagine.

People who are more attractive do repeatedly report being slightly happier than their less bodily-advantaged peers.

But it may partly depend where those girls (or boys) live.

In the city where it’s more about looks, being attractive may make you happier.

In the countryside, though, the link is less clear-cut.

(Alternatively, if Audrey meant that looking happy increases your attractivity, then: DEFINITELY TRUE!)

“To keep the body in good health is a duty… otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.” – Buddha

True.

You can’t argue with Buddha, can you?

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” ― Sylvia Plath

Plath not exactly known for her quotes about happiness.

Nevertheless: true.

Get out into nature, travel and explore.

All were linked to higher levels of happiness in the poll.

About the poll

The poll included data from 262,000 Americans.

They were asked about their lifestyles, demographics and many other characteristics.

Quotes image from Shutterstock

The wonderful power of awe, the source of life’s most emotional moments. Plus: you really can smell happiness…

1. Awe expands time and increases well-being

Awe makes people more patient, less materialistic and more open to helping out others.

This happens, authors of a recent study think, because awe slows down our subjective experience of time.

The researchers described their conclusions:

“People increasingly report feeling time starved, and that feeling exacts a toll on health and well-being.

Drawing on research showing that being in the present moment elongates time perception, we predicted and found that experiencing awe, relative to other states, caused people to perceive that they had more time available and lessened impatience.

Furthermore, by expanding time perception, awe, compared with other states, led participants to more strongly desire to spend time helping other people and to partake in experiential goods over material ones.”

2. Awe protects mind and body

The wonderful effects of awe do not end with expanding time and increasing well-being.

Positive emotions, especially the feeling of awe, have been linked to lower levels of inflammatory cytokines by a recent study.

The research suggests that the positive feeling from enjoying the beauty of nature or getting lost in a painting or symphony can actually help protect the body against heart disease, arthritis, depression, and even Alzheimer’s disease.

3. Why happiness makes people cry

When you think about it, these are pretty weird:

• Spouses cry when reunited with a soldier returning from war.
• Lottery winners disintegrate into floods of tears.
• Soccer players scream when they score the winning goal.
• Teenage girls scream and cry at a Justin Bieber concert.

Shedding tears might seem a strange response to happiness, but a recent study suggests that it helps people cope with overwhelming emotions.

Crying tears of joy may be the mind’s way of restoring emotional equilibrium, according to the study.

4. All human communication is positive (that’s on average!)

Apparently, human communication is pretty happy, overall.

Across multiple languages and in many modes — movie subtitles, music lyrics, Russian literature — human communication skews towards the positive, a recent study found.

Professor Peter Dodds, a mathematician and the study’s lead author, said:

“We looked at ten languages, and in every source we looked at, people use more positive words than negative ones.”

While some sources were more positive than others, with Chinese books being the least positive and Spanish-language websites being the most positive, all the samples averaged above the neutral point.

This was even the case for English language song lyrics, which were ranked 22 out of 24 categories for happiness, with only Chinese novels and Korean subtitles being less happy.

5. Men and women process emotions in different ways

Women rate emotional images as more stimulating and are more likely to remember them than men, a recent study found.

While strong emotions tend to boost memory for both men and women, this neuroimaging study may help explain why women often outperform men on memory tests.

Women found the emotional pictures — and especially the negative pictures — more stimulating than the men.

Dr Klara Spalek, the study’s first author, said:

“This result would support the common belief that women are more emotionally expressive than men.”

6. A common painkiller also kills pleasure

Acetaminophen — also known as Tylenol (or paracetamol outside the US) — kills positive emotions, a study has found.

Studies have already shown that the painkiller blunts both physical and psychological pain.

But this is the first time anyone has thought to test the popular painkiller’s effect on both negative and positive emotions.

Geoffrey Durso, the study’s lead author, said:

“This means that using Tylenol or similar products might have broader consequences than previously thought.

Rather than just being a pain reliever, acetaminophen can be seen as an all-purpose emotion reliever.”

7. Genes make some people more emotionally reactive

Carriers of a certain genetic variation experience positive and negative emotions more strongly, a recent study suggests.

The genetic variant is carried by around 50% of Caucasians — although the percentage varies between ethnicities.

The feelings are accompanied by greater activation in regions of the brain linked to emotional processing.

The study may help to explain why some people are particularly susceptible to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

8. Life’s highest highs and lowest lows come from…

When you look back over your life, which moments have given you the most pain — and which the most pleasure?

Some might guess it’s individual achievements, like getting a promotion, or individual failures, like failing an exam.

In fact, research suggests that it’s the highs and lows of social relationships that provide the highest highs and lowest lows.

Dr. Shira Gabriel, whose study this finding is based on, said:

“Most of us spend much of our time and effort focused on individual achievements such as work, hobbies and schooling.

However this research suggests that the events that end up being most important in our lives, the events that bring us the most happiness and also carry the potential for the most pain, are social events — moments of connecting to others and feeling their connections to us.”

9. It’s emotions that make diets hard to follow

As every dieter knows, planning a diet and actually following through are two completely different things.

The reason is that most people think their conscious thoughts and intentions will change their behaviour, when in fact they don’t.

What really drives a lot of actual, real-world dieting behaviour is the emotions.

Dr Marc Kiviniemi, a public health researcher at the University at Buffalo, explained:

“The crux of the disconnect is the divide between thoughts and feelings.

Planning is important, but feelings matter, and focusing on feelings and understanding their role can be a great benefit.

If you’re sitting back conceiving a plan you may think rationally about the benefits of eating healthier foods, but when you’re in the moment, making a decision, engaging in a behavior, it’s the feelings associated with that behavior that may lead you to make different decisions from those you planned to make.”

10. You really can smell happiness

People communicate their happiness to others through their perspiration.

There are chemical compounds in sweat, it turns out, that can be detected by others.

Previous studies have shown that we can smell fear and disgust in sweat — but happiness has been more of a gray area.

Professor Gün Semin, a psychologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who led the study, said:

“Our study shows that being exposed to sweat produced under happiness induces a simulacrum of happiness in receivers, and induces a contagion of the emotional state.”

Woman and sunset image from Shutterstock

Many self-help books claim that more sex in a relationship makes couples happier, but is it really true?

Contrary to the claims of many self-help books, couples that have more sex are NOT happier, a new experiment finds.

When couples had more sex, researchers found, they reported wanting and enjoying it less — indeed their happiness was slightly reduced.

The conclusions come from a study of 64 heterosexual, married couples between the ages of 35 and 65.

The study asked some couples to double the amount of sex they had, while the rest were given no instruction.

The results showed that couples that had more sex were slightly less happy.

They also enjoyed the sex less and wanted it less.

Dr Tamar Krishnamurti, one of the study’s authors, said:

“The desire to have sex decreases much more quickly than the enjoyment of sex once it’s been initiated.

Instead of focusing on increasing sexual frequency to the levels they experienced at the beginning of a relationship, couples may want to work on creating an environment that sparks their desire and makes the sex that they do have even more fun.”

The researchers were open to alternative interpretations of their study, as good scientists should be.

Professor George Loewenstein, who led the study, said:

“Perhaps couples changed the story they told themselves about why they were having sex, from an activity voluntarily engaged in to one that was part of a research study.

If we ran the study again, and could afford to do it, we would try to encourage subjects into initiating more sex in ways that put them in a sexy frame of mind, perhaps with baby-sitting, hotel rooms or Egyptian sheets, rather than directing them to do so.”

Despite the study’s results, Professor Loewenstein thinks many couples can benefit from having more sex — as long as sex is initiated in the right way.

Nevertheless, the results fly in the face of a common finding that those who have more sex are happier.

However, the results of other studies may be caused by people who are happier tending to have more sex, rather than that more sex causes more happiness.

The study was published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (Loewenstein et al., 2015).

Kiss image from Shutterstock