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 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).

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).

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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