Category: Happiness

Many people have taken up novelty activities during the pandemic.

Doing meaningful activities is the key to boosting happiness while social distancing and lockdown rules are in effect, a new study finds.

In contrast, keeping busy just for the sake of it does not boost happiness.

Indeed, mindless busywork tends to leave people feeling unsatisfied and unsettled.

It is better to continue with activities that were enjoyable before the pandemic — only in a a different form.

For example, dinner parties can be done virtually as can group exercise classes.

Dr Lauren Saling, study co-author, said:

“Busyness might be distracting but it won’t necessarily be fulfilling.

Rather, think about what activities you miss most and try and find a way of doing them.”

Researchers asked almost 100 people about their level of well-being before and during lockdown.

The results revealed that when people took up novelty lockdown activities, like baking and painting, just to keep busy, this was linked to more extreme emotions.

On the other hand, meaningful activities made people feel calmer.

Dr Saling said:

“Extreme emotions are not necessarily a good thing.

Emotions are a mechanism to make you change your behaviour.

But when you’re doing what you love, it makes sense that you feel more balanced — simply keeping busy isn’t satisfying.”

Simply being busy is not enough to stave off sadness.

Dr Saling said:

“The study showed positive and negative affect worked together, not as opposites.

Respondents who simply stayed busy during lockdown reported an increase in both positive and negative emotions.

This heightened emotionality will tend to shift you away from activity in general and towards meaningful activity.”

The study also revealed that people under 40 experienced the largest changes to their positive emotions after lockdown.

This might be because younger people have more difficulty finding suitable substitute activities.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Cohen et al., 2020).

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).

Why Americans are getting unhappier and the 10 happiest countries in the world.

Norway is the happiest country in the world, closely followed by Denmark and Iceland.

The United States, though, has become 5% unhappier over the past 10 years, despite people earning more money.

The trend in happiness is the reverse for most countries, which have become happier.

The US came 14th on the list and the United Kingdom ranked 19th.

Canadians lived up to their reputation by ranking at number 7 on the list, while Australia came 9th.

Dr John Helliwell, the study’s first author, said the problem for the US was too much focus on money and not enough on social factors:

“It’s the human things that matter.

If the riches make it harder to have frequent and trustworthy relationship between people, is it worth it?

The material can stand in the way of the human.”

Dr Jeffrey Sachs, study co-author, also thinks the US has a problem:

“We’re becoming more and more mean spirited.

And our government is becoming more and more corrupt. And inequality is rising.

It’s a long-term trend and conditions are getting worse.”

Meik Wiking, chief executive officer of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, commented on Norway beating Denmark (the previous number 1):

“Good for them.

I don’t think Denmark has a monopoly on happiness.

What works in the Nordic countries is a sense of community and understanding in the common good.”

Here is the full list of the 10 happiest countries in the world:

1. Norway 7.54
2. Denmark 7.42
3. Iceland 7.5
4. Switzerland 7.49
5. Finland 7.47
6. Netherlands 7.38
7. Canada 7.32
8. New Zealand 7.321
9. Australia 7.28
10. Sweden 7.28

And here are the saddest countries:

• Yemen 3.59
• South Sudan 3.59
• Liberia 3.53
• Guinea 3.51
• Togo 3.49
• Rwanda 3.47
• Syria 3.46
• Tanzania 3.35
• Burundi 2.91
• Central African Republic 2.69

It is no accident that the unhappiest countries in the world are also the poorest.

But many researchers agree that above a certain level, more money doesn’t equal more happiness.

The research was published in the World Happiness Report 2017.