Happiness - Page 24 of 26

Does Keeping Busy Make Us Happy?

People dread being bored and will do almost anything to keep busy, but does keeping busy really make us happy?

Much of modern civilisation can be credited to our very human habit of keeping busy.

Science, art, philosophy, technology, commerce and all the rest: it’s not just necessity that’s the mother of invention, it’s also boredom.

But there is a tension in us between our desire for activity and inactivity. Given a choice we’ll remain idle—whether happily or otherwise—but at the same time we take almost any excuse to be busy. And let’s be honest, some of these excuses are pretty flimsy (how else can you explain train-spotting, shoe shopping or golf?).

This tension is very nicely demonstrated in a recent study by Hsee et al. (2010). When given the choice, participants preferred to do nothing, unless given the tiniest possible reason to do something: a piece of candy. Then they sprang into action.

Not only did people only need the smallest inducement to keep busy, they were also happier when doing something rather than nothing. It’s as if people understand that being busy will keep them happier, but they need an excuse of some kind.

A wandering mind

So the secret to a happy life is to keep busy, right? Well not quite. Unfortunately just being busy isn’t enough. That’s because our minds can wander just as easily when we’re busy as when we’re idle. Even when busy we’re often elsewhere in our minds.

We know this because Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) sampled the experience of 2,250 US adults at random intervals. Each time participants reported, through their smartphone, how they were feeling and what they were doing. Almost half the time people were asked, at that moment their minds were wandering from whatever they were doing—43% to pleasant topics, 27% to unpleasant topics and the rest to neutral topics.

The only time their minds weren’t wandering was when they were having sex.

The interesting thing was that both neutral and unpleasant topics, which comprised 57% of mind wandering, made people considerably less happy than their current activity, whatever it was. And even when thinking happy thoughts, they were no happier than when fully engaged with their current activity.

As Killingsworth and Gilbert conclude:

“…a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost.”

Overall this study found that what people were thinking was a better predictor of how happy they felt than what they were doing.

This all serves to back up the idea that being mindful is a good thing. Paying attention to whatever you are doing right now is likely to make you happier than letting your mind wander off.

Similarly, finding a reason to be active and engaged in whatever it is, is also likely to make us feel better than sitting around idle, even though our natural tendency is towards idleness. So being busy does make us happier, as long as we can stop our minds wandering.

Image credit: beast love

How Money Restricts Life’s Pleasures

When you live in luxurious surroundings, have experienced the best restaurants and stayed in the most lavish hotels, it becomes more difficult to savour the simple things in life.

Spare a thought for the super-rich, the poor darlings can’t appreciate a tin of spam, a lump of coal or a cardboard box the way you and I can.

It’s a mystery why money doesn’t make us happy, because it feels like it damn well should. With money we can buy whatever we want, go wherever we want, even be whoever we want. Surely that should make us happy?

And yet study after study shows that in affluent societies money might bring satisfaction, but it doesn’t bring much happiness.

Perhaps, as people become really rich, they don’t choose more enjoyable activities (i.e. they stay in the office working)? Perhaps material goods just can’t make us happy? Or perhaps there is always someone richer, spoiling the party with their more impressive wealth?

Failure to savour

There’s something missing from these accounts, though, and it’s the old argument that when you live in luxurious surroundings, have experienced the best restaurants and received the most lavish gifts, it becomes more difficult to savour the simple things in life.

Supporting this account, a new study published in Psychological Science has found that participants were less able to savour positive emotions both when they were richer themselves and when they were prompted to think about wealth by looking at a picture of money (Quoidbach et al., 2010).

In a second study participants who were cued with the idea of money didn’t enjoy or savour a chocolate bar as much as those not reminded of money. When participants looked at a picture of money beforehand, the average time spent eating the chocolate went down from 45 seconds to 32 seconds. Levels of enjoyment reported afterwards also went down, from 5 to 3.6 on a scale of 1 to 7, where 7 is maximum enjoyment.

And this is only the effect of looking at a picture of money for a few seconds. Think what our society, with its constant reminders of opulence in both public and private, are doing to us. It’s a wonder we can enjoy anything.

Relativistic psychology

This is just one facet of our mind’s habit of comparing everything with everything else, from complex concepts like money right down to the most basic perceptual level. Like when you open your eyes in the morning, or turn up the volume on your mp3 player; for a moment the senses are overloaded but soon the contrast fades as the mind acclimatises.

It’s easy to forget that things aren’t ‘loud’ or ‘bright’, they are just ‘louder’ or ‘brighter’ than something else. Money is just one more thing that our minds treat in this relativistic fashion.

So spare a thought for the super-rich, the poor darlings can’t appreciate a tin of spam, a lump of coal or a cardboard box in quite the same way that you and I can. It’s not much of a silver lining I’ll grant you, but it’s something to hold on to.

Image credit: Darrren Hester

The Psychological Immune System

We get over bad moods much sooner than we predict, thanks to the covert work of the psychological immune system.

One of the most incredible things about the human mind is its resilience. Let’s face it, life can be pretty depressing at times, and yet people generally push on much the same as they always have, sometimes even with a spring in their step and a smile on their face.

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How to Choose Between Experiential and Material Purchases

Experiential purchases like restaurant trips or theatre tickets are likely to beat material purchases like clothes or electronics for our long-term happiness.

If you decided to spend $100 on your happiness, would you buy something experiential like a meal out or something material like an item of clothing? Research covered here recently suggested that for long-term happiness experiences tend to beat possessions. But Leonardo Nicolao and colleagues at the University of Texas argue in the Journal of Consumer Research that this research doesn’t tell us the whole picture (Nicolao et al., 2009).

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12 Laws of the Emotions

Explore the psychology of the emotions with these 12 laws.

We tend to think of our emotions as having laws unto themselves, but one psychological researcher has suggested that our emotions do follow certain general rules.

Professor Nico Frijda puts forward twelve laws of the emotions (Fridja, 2006). As with most laws there are exceptions, but these have been synthesised from years of psychological research and hold true much of the time.

1. The Law of Situational Meaning

The first law is simply that emotions derive from situations. Generally the same types of situation will elicit the same types of emotional response. Loss makes us grieve, gains make us happy and scary things make us fearful (mostly anyway – see all the other laws).

2. The Law of Concern

We feel because we care about something, when we have some interest in what happens, whether it’s to an object, ourselves, or another person. Emotions arise from these particular goals, motivations or concerns. When we are unconcerned we don’t feel anything.

3. The Law of Apparent Reality

Whatever seems real to us, can elicit an emotional response. In other words how we appraise or interpret a situation governs the emotion we feel (compare with laws 11 & 12). The reason poor movies, plays or books don’t engage us emotionally is because, in some sense, we fail to detect truth. Similarly it’s difficult to get emotional about things that aren’t obvious, right in front of us. For example grief may not strike when we are told about the death of loved one, but only once it becomes real to us in some way – say when we pick up the phone to call them, forgetting they are gone.

4, 5 & 6. The Laws of Change, Habituation and Comparative Feeling

The law of habituation means that in life we get used to our circumstances whatever they are (mostly true, but see laws 7 & 8). The emotions, therefore, respond most readily to change. This means that we are always comparing what is happening to a relatively steady frame of reference (what we are used to). As a result our emotions tend to respond most readily to changes that are relative to this frame of reference.

7. The Law of Hedonic Asymmetry

There are certain awful circumstances to which we can never become accustomed. If things are bad enough, it is impossible to escape negative feelings like fear or anxiety. On the other hand positive emotions always fade over time. No matter how much we are in love, how big the lottery win, or how copious the quantities of drugs consumed, positive emotions like pleasure always slip away.

8. The Law of Conservation of Emotional Momentum

Time doesn’t heal all wounds – or if it does, it only does so indirectly. Events can retain their emotional power over the years unless we re-experience and re-evaluate them. It’s this re-experiencing and consequent re-definition that reduces the emotional charge of an event. This is why events that haven’t been re-evaluated – say, failing an exam or being rejected by a potential lover – retain their emotional power across the decades.

9. The Law of Closure

The way we respond to our emotions tends to be absolute. They often lead immediately to actions of one kind or another, and they will brook no discussion (but see laws 10, 11 & 12). In other words emotional responses are closed to goals other than their own or judgements that can mitigate the response. An emotion seizes us and send us resolutely down one path, until later that is, when a different emotion sends us down the opposite path.

10. The Law of Care for Consequences

People naturally consider the consequences of their emotions and modify them accordingly. For example anger may provoke violent feelings towards another, but generally people refrain from stabbing each other willy-nilly. Instead they will shout, hit their head on the wall or just silently fume. Emotions may absolutely dictate a type of response, but people do modulate the size of that response (usually!).

11 & 12. Laws of the Lightest Load and the Greatest Gain

The emotional impact of an event or situation depends on its interpretation. Putting a different ‘spin’ on a situation can change the feeling. The law of the lightest load means people are particularly motivated to use re-interpretations to reduce negative emotions. For example we might reduce the fear of the credit crunch by generating the illusion we won’t be affected. The exact reverse is also true: whenever a situation can be reinterpreted for a positive emotional gain, it will be. For example anger can be used to make others back down, grief attracts help and fear may stop us rashly attempting difficult or dangerous tasks.

Exploring the emotions

You may not agree with all of these ‘laws’, for example this is quite an individually based account of emotion, and tends to downplay the social aspects of emotion. Nevertheless it is an excellent starting point which provides a very useful way of thinking about emotions, and helps pave the way for examining individual emotions.

[Image credit: Victor Bezrukov]

7 Reasons Leaders Fail

Around two-thirds of workers say the most stressful aspect of their jobs is their immediate boss or line manager.

Around two-thirds of workers say the most stressful aspect of their jobs is their immediate boss, their line manager (Hogan, 2006). While this will come as no surprise to most, this statistic suggests a massive number of unhappy working relationships. So, does this mean that leadership is failing on a massive scale? Well, not exactly…

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Weather Has Little Effect on Mood

Surely sunshine and blue skies lift the spirits while black clouds and torrential rain send them plummeting? Research suggests the answer might not be so intuitive.

Some psychological questions appear so obvious they are barely worth asking. Take the link between the weather and average mood. Surely sunshine and blue skies lift the spirits while black clouds and torrential rain send them plummeting?

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Happiness Could Add 10 Years to Your Life

It seems only common sense that happiness should be good for our physical health, but psychological research has sent mixed signals in recent years.

It seems only common sense that happiness should be good for our physical health, but psychological research has sent mixed signals in recent years. Some studies have found it is, while others have found no effect, and some even a negative effect.

In a new article published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, Professor Ruut Veenhoven of Erasmus University offers a possible solution to this question. In reviewing 30 studies, he finds that the neutral and negative findings for the effects of happiness on health are in studies on people who were ill at the time.

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4 Ways We Fail to Choose Happiness

There are two requirements for decision-making that will bring happiness in the future.

There are two requirements for decision-making that will bring happiness in the future. First we need to know how a particular decision will make us feel in the future. To do this accurately we need to avoid the systematic biases that affect how we predict our future emotional states.

This is no mean feat in itself – the distinction bias, projection bias, impact bias, memory bias and belief biases are tricky customers.

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How to Choose Happiness: Combat 5 Decision-Making Biases

Choosing happiness can be hard work, but the effort often pays off.

“Life is the sum of all your choices.” –Albert Camus

Happiness is in our hands if only we could make the right decisions in life. Decisions often rely on making accurate predictions of how we will feel in the future. Unfortunately for us psychologists have shown that there are five major biases in the way we predict our future emotional states.

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