Psychological research on the causes of happiness

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In summary: TED: The Truth About HappinessTED: The Science of HappinessTED: The Power of HabitTED: The Truth About Choices
  • #1
junglebeast
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I am interested by analytical investigation into the causes of happiness. I've spent some time pondering these questions from a purely analytical perspective in the past, and come to some of my own conclusions...but I'm not going to discuss those here. Rather, I'm going to share with you a list of conclusions that have been drawn by prominent psychologists that relate to happiness as well as the overall human perspective.

My hope in creating this thread is that other people can help to contribute additional nuggets of information, because ultimately we can all benefit by understanding how our minds work.

GUIDELINES

If you have something to share, please state the overall result in a few easy to understand sentences, possible with example, and provide a link that can be traced back to some actual scientific research or credible opinion.

To reiterate,
1) Do not simply post links to articles without summarizing the conclusion
2) Do not post your own opinions/musings/anecdotal evidenceTo kick things off, all of the following psychological facts have been gleaned from the following TED talks by prominent psychologists. I apologize if there's some redundancy here:

* if you have the option to change a decision, you will be less happy with the outcome.

* if you are forced to make a non-revokable decision, you will be more happy with the outcome (basically the same as above)

* if people are asked to make a decision that is difficult, they usually choose the default option instead of making a rational choice.

* every time you decide you make a decision about what you like, it literally rewires your brain to like that type of thing more in the future (even if you have memory loss).

* almost everyone cheats, but only a small amount relative to the size of what you did honestly.

* when a person says they will be honest, they do tend to be more honest as a result

* when you see people from your group cheating, it increases the amount you will cheat.

* when you see people from an opposing group cheating, it decreases the amount you will cheat.

* when you see an option you don't want included for free in something else, it makes you value that thing higher.

* when you suffer some loss, after about 3 months you are no less happy than if you hadnt lost (loss of loved one, limb, anything).

* people are less willing to pay for something twice than to pay for something after having already lost the same amount of money.

* people are more willign to pay for something if it has a lower relative price to its perceived past price (ie, better deal), regardless of the actual value of the item.

* people prefer to make less money, increasing over time, than to make more
money decreasing over time.

* people who can have self control in their desires (as young children) turn out to be more successful people later in life.

* people are not willing to spend the time to test the thigns they have
confidence in.

* people have difficulty choosing between less now, or more later. people tend to be extremely impatient.

* people over-estimate their own patience, especially if they are continually reminded of what they want.

* if a person knows they already have to wait for something, they don't mind waiting extra for it as long as the extra amount is small relative to the amount they already expect to wait. however, as they approach the future, their opinion changes and they want it more urgently. ie, now is always better, and more is always better.

* people overexaggerate the odds based on the specific examples they remember seeing, rather than factual statistics.

* people tend to over estimate the present, and under estimate the future.

* the more expensive something is, the more people physically enjoy pleasure from it.

* People are more satisfied with their choices if there are fewer alternatives.

* The more alternatives there are, the more likely people are to be paralyzed and make no choice. The more options, the more you blame yourself for making bad choices.

* The more options there are, the more you expect perfection, and the more your hopes are let down.

* "The secret to happiness" is having low expectations and exceeding them (ok, I admit this one is just a psychologist's opinion).

* people remember hits, forget the misses. you can get someone interested by givin them hits early on.

* neuroscientist Brian Knutson has consistently found that the pictures inside our skulls show that the possibility of a payoff is much more stimulating than actually getting one. as a result, people get addicted to looking things up. note: caused by dopamine.

References: The following TED talks...
Dan Gilbert: Exploring the frontiers of happiness
Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?
Dan Gilbert on our mistaken expectations
Talks Dan Ariely on our buggy moral code
Talks Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions?
Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice

And this article:
Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that's dangerous.
 
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  • #2
These aren't facts, they're opinions. And I would say I disagree with just about all of them.

Can you post scientific research to back up even one of these claims? Just one. I'll give you a GOOBF card if you can show research to prove just one.

Just because someone says something doesn't mean it has any merit.
 
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  • #3
Evo said:
These aren't facts, they're opinions. And I would say I disagree with just about all of them.

Well, they may not be "hard" facts, but they are statistical generalizations that have resulted from controlled psychological experiments on large groups of people.

The whole point is that they defy our intuitions. I wouldn't have bothered to post the results that are obvious to us all at first...
 
  • #4
junglebeast said:
Well, they may not be "hard" facts, but they are statistical generalizations that have resulted from controlled psychological experiments on large groups of people.

The whole point is that they defy our intuitions. I wouldn't have bothered to post the results that are obvious to us all at first...
Sorry, but this falls into the category of "not even wrong".

Did you copy this from some website? Most of these are just plain nonsense.
 
  • #5
Evo said:
Sorry, but this falls into the category of "not even wrong".

Did you copy this from some website? Most of these are just plain nonsense.

As I have already explained, these are results I compiled from the presentations of prominent psychologists that were invited to speak at the latest TED conference.

I understand that these results may seem counter-intuitive to you, and if so, I urge you to watch the presentations for yourself and perhaps it will change your mind.

These guys are not idiots.
 
  • #6
junglebeast said:
As I have already explained, these are results I compiled from the presentations of prominent psychologists that were invited to speak at the latest TED conference.

I understand that these results may seem counter-intuitive to you, and if so, I urge you to watch the presentations for yourself and perhaps it will change your mind.

These guys are not idiots.
But these quotes are almost all old wive's tales, told and retold. Nothing new. Kind of sad that these came fron TED talks, I like those. My little sister is a psychologist, and she'd priobably rioll her eyes at this stuff too. Our grandmother used to spew some of this stuff. :biggrin:
 
  • #7
Dan Gilbert is actually pretty well respected in cognitive and social psychology. I don't know how many of these studies (in the OP's list) were his, but has done some interesting work.

http://www.danielgilbert.com/ (see the "writing" section)
 
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  • #8
Evo said:
But these quotes are almost all old wive's tales, told and retold. Nothing new. Kind of sad that these came fron TED talks, I like those. My little sister is a psychologist, and she'd priobably rioll her eyes at this stuff too. Our grandmother used to spew some of this stuff. :biggrin:

Evo, how many times do I have to say...these were not offhandedly mentioned old wives tails. For example, this quote:

"* when you suffer some loss, after about 3 months you are no less happy than if you hadnt lost (loss of loved one, limb, anything)."

Was concluded based on followup studies of people who won the lottery vs people who had injuries that resulted in amputation...and many other surveys/experiments. It was found that there was no statistical difference between the happiness of these two groups of people. Yes, I know it's mind boggling at first...but think about it...most people are pretty much equally happy throughout their lives. It depends more on their perspective than the events that happen.

Good and bad things are happening to us everyday. They cause short changes in our happiness but that new toy you bought 5 years ago no longer affects your happiness today. Also the boyfriend who dumped you 20 years ago doesn't affect your happiness today...you probably feel like "it was for the better." This is an evolutionary programmed response we all have. A friend of mine just recovered from a broken leg. He commented that it caused him to reflect upon and value his life in a different way.
 
  • #9
The main thing I took away from Dan Gilbert (in Stumbling on Happiness) is that we're pretty bad at predicting how happy we will be in the future based on some situation we imagine. We don't have insight into how emotionally adaptive we actually are. For instance, when people are asked how unhappy they would feel after their spouse died, they report that they'd be devastated and miserable. If you ask them how they would feel 5 years after the event they often say they will still be devastated, still miserable. But in fact, people who have actually gone through losing a spouse are more resilient than that. They pick themselves up and they go on.

The reverse also appears to be true; the happiness people expect to experience from something like winning the lottery doesn't match up with reality. It reminds me something one of my professors said. He practices clinical psychology and works with grad students. He said that some of the worst moments of crises he sees are not when students are struggling in school, it's after they graduate. They've worked so hard, with such great expectations of how perfect life will be when they get the PhD... and then it isn't.
 
  • #10
i'm not going to try to condense this into a platitude, and I'm not sure if it quite fits your "happiness" quest. but it does provide some evidence that people often have a certain outlook on life because of their genetics. i actually find this a bit worrisome. it suggests that personality tests may actually be genetic tests. maybe you could show statistical correlations between personality and race. hmmm.

anyhoo, without further ado, http://www.cnsspectrums.com/aspx/articledetail.aspx?articleid=642"
 
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  • #11
junglebeast said:
Evo, how many times do I have to say...these were not offhandedly mentioned old wives tails. For example, this quote:

"* when you suffer some loss, after about 3 months you are no less happy than if you hadnt lost (loss of loved one, limb, anything)."

Was concluded based on followup studies of people who won the lottery vs people who had injuries that resulted in amputation...and many other surveys/experiments. It was found that there was no statistical difference between the happiness of these two groups of people. Yes, I know it's mind boggling at first...but think about it...most people are pretty much equally happy throughout their lives. It depends more on their perspective than the events that happen.

Good and bad things are happening to us everyday. They cause short changes in our happiness but that new toy you bought 5 years ago no longer affects your happiness today. Also the boyfriend who dumped you 20 years ago doesn't affect your happiness today...you probably feel like "it was for the better." This is an evolutionary programmed response we all have. A friend of mine just recovered from a broken leg. He commented that it caused him to reflect upon and value his life in a different way.
What I'm saying is that none of this is new. It's the same old stuff that's been said for ages.

And a lot of it isn't necessarily true.

Let's just take this one for example
if people are asked to make a decision that is difficult, they usually choose the default option instead of making a rational choice.
What's the default option? What's the rational as opposed to the irrational choice? This makes no sense. The difficult decision is "your foot is crushed and needs to be amputated".

Decision "your dog has heart worms, we can give him medicine to kill the worms, but the medicine will destroy his liver and he will die".

Every thing listed is the same.

You said
if you are forced to make a non-revokable decision, you will be more happy with the outcome (basically the same as above)
No, I had to make a decision to kill my dog, 40 years ago, I'm still torn up about it.

I could go through every one of the things you listed and show where it's not true in many, if not most cases.
 
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  • #12
I thought that the sensation we label 'happiness' was the function of neurochemicals influencing one's nervous system (gross over-simplication). So what we're supposed to be exploring, here, then, isn't the source of 'happiness' per se, but what external influences have an impact on those chemicals and for what time frame. Yes?

Or did I just violate all of the rules set out by junglebeast?
 
  • #13
Evo said:
Let's just take this one for example What's the default option? What's the rational as opposed to the irrational choice? This makes no sense. The difficult decision is "your foot is crushed and needs to be amputated".

Decision "your dog has heart worms, we can give him medicine to kill the worms, but the medicine will destroy his liver and he will die".

There are 2 survey questions:

Check this box if you are willing to donate your organ after death.

Check this box if you are not willing to donate your organs after death.

About 90% of people skip the question when they come to it, choosing the default option, rather than making the difficult decision they don't want to think about. As a result, all of the countries that use the first wording have organ donor rates of about 10%, vs the other wording have organ donor rates of 90%. This is one of the real examples that was used to derive that "tidbit."
 
  • #14
GeorginaS said:
I thought that the sensation we label 'happiness' was the function of neurochemicals influencing one's nervous system (gross over-simplication). So what we're supposed to be exploring, here, then, isn't the source of 'happiness' per se, but what external influences have an impact on those chemicals and for what time frame. Yes?

Or did I just violate all of the rules set out by junglebeast?
That's ok, I already violated all of his rules.
 
  • #15
Evo said:
I could go through every one of the things you listed and show where it's not true in many, if not most cases.

But the rules of this thread say this:

2) Do not post your own opinions/musings/anecdotal evidence

:smile:

Edited to add: We were posting simultaneously. :biggrin:

One more edit: is this a philosophical subject as set out in the opening premise?
 
  • #16
junglebeast said:
There are 2 survey questions:

Check this box if you are willing to donate your organ after death.

Check this box if you are not willing to donate your organs after death.

About 90% of people skip the question when they come to it, choosing the default option, rather than making the difficult decision they don't want to think about. As a result, all of the countries that use the first wording have organ donor rates of about 10%, vs the other wording have organ donor rates of 90%. This is one of the real examples that was used to derive that "tidbit."
What's the default option? I'm an organ donor, btw. Not checking a box saying you are not willing to donate does not give consent to donate.

Do you have any of the supposed studies you keep referencing?
 
  • #17
Since I'm a woman over 50 with a heart of a kid and can still dance up to 4 hours straight if the music is rocking, here's an article I agreed with from Medline Plus.:smile:

Good News for Elderly: Happiness Keeps Growing
Older adults learn to limit negative influences, studies show

HealthDay
By Margaret Steele
Thursday, August 13, 2009

THURSDAY, Aug. 13 (HealthDay News) -- The longer you live, the happier you're likely to be, a growing body of research shows.

Researchers who spoke at the recently concluded annual convention of the American Psychological Association in Toronto said that mental health generally improves with age. Given that the world population of people over 65 is expected to nearly triple by 2050, according to U.S. officials, this should come as good news.

Reporting on several studies of aging and mental health, Susan Turk Charles, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, said the findings indicate that happiness and emotional well-being improve with time.

Older adults exert greater emotional control, said Charles. Studies show they learn to avoid or limit stressful situations and are less likely than younger adults to let negative comments or criticism bother them.

Charles added that "we know that older people are increasingly aware that the time they have left in life is growing shorter. They want to make the best of it so they avoid engaging in situations that will make them unhappy. They have also had more time to learn and understand the intentions of others, which helps them to avoid these stressful situations."

Another study conducted over a 23-year period examined three groups of people at three different life stages and concluded that emotional happiness grew with age, she said.

These findings may not apply to older adults who feel trapped in distressing situations and those with forms of dementia, Charles said. "We know that older adults who are dealing with chronic stressors, such as caregiving, report high rates of physical symptoms and emotional distress," she added.

In separate reports, Charles and Laura Carstensen, a psychology professor at Stanford University, also noted that social relationships -- or lack of them -- influence how older people respond to stress. Carstensen cited a Swedish study that concluded that people with strong social connections were less likely to suffer cognitive impairment than others. It seems social relationships influence the way that the brain processes information, she said. "These changes have a profound impact on health outcomes," Carstensen said.

To make the most of the coming years, Carstensen offered these tips:

Think of ways to enjoy the time ahead and try to imagine living 100, healthy, happy years.

Provide daily routines that reinforce your goals, both in your home and in your social life.

Develop new activities and relationships, and don't invest all of your emotional energy in a job or a single relationship.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_88118.html [Broken]

Naturally, I'm all for living my *happy years*! No BODY will steal them from me. :wink:
 
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  • #18
Evo said:
You said No, I had to make a decision to kill my dog, 40 years ago, I'm still torn up about it.

Again you are putting this into the wrong context, because there is no way to bring something back from the dead. The statement only says that you will be more happy with a decision if you made it under a non-revokable context then if you had made it under a revokable context.

In other words, 10 days after you purchase a product you will tend to be less happy with it if there is a 30 day return policy than if there was not a return policy. The reason is because when you have an option to revoke your first decision, you constantly question that decision and find flaws in it, whereas if you know you can't take back the decision, you just accept it and become happy with it. This doesn't apply to your dog situation. However, the other one does -- your happiness today is probably no different than your happiness while your dog was still alive, regardless of how much you miss your dog.

I thought that the sensation we label 'happiness' was the function of neurochemicals influencing one's nervous system (gross over-simplication). So what we're supposed to be exploring, here, then, isn't the source of 'happiness' per se, but what external influences have an impact on those chemicals and for what time frame. Yes?

Right, exploring what effect external influences tend to have on influencing the release of dopamine and the like. For example, dopamine is released (making us happy) at the PROSPECT of something we think will make us happy in the future..but when that thing happens, it doesn't actually make us as happy as the original prospect did. And when something good does happen, the resulting happiness is relative to what we expected-- if we had high expectations, then it doesn't do much for us. If we had low expectations, we are pleasantly surprised.

Do you have any of the supposed studies you keep referencing?

Yes, I gave references...you can check out the publications of those gentlemen or watch the presentations to hear a verbal explanation of their results.
 
  • #19
junglebeast said:
Yes, I gave references...you can check out the publications of those gentlemen or watch the presentations to hear a verbal explanation of their results.

But your rules say this:

and provide a link that can be traced back to some actual scientific research or credible opinion.
 
  • #20
GeorginaS said:
But your rules say this:

...and provide a link that can be traced back to some actual scientific research or credible opinion.

Hi Georgina, right...I'm sorry but I'm not sure what your point is? How much more credible can you get than having a PhD in psychology and publishing results that are influential enough to be invited to speak about them at TED? They discuss experiments verbally, and you have their names so you can look up actual pubs if you want..I never said that a publication needed to be directly linked..
 
  • #21
"The findings back the common theory that rejection 'hurts' by showing that a gene regulating the body's most potent painkillers - mu-opioids - is involved in socially painful experiences too. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6049700/Why-a-broken-heart-really-does-hurt.html [Broken]
 
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  • #22
junglebeast said:
Hi Georgina, right...I'm sorry but I'm not sure what your point is? How much more credible can you get than having a PhD in psychology and publishing results that are influential enough to be invited to speak about them at TED? They discuss experiments verbally, and you have their names so you can look up actual pubs if you want..I never said that a publication needed to be directly linked..

I think the problem is that

1) you are asking readers here to do a lot of work to go back and listen to the talks and find the person who specifically mentioned the findings you listed. You give multiple sources.

2) It gets even more difficult because it may be the case that the people giving the talks are citing other people's research and not their own (e.g., a presenter might say something like, "We know from previous research that 87% of people do X under condition Y".) Maybe the TED talks give specific citations and maybe they don't, but you're asking for a lot of effort for people to weed through this and figure it out.
 
  • #23
junglebeast said:
"The findings back the common theory that rejection 'hurts' by showing that a gene regulating the body's most potent painkillers - mu-opioids - is involved in socially painful experiences too. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6049700/Why-a-broken-heart-really-does-hurt.html [Broken]

I didn't know you'd be going for the social pain angle (I think happiness is a lot more than pain avoidance), but here's an older, but influential psychological/physiological study from Naomi Eisenberger (from your link) about how "social pain looks like emotional pain" in the brain:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/302/5643/290?ck=nck
 
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  • #24
Doesn't this fit better in the social sciences subforum?
Not to be a stickler, but philosophy and psychology are quite different :)
 
  • #25
JoeDawg said:
Doesn't this fit better in the social sciences subforum?
Not to be a stickler, but philosophy and psychology are quite different :)

I've wrestled with where to move this because normally we put the psychology topics under medical sciences. That doesn't seem quite the right fit. I think I am going to move this to GD.
 
  • #26
Evo said:
What I'm saying is that none of this is new. It's the same old stuff that's been said for ages.

And a lot of it isn't necessarily true.

Let's just take this one for example What's the default option? What's the rational as opposed to the irrational choice? This makes no sense. The difficult decision is "your foot is crushed and needs to be amputated".

Decision "your dog has heart worms, we can give him medicine to kill the worms, but the medicine will destroy his liver and he will die".

Every thing listed is the same.

You said No, I had to make a decision to kill my dog, 40 years ago, I'm still torn up about it.

I could go through every one of the things you listed and show where it's not true in many, if not most cases.

Evo, I'm a neuroscience student. These things STATISTICALLY happen most of the time; you can't generalize from the group to the individual.
 
  • #27
junglebeast said:
Hi Georgina, right...I'm sorry but I'm not sure what your point is? How much more credible can you get than having a PhD in psychology and publishing results that are influential enough to be invited to speak about them at TED? They discuss experiments verbally, and you have their names so you can look up actual pubs if you want..I never said that a publication needed to be directly linked..

I don't even know what TED is to know where to look up your references. You say it's a talk. How much leeway do these talks have? Are they like keynote addresses where there can be a lot of speculation to provide food for thought as a conference begins, or are these from strictly scientific talks? Who is the audience? Are these given at psychology conferences, or are these something aimed at the general public where there may be a little more "awe" in the statements and a little less science?

Are the statements you've provided part of the premise, part of the conclusion, part of a survey question, or again, the author's speculation? Without providing a source with the methods and results of the studies from which a conclusion has been derived, we have no reason to believe the conclusion is accurate. Just because someone is well-known in their field doesn't mean they don't sometimes have an erroneous or premature conclusion.

Here's the way the rules at PF work, which pre-empt any rules you make up in your own thread...if YOU make a claim, as you did by starting the thread, the YOU are responsible for providing the references to support that claim. Don't just tell us this long list of claims was made by a list of people (you don't even match the author to the claim) and then suggest if we don't believe you that we should go look up that author's entire body of literature to figure out if we believe you. Here's the simple answer when you take that approach...I don't believe you. You need to support your claims by connecting the claims to the specific references that support them, and until then, we reserve the right to maintain our disbelief.
 
  • #28
junglebeast said:
Hi Georgina, right...I'm sorry but I'm not sure what your point is? How much more credible can you get than having a PhD in psychology and publishing results that are influential enough to be invited to speak about them at TED? They discuss experiments verbally, and you have their names so you can look up actual pubs if you want..I never said that a publication needed to be directly linked..

Actually, my reading comprehension skills are pretty good, and I wasn't calling into question the credibility of people who have PhDs in psychology. Your instructions to us were:

and provide a link that can be traced back to some actual scientific research or credible opinion.

That you chose to highlight the last two words -- taking them out of context -- doesn't exempt them from the rest of the sentence. You are instructing us to provide a link to "some actual science research or credible opinion". You didn't say: provide a link to some actual science research or just provide a credible opinion. The linking instruction applies to both of the potential information sources, not one or the other. Hence my problem with you handing us a list of books that we're supposed to ferret through in order to try and locate something that resembles the distillation and summarisation of ideas you handed out in your opening premise. You put one onus of proof on us and didn't hold yourself to the same standard.

Further, in the books that you reference you don't provide proper citations nor do you even provide page numbers that we could easily refer to if we were so inclined or, say, we actually had one or two of those books sitting on our own bookshelves.

That's a long way of saying: yeah, what Moonbear said.
 
  • #29
Supplementing my previous post with more happiness oozing out of me.:biggrin: (I'm not 60 yet, but I sure enjoy learning from those younger and older than me. :wink:)
Who is behind Choosing Happiness?
Dr. Laura Delizonna is the founder of Choosing Happiness. Since 2002, she has been affiliated with Stanford University where she currently teaches positive psychology and emotional intelligence courses and previously was a staff psychologist and a postdoctoral fellow.http://www.choosinghappiness.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44&Itemid=125 [Broken]
Choosing Happiness in Times of Uncertainty - Practical Tools for Life by Laura Delizonna, PhD (3/12/2009)
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/caree...Choosing Happiness-SU Alumnae Conf-3 6 09.pdf
 
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  • #30
Why are there so many female PFers in this thread?
 
  • #31
Math Is Hard said:
Why are there so many female PFers in this thread?

We should have a Sisterhood meeting!

Bora Bora would cause me happiness :smile:
 
  • #32
Must be that us women are all so dang happy. :grumpy:

And, yeah, WHAT MOONBEAR SAID!

Go Moonbear!
 
  • #33
Georginia, no, actually...I did not take anything out of context, because the meaning of the word "OR" is "one or the other"..I said OR, and I meant OR! I specifically stated OR because I thought it would be ok to keep a semi informal discussion.

The purpose of references is so that people who are interested in doing the fact checking can do so. If you are so inclined, it takes all of about 1.5 hours to listen to all of these amazing talks, and all of about 1 millisecond to pull up the talks on Google.

It is really irrelevant to me whether or not you agree or disagree with the conclusions listed here. I am simply summarizing them, not arguing them.

I'm beginning to wish that I just kept this to myself.
 
  • #34
lisab said:
We should have a Sisterhood meeting!

Bora Bora would cause me happiness :smile:

Is that in the list? :smile:
 
  • #35
Okay then some, contentment contendings from the sofa, feet on coffee table, chateauneuf du pape in rummer, unnerved by previous ponderings,

happiness is about attempts and progress towards a Big End Goal, to go where you want to, especially when it leads to the feeling of making the world a better place to live.

It's also about being accepted and respected within the social group in the special place that one desires.

To some happiness is about making others unhappy but happiness is mostly about making others happy instead.

Now, off to Bora Bora (if I win that lottery)
 

1. What is the definition of happiness in psychological research?

Happiness in psychological research is defined as a positive emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, contentment, and satisfaction with one's life.

2. What are the main factors that contribute to happiness?

Psychological research has identified several factors that contribute to happiness, including genetics, life circumstances, and intentional activities such as practicing gratitude and cultivating strong relationships.

3. Can happiness be measured objectively?

While happiness is a subjective experience, psychological research has developed reliable and valid measures to assess levels of happiness and well-being, such as the Subjective Happiness Scale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale.

4. How does psychological research on happiness inform interventions and treatments?

Psychological research on happiness has shown that interventions such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based practices, and positive psychology interventions can effectively increase levels of happiness and well-being in individuals.

5. Is happiness a stable or fluctuating state?

Research has found that happiness is a dynamic and fluctuating state, influenced by both internal and external factors. While some individuals may have a genetically predisposed "set point" for happiness, intentional activities and life circumstances can also impact an individual's level of happiness.

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