Happiness: content and contributions about the science happiness and daily life

 

Content and contributions about happiness, the science of happiness and meaningful life

Bundle items:
Article summary of Very happy people by Diener & Seligman. (1)

Article summary of Very happy people by Diener & Seligman. (1)

What is this article about?

This is a research report of an experiment where 222 undergraduates were screened for high happiness. The upper 10% of consistently very happy people were compared with average people and very unhappy people. This study has tried to find out what some factor might be that influence high happiness: social relationships, personality and psychopathology, and variables that have been related to subjective well-being in correlational studies. It also examined whether there was a variable that was sufficient for happiness and a variable that was necessary for happiness (sufficient: everyone with the variable is happy, necessary: every happy person has the variable).

What were the results?

On a scale from 5 to 35, the very happy group scored about 30 on life satisfaction. The very happy people had virtually never thought about suicide, could recall many more good events in their lives than bad ones, and had many more positive than negative emotions on a daily basis. The very unhappy people were dissatisfied with life and had equal amounts of positive and negative affect on a daily basis. They reported this about themselves, but their friends and family also rated them dissatisfied. The average group was in the middle of these two groups. 

The biggest difference between the very happy group and the average and very unhappy group, was in their fulsome and satisfying interpersonal lives. The very happy people spent the least time alone and the most time socializing and valued their

......read more
Activities abroad, study fields and work areas: 
IBP Social Psychology Summary - Dealing with Adversity and Achieving a Happy Life -ch 12

IBP Social Psychology Summary - Dealing with Adversity and Achieving a Happy Life -ch 12

Social and Organizational Psychology

IBP 2017-2018

 

 

Dealing with Adversity and Achieving a Happy Life

 

Stress: a contributing factor to psychological and physical health problems

  • Can stem from traumatic events, or frequent daily hassles
  • Interferes with the operation of the body’s immune system, and can be measured at the cellular level
  • Stress can be reduced by social support

Loneliness: when a person has fewer and less satisfying relationships than desired

  • If you see your personality as “fixed”: you are likely to react to rejection by cutting yourself off from others
  • If you perceive yourself as capable of change: experience rejection as an opportunity for future improvement or growth
  • Interventions related to self-change help to improve people’s resilience in the face of stress and reduce the likelihood of depression

Discrimination

  • Experiencing discrimination based on disability, sexual minorities, and weight, is associated with harm to well-being
  • Weight discrimination predicts mortality

Improving mental health

  • Regular exercise
  • Social support has shown to be beneficial for people with PTSD
  • Joining groups can foster social connectedness and help prevent depression
  • Practicing self-forgiveness

Is the legal system fair?

  • Understand potential sources of error and bias within the current system
  • Lineups used to identify criminal suspects are subject to bias if all the suspects are shown at once (simultaneous lineup)
  • In legal proceedings, defendants’ race, gender, physical attractiveness, and socioeconomic status can influence jurors’ perceptions and judgments

Happiness: often referred to as subjective

......read more
Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life - Baumeister e.a. - Article

Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life - Baumeister e.a. - Article

What is this article about?

Two of the most widely held goals by which people measure and motivate themselves are happiness and a meaningful life. In this article, the relationship between these two goals is discussed. More specifically, although there certainly is (much) overlap between these two, the focus here is on the differences.

How can happiness be defined?

Happiness generally refers to a state of subjective well-being. Happiness be may narrowly or broadly focused: one can be happy to have found a lost key, but one can also be happy that the war has ended. Happiness is conceptualized and measured by researcher in at least two different manners. The first one concerns affect balance, which suggests that happiness is an aggregate of how one feels at different moment. Happiness is then defined as having more pleasant than unpleasant emotional states. The second one concerns life satisfaction, which goes beyond momentary feelings. It refers to an integrative, evaluative assessment of one's entire life. Generally, assessing both of these provides a useful index of subjective well-being.

How can a meaningful life be defined?

Meaningfulness is considered to concern both a cognitive and emotional assessment

......read more
Activities abroad, study fields and work areas: 
Study Guide with article summaries for Science of Happiness at the University of Utrecht

Study Guide with article summaries for Science of Happiness at the University of Utrecht

Article summaries with Science of Happiness at the University of Utrecht

  • Summaries with prescribed articles of 24/25
...read more
Activities abroad, study fields and work areas: 
Summary of the Promise of Sustainable Happiness

Summary of the Promise of Sustainable Happiness

Short Summary of the Promise of Sustainable Happiness

The article suggests that, despite several barriers withholding people to increase their well-being, less happy people can successfully strive to be happier by learning a variety of effortful strategies and practicing these with determination and commitment. They use the sustainable happiness model (by Lyubomirsky, Sheldon and Schkade, 2005) as theoretical framework. According to the model, three factors contribute to an individual’s happiness level:

  • The set point

  • Life circumstances

  • Intentional activities/effortful acts that are episodic and naturally variable

The journey to happiness has always and still is of great interest, there is empirical evidence that it even leads to positive life outcomes such as a higher income and stronger relationships. The question, however, is whether people can actually attain a level of sustainable happiness.

To answer this question, we first we look at what happy and unhappy people are like:

The first thing that comes to mind is the difference between their ‘objective’ circumstances that could cause a difference in their level of happiness. Some examples include: marital status, age, sex, culture, income etc. It is shown, however, that these factors do not explain the variation in people’s level of well-being.

The article proposes that happiness and unhappiness is due to the subjective experience and construal of the world by people. They interpret their environment differently, leading the authors to explore an individual thoughts, behaviors and motivations. Happier people see the world in a more positive, and thus happiness-promoting, way. Research suggests that happy people are this way because of multiple adaptive strategies:

Construal

Research that involved having happy and unhappy people reflect on similar hypothetical situations / actual life events, revealed that happy people view these events as more pleasant, while unhappy

......read more
What is the science of happines: in 27 short summaries the most relevant articles

What is the science of happines: in 27 short summaries the most relevant articles

Summaries of 27 articles on the science of happiness

......read more
Activities abroad, study fields and work areas: 
Supporting content & Crossroads:
The science of happiness and the secrets of a meaningful life - Theme
Access: 
Public
Follow the author: Psychology Supporter
Contributions, Comments & Kudos

Add new contribution

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.
Statistics
169