A couple of years ago, Dr. Sheldon Cohen (Carnegie Mellon University) gave a bunch of people the cold. He demonstrated that even though a positive emotional style isn't associated with a lower risk of contracting the cold, it is associated with exhibiting fewer symptoms of the cold. I guess what I'm trying to say is, put down that bottle of Dayquiland smile sniffles!
I've been on a happiness hiatus. Ironically, the only thing getting in the way of my well-being has been my dissertation on well-being! Let's review what has happened on the happiness front in the past seven weeks.
1) It has been shown that your serotonin levels effect how you play the ultimatum game. Apparently, low serotonin levels probilify the rejection of unfair offers. The researchers concluded that "5-HT plays a critical role in regulating emotionduring social decision-making."
3) Often, when we think about egalitarianism or distributive justice, we think about the distribution of goods, rights or opportunities. In a recent paper, "Happiness Inequality in the United States," Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers discuss...happiness inequality. According to Wolfers, "there is less happiness inequality today than in the 1970’s or 1980’s" even though there have been "large increases in income and consumption inequality."
You can read the trilogy of articles on the topic, here. You can also read a brief summary of these findings, here.
4) Check out this tantalizing tidbit about the well known benefits of smiling.
6) The August issue of Psychological Science contains a fascinating article by Eugene M. Caruso, Daniel T. Gilbert, and Timothy D. Wilson on the phenomenon known as temporal value asymmetry.
7) Randy Newman has remarked that "short people got no reason to live."
Turns out, they're pretty miserable too...
This article suggests that "the main reason why taller people do better is because they have higher incomes, they are better educated, and they work in higher status occupations."
8) According to this article, "Between 1980 and 1985, only 2,125 articles were published on happiness, compared with 10,553 on depression. From 2000 to 2005, the number of articles on happiness increased sixteenfold to 35,069, while articles on depression numbered 80,161. From 2006 to present, just over 2 1/2 years, a search found 27,335 articles on happiness, more than half the 53,092 found on depression."
9) According to recent research the experience of positive emotions was more strongly related to life satisfaction than the absence of negative emotions across nations. However, "negative emotional experiences were more negatively related to life satisfaction in individualistic than in collectivist nations, and positive emotional experiences had a larger positive relationship with life satisfaction in nations that stress self-expression than in nations that value survival. These findings show how emotional aspects of the good life vary with national culture and how this depends on the values that characterize one's society. Although to some degree, positive and negative emotions might be universally viewed as desirable and undesirable, respectively, there appear to be clear cultural differences in how relevant such emotional experiences are to quality of life."
10) According to a recent study in the journal, BMC Cancer, women who suffered two or more traumatic events in their life, such as losing a loved one, had a 62 per cent greater risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer, but optimistic women were 25 per cent less likely to develop the disease. This study definitely deserves a closer look.
11) According to this article, conventional retributivist and utilitarian conceptions of punishment must accommodate our ability to adapt to changed circumstances (including fines and imprisonment) and, somehow, must ameliorate the devastating (unintended) consequences of incarceration (such as unemployment, divorce and disease). These phenomena are obstacles to implementing proportional punishment and creating a marginal deterrent, thus they threaten the foundations of punishment theory.
The hustle and bustle of activity that has occured since my haitus is a bit overwhelming, but I am going to do my best to cover it here:
1) Peter Clough (University of Hull), in collaboration with AQR, has shown it is possible to teach kids to be tough (which they claim you can measure using the MTQ48) and that doing so has the beneficial effects you would expect, given other research on the benefits of resilience.
2) Research on hedonic adaptation has shown that “Within a few years, paraplegics wind up only slightly less happy on average than individuals who are not paralyzed.” Recently, researchers have shown that, ironically, functionally impaired patients with diseases such as amytrophic lateral sclerosis might be depressed (and, consequently, decline life sustaining treatment) because they don't realize that having the disease won't nessecarily compromise subjective quality of life (if they accept life sustaining treatment). It was also shown that, unsurprisingly, educated patients adapt to the illness better, from a hedonic point of view (this might be surprising if you buy into the myth of the melancholic genius).
3) Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin have shown that having strong family ties is a much bigger predictor of contentment than income. This research seems to support the jist of the Easterlin Paradox: money matters up to a point (when basic needs are met), then, other things matter more. In the words of Rebecca J. North, one of the researchers,"Our findings underscore the importance of additional policy indicators that can tap the well-being of individuals and families at the psychosocial level to provide a more comprehensive understanding of a nation's well-being." As I have argued in other places, researchers often forget that money is extrinsically valuable. If it has any influence on subjective well-being, it is probably because of how it is used.
4) It has previously been shown old people are as happy as young people. This is puzzling, in part, because old people spend more time alone, which has been shown to cause (and be caused by) depression. In the current issue of Psychology and Ageing, Bill Von Hipple has shown that "older people are just as satisfied with their social lives because they seem to get much more from the few interactions they have." In other words, the old aren't lonely because the elderly simply adapt, hedonically, to being less social than they used to be.
David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald have shown that people who have sex once a week are a lot happier than those who have sex once a month (the optimal number of sexual partners in a year: one). Recently, J. Sabura Allen has shown that depressed (Australian) women have sex more often than happier women (regardless of whether or not they are in a relationship)!
Drawing on a range of empirical evidence, this essayargues that the failure to include, and to give sufficient weight to, fairness preferences undermines legal economists' policy recommendations. The authors argue that given the growing body of research revealing that individuals value fairness over their own rational self-interests, it is incumbent on legal economists to take preferences for fairness into account. This claim is problematic from the get go. After all, what we value (or what we prefer) isn't necessarily good for us. I think the authors are on to something, nonetheless.
Often, when simple utilitarians calculate the happiness/welfare/well-being of an individual or group, they pretend that people don't care about things such as fairness. When utilitarians, such as Peter Singer, recommend a counterintuitive social policy, they pretend that ignoring our intuitions (of the deontic variety) doesn't have a negative influence on our subjective well-being, but it wouldn't be entirely surprising if people were upset by non-utilitarian considerations even if they shouldn't be. If utilitarians were to take the influence our ineliminable (moral) judgments of right and wrong have on our subjective well-being into account, they might be forced to concede that non-utilitarian concerns (such as justice and fairness) must be respected.
Shouldn't utilitarians simply attempt to accommodate deontic considerations? I don't think so. My deontic judgments are the evolutionary by-product of morally irrelevant processes that were conducive to my fitness. Fitness, from my point of view, is morally irrelevant. Thus, it seems to me that I should ignore my deontic judgments when I try to figure out what I ought to do. However, whether or not I should ignore these judgments depends on whether or not I can. On one hand, it might turn out that I can simply dismiss my own judgments and values as systematic biases that undermine my well-being and be done with it.
On the other hand, it might turn out I can't ignore these judgments, even if I am able to recognize they are biases upon reflection. Ignoring these biases could make me miserable, even if I don't identify with them. If this turns out to be the case, it might be a good idea to chemically or surgically alter my brain to relieve myself of these harmful biases. It might also be a good (and less difficult) idea to trick myself by creating situations in which acting in accordance with these illusions doesn't undermine my well-being (intentionally damaging my brain might not work). Either way, reasoning away my conscience might not be a viable option.
An article in the March issue of Psychological Science by Tim Bates, Alexander Weiss and Michelle Luciano supports old findings that your level of happiness depends on internal (in this case, genetic) as well as external (relationships, for instance) factors. Apparently, the genes underlying personality traits such as conscientiousness, extroversion and emotional stability are the foundation of an 'affective reserve' we can draw upon during periods of duress. The good news is that those without the prerequisite genetic foundation might still be able to cultivate the character traits of happy people, and reap the corresponding rewards.
Excelsior!
C.L.Sosis
P.S. Thanks for sending me this article, Adam Feltz!
P.S.S. You should read this response to these findings by one of the founding fathers of positive psychology, Ed Diener.
According to a new study in the Journal of Social Science and Medicine people, young and old, are significantly happier than middle-aged people (on average, men hit a hedonic low point at 50, women hit it at 40). According to the authors of the study, Andrew Oswald and David Blanchflower "it happens to men and women, to single and married people, to rich and poor and to those with and without children." This pattern was found in 70 countries.
P.S. The good news: according to Oswald "by the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit, then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20-year old."
Last night, 20/20 interviewed Dr. Richard Davidson (Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison) who has isolated and identified the neural correlates of well-being and affective style. Even though the interview was stupidified for popular consumption--Bill Weir (pictured) is an idiot--I recommend you read the primary source, here.
Excelsior!
C.L.Sosis
P.S. You might want to read Davidson's earlier work on the positive effects of meditation (he and the Dalai Lama are freinds).
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