M'lady and I went to Atlanta a couple of weeks ago to visit the amazing aquarium. Afterward, we had a couple of hours to kill, so we decided to visit The World of Coca-Cola® where we saw the following video:
Needless to say, we both thought this quasi-provocative video was slightly disturbing (the computer animated talking helicopter has nipple rings). I even entertained the possibility we were brainwashed or subjected to subliminal advertisements (unbeknownst to us, of course). In any case, the video made me think about the dark side of the well-being research this blog is about: it's undeniable that unhealthy behavior can reliably make us happy (in some cases)!
Thus, I found it funny that after we got back, I was perusing the Journal of Happiness Studies and I came across an article which seems to show that Taiwanese kids who eat fast food are fatter and happier than Taiwanese children who don't eat it. This is slightly surprising, given the fact that it's been shown food has a fleeting effect on your subjective well-being.
As always, confounding variables should be accounted for, but, for the sake of argument, let's suppose that there is a causal connection. If this is so, we might be forced to make a choice between 'objective' and 'subjective' aspects of well-being. The authors point out that we must be aware that an unintended consequence of fighting childhood obesity might be lower overall levels of happiness.
Even though I think we can teach children to choose healthy food, I doubt that we can ever ignore the allure of food which is so sweet, fat and fast. Thank you, evolution! In the age of sugar substitutes and oral contraceptives, do we really need to exercise discipline? When what feels good isn't good for us, we can use technology to bridge the gap between happiness and health. We need not exercise restraint. We can, in short, have our cake and eat it too.
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.
According to the World Values Survey, overall, the world is getting happier. More people are happier today than was the case 25 years ago; the survey found increased happiness from 1981 to 2007 in 45 of 52 countries analyzed. As usual, Denmark, Columbia and Puerto Rico top the charts. The United States maintains about the same relative position (19 out of 96) as it did in the 2000 survey. Countries whose respondents reported high levels of happiness were much likelier to be democracies than were countries that rank lower in terms of their citizens' happiness. Apparently, there is a strong correlation between happiness, economic development (this is distinct from wealth, y'all) and democracy!
The authors don't address the truly puzzling cases that troubled Easterlin: why, for example, are Venezuelans happier than Americans? Why, exactly, are extremely wealthy nations (such as Japan) as happy or slightly happier than poor nations (such as Jamaica)?
As far as I'm concerned, this chart reveals the gross hedonic inefficiency of wealthy nations (and, conversely, the hedonic ingenuity of less wealthy nations). Remember, money is extrinsically valuable, and this data provides us with reasons to reconsider the way we use it.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, based on interviews of more than 100,000 people so far, shows that 47 percent of Americans are struggling and 4 percent are suffering.
People were asked to imagine where they would put themselves on a ladder with 10 steps. Those who said they were on step seven or above are listed as "thriving", those who were at four or below are "suffering" and those between seven and four are the "struggling." Apparently, those who are "thriving" tend to have higher incomes, more education and less illness, whereas those who are "suffering" tend to have trouble meeting their basic needs (such as food, shelter and medical care).
"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."
Hello Fellow Hedonists,
Children who watch alot of television are unhappy.It has been hypothesized that television makes people who have better things to do (such as graduate students) unhappy because it is percieved as an opportunity cost. Busy people feel guilty for watching T.V. Television also seems to provoke materialistic anxiety (men's magazines have a similar effect).
Now, Daniel Kahneman, Alan Krueger, David Schkade, Norbert Schwarz and Arthur Stone have shown that we spend too much time engaged in 'neutral downtime' when we could be engaged in more gratifying activites. Interestingly, it has also been shown that people who have televisions in their homes report greater well-being than do those who do not have televisions in their homes. I wonder why...
A seven-year review of the well-being of Australians has found your happiness ceases to increase (significantly) when household income passes $100,000 (it should also be noted that the study also shows that households that earn $500,000 are the happiest.).
I find this study especially interesting because it discusses these findings in terms of the 'price' of happiness and diminishing returns: low income households had to earn an extra $7143 in order to gain a hedonic point, whereas high income households need to earn an extra $625,000 in order to gain a hedonic point.
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)!
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released its annual "Social Trends" report, according to which Britons are wealthier, healthier and living longer, but seem no happier than before. Britain's output per capita had more than doubled in the last 30 years, while mortality rates for circulatory diseases, cancer and respiratory illness continue to decline. Yet satisfaction with the standard of living in Britain has remained steady since the 1970s: each year since 1973 an average of 86 percent of people said they were "very" or "fairly satisfied" with their standard of living. In 2006, the figure was 85 percent, compared to six percent who rated themselves as "fairly" or "very dissatisfied". These figures seem to support the Easterlin Paradox.
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