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.
According to a new study in Psychoneuroendocrinology psychological problems, such as stress and anxiety, aggravate allergic reactions! As you know, this is one of many examples of the intimate connection between the well-being of the brain and the rest of the body I discuss here.
Often, this connection can lead to a vicious cycle, in which a broken body undermines the integrity of the mind, which exacerbates health problems. Mental illnesses can take a serious toll on your physical well-being which will compromise, in some cases, your sanity.
The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions suggests that positive emotions broaden your awareness and probilify a variety of novel and exploratory thoughts and actions. Recent research seems to show that stress encourages perseveration, and causes significant, negative, changes in the neural architecture of the brain.
Perhaps this research will eventually yield the 'constrict-and-destroy theory of negative emotions'...
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.
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).
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.
I'm an atheist. That being said, a new study (which I haven't read, I can't find it, I've seen reports but I don't think it has been published) seems to show that spirituality has a significant positive effect on the subjective well-being of children. Don't send your kids to Jesus Camp just yet. Keep in mind, this study seems to show that spirituality has a relatively enormous positive effect on the subjective well-being of children, not religiosity, so you might consider teaching your children the lessons of the Buddha before you ship 'em to a madrasah. This study doesn't examine the long term effects of spirituality on the subjective well-being of children but it has been shownover and over again that spirituality and religiosity do in fact (for one reason or another) have a small but significant positive influence on the subjective well-being of adults and it should be noted that the Character Strengths and Virtues handbooklistsspirituality as a character strength/virtue.
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