Week 1: Why happiness deserves scientific interest - college Flashcards
Why is it harder to come up with positive news events than negative news events in the last year? (2)
(1) People suffer from negativity Bias –> negative events have bigger impact than positive events
(2) Evolutionairy perspective; human pays more attention to bad things as not to ignore danger
Does happiness deserve scientific interest?
Yes, people want to be happy and governments wants us to be happy
What are 4 benefits of happier people?
(1) They are more productive
(2) Are healthier and live longer
(3) They contribute more to society
(4) They have better social relationships
What does science of happiness focusses on? (2)
The antecedents of happiness
The consequences of happiness
What does it mean to describe happiness as jingle or jangle
jingle = one term to refer to several underlying concepts
jangle = different terms that are used to describe one larger concept
What is the lay definition of happiness?
Inner harmony rather than satisfaction or positive affect
How does the tripartite model describe hedonic/subjective well-being (3)
(1) Positive affect
(2) negative affect
(3) Cognitive life evaluations
What is eudaemonic wellbeing? (3)
Eudaimonia = a sense of meaning and purpose in life or good psychological functioning. Flourishing; self-actualization of one’s potential by fulfilling one’s true self
Purpose and meaning in life
Why is it not easy to tell how happy someone will become from any decision?
Happiness is a biased judgment: people have too much focus on one particular issue, usually something they do not have
How do peoples views of their future happiness compared to others future happiness differ?
People tend to be positive about themselves and negative about people they don’t know
Is life satisfaction a bottom-up or top-down mechanism?
Life satisfaction is a top-down mechanism because overall life satisfaction drives specific elements of domain satisfaction
Are domain specific evaluations related
Yes they are correlated strongly about .60, possibly influenced by common factor such as personality
Are cognitive and affective components of well-being related?
The association varies widely as a result of affective well-being being more variable
Which is more important? life satisfaction or affect?
People want to be satisfied with their life, driving by life circumstances and not momentary feelings of pleasure
Who is more happy? people who win the lottery or become paraplegic?
Loterij winners were not much happier than neutral control group
Paraplegics were a little less happy but still more happy compared to the unhappy
