Major components of SWB
- Life satisfaction
- High positive affect
- Low negative affect
Phlegmatic
Low negative affect and low positive affect
T/F Happy people tend to show a bias in which they under-remember bad events and over-remember good ones
True, called the positivity effect
In almost all countries, people who have the highest incomes on average tend to be:
More happy than their poorer peers
Correlates with more happiness
Marriage
Strong social network
Enjoyable job
Income
NOT: kids
Extraverted stable
someone with high extraversion and low neuroticism
Spending money on ____ has been found to be associated with the most benefits in SWB
Vacations, concerts, donating to charity
NOT: sports cars
Hedonism
Type of happiness in which we strive to maximize pleasure
Gottman’s positivity ratio
There needs to be 5 positives for each negative just to be at a neutral level
The happiest countries tend to be
Least religious
Demographic related with more life satisfaction
More education (moderated thru income)
Bottom-up approach to SWB
Happiness is explained as the sum of many small pleasurable and positive moments, such as social relationships, income, living situation, etc
Positivity bias
Happy people tend to be optimistic, feel a sense of control, see the good in people, and generally have a positive outlook on life
Carver and Scheier found that people high in optimism
recover faster from surgeries
Learned helplessness
Depressed people tend to feel like they have no control over their current problematic situation and negative feelings
Self-adaptation
Costa and McCrae found that happy and unhappy people have different coping strategies when they are confronted with a negative or stressful situation
______ is an example of a positive coping strategy
Situation we do not adapt to
Unemployment
10 basic human values
- Achievement
- Conformity
- Benevolence
- Self direction
- Stimulation
- Hedonism
- Power
- Security
- Tradition
- Universalism
Not: Leisure
Self-affirmations
Process of identifying most important values and most important role
Working towards goals can positively influence our well-being. Which goal characteristic has Not been helpful in boosting well-being?
Being extrinsically motivated
But: being intrinsically motivated, self-concordant, and approach oriented help
Example of intrinsic reason for working towards goals
To gain autonomy
People who focus on achieving extrinsic goals rather than intrinsic goals tend to have
Greater drug use
D-Love
Deficiency love, they counter-balance you
You love the person because of their dedication to you
Theory of Flow
Challenge and skill must balance
Victor Frankl lives in a Nazi camp during WWII and noted that
People would die when they lost meaning and purpose in life
RIASEC model
Occupational interests, tests what you enjoy
NOT: aptitudes, does not test what you’re good at
Scale on Diener’s website measures
Satisfaction with Life (SWLS)
Flourishing
Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving CIT
In terms of interest, what level of novelty do people seem to most often enjoy?
Medium levels of novelty
Sex differences in SWB
No consistent differences emerge
Research on the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions has found
Effects are larger for those who practice the exercises more often
Effects can persist for several months
Smaller studies have stronger effects
*** All interventions did Not have similar effects
Single Nucleotide Peptide (SNP)
This single gene influences a characteristic, although other genes may as well
Has to do with heritability of SWB
Relationship between age and SWB
It depends on the nation where one lives
Relationship between marriage and SWB
People who marry were happier even five years before ever marrying
There is a sharp uptick in life satisfaction at the time of the wedding
People who will eventually divorce were on average less happy even years before marrying
There are individual differences- some people are happier after marriage, and others are less happy
Interaction between income and education on SWB
When income is controlled, the effects of education become much smaller, but remain
Group with the smallest relationship between income and SWB
US broad sample, 0.12
Easterlin’s Paradox
Rich people are happier in the rich nations, but not the poor ones???
- most findings do show that more nations increase in SWB as income rises, but there are many exceptions
- some evidence that the comparison standard increases, based on wealthiest nations, and that therefore as the world gets richer, people are barely more satisfied—they want more
Values for money and love
Valuing love more and money less seems associated with the most happiness
Strongest association with income
Life satisfaction
Optimal amount of happiness
80%
A heritability of 0.50 means that
One can explain half of the variation in one’s happiness, but this does not tell us that we can only change 50%
Think of hair color, it is heritable, but we can change it
How frequently do people feel meaning in life?
Most people usually feel that they have meaning in life
Elements of meaning in life
Significance beyond self (legacy)
Coherence
Purpose
Review article by Diener:
Weather on happiness
Had little to no impact on SWB
Review article by Diener:
Global measures vs. on-line momentary measures summed over time
Global measures do somewhat better
Review article by Diener:
Measures used to assess SWB
Peer reports, brain activity, smiling
Review article by Diener:
Comparison of broad, global measure with more focused vs. narrower measures and concluded
At times certain people are higher on global measures, interpreted as a positivity effect
Review article by Diener:
Religion and SWB
It depends on culture
It depends on the life circumstances of respondents
- people are more religious when situations are bad
Review article by Diener:
Group that would be the least happy
Those open to experience living on the outskirts of the city
- social isolation
Declining marginal utility
Poor people get more boost from money than rich people who get that amount
Life satisfaction
An appraisal of one’s own life
Positive affect
Pleasant moods and emotions
Adaptation
One reacts strongly to events, but then they decline in impact
AIM
A theory of thinking and happiness