The Myers & Diener Study - Describe Flashcards
Identify a way of assessing happiness.
- Consider a person’s sense of their own happiness.
- Consider a person’s well-being, subjective well-being (SWB).
How is subjective well-being assessed?
Done by interviewing people using a closed question:
- ‘How satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?’
- Are you very satisfied? Not very satisfied? Not at all satisfied?
What else can be used to produce quantitative data to represent happiness?
A multi-item scale = includes a number of questions related to happiness.
What is one way to discover what people are doing?
- Asking them to report what they are doing at a selected time.
- Researchers use beeps to remind a participant to send a message saying what they’re doing and thinking at a particular moment.
- This is a way to sample peoples behaviour.
What is this study described as?
A review of other research
- Some of the research referred to is based on multiple studies.
- Some of which are reviews, some are meta-analysis.
What were the findings when looking into age and happiness?
- A surgery of almost 170,000 people of all ages in 16 different countries found no differences.
- People of all ages were equally happy.
- The mean score was 80% satisfaction with life.
- Although, at different ages, different factors contribute to happiness.
What were the findings when looking into gender and happiness?
- The survey found that 80% of men and women said they were ‘fairly satisfied’ with life.
- In another study, it was calculated that a person’s gender accounted for 1% of global well-being.
- Although, research has found that women are twice as vulnerable as men to depression.
What were the findings when looking into money and happiness?
- A survey found that 75% of American college students selected ‘being well off financially’ as an essential life goal, compared to 39% in an earlier study.
- Diener found a correlation of +0.12 between income and happiness.
- People who are rich don’t report greater happiness.
- 37% of people on the Forbes rich list were less happy than the American average.
What three elements are a part of a theory of happiness?
- The importance of adaptation.
- Cultural worldview.
- Values and goals.
What is the conclusion of the importance of adaptation?
- The effects of positive and negative events fade overtime.
- Someone who wins the lottery only experiences short-term increases in happiness.
- A longitudinal study found that it is only events in the last 3 months that influence SWB.
- This is due to the human capacity to adapt to life’s circumstances.
What is the conclusion of cultural worldview?
- Cultural attitudes predispose people to interpret life events differently.
- Some attitudes interpret the world as a benevolent place, other cultures interpret it negatively.
What is the conclusion of values and goals?
- People with a higher sense of SWB ave goals which they are striving to achieve.
- Factors like money, only matter if they are relevant to your goals.
