{"id":485,"date":"2021-02-12T15:50:33","date_gmt":"2021-02-12T15:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/?p=485"},"modified":"2023-06-30T22:38:29","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T21:38:29","slug":"the-psychology-of-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/the-psychology-of-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"The Psychology of Happiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_65 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title ez-toc-toggle\" style=\"cursor: pointer\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/the-psychology-of-happiness\/#Peoples_responses_to_the_question_about_their_happiness\" title=\"People\u2019s responses to the question about their happiness\">People\u2019s responses to the question about their happiness<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/the-psychology-of-happiness\/#Lots_of_different_things_can_affect_your_happiness\" title=\"Lots of different things can affect your happiness\u00a0\">Lots of different things can affect your happiness\u00a0<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/the-psychology-of-happiness\/#Feelings_can_be_influenced_by_trivial_events\" title=\"Feelings can be influenced by trivial events\">Feelings can be influenced by trivial events<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/the-psychology-of-happiness\/#New_influences_on_our_happiness\" title=\"New influences on our happiness\">New influences on our happiness<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/the-psychology-of-happiness\/#We_can_worry_about_%E2%80%93_and_hope_for_%E2%80%93_all_sorts_of_things_in_life\" title=\"We can worry about &#8211; and hope for &#8211; all sorts of things in life\">We can worry about &#8211; and hope for &#8211; all sorts of things in life<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<span class=\"rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\">4<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span>\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"485\" class=\"elementor elementor-485\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-4e47819c elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"4e47819c\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-37f49eeb\" data-id=\"37f49eeb\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-65b07225 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"65b07225\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>How happy do you think you are? Can you be sure you know?\u00a0 It sounds unlikely that you wouldn\u2019t know something so basic about yourself but consider a study conducted at the University of Mannheim in Germany in the 1980s. Psychologist Fritz Strack and his colleagues asked university students the following two questions: \u201cHow happy are you?\u201d and \u201cHow many times did you go out on a date last month?\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Peoples_responses_to_the_question_about_their_happiness\"><\/span>People\u2019s responses to the question about their happiness<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>The odd finding was that people\u2019s responses to the question about their happiness varied depending on the order of the two questions. When the happiness question came first, the frequency of dating was unrelated to happiness: students who had been out on more dates did not report being any happier. \u00a0However when the order of the questions was reversed, the responses showed a strong positive link between the number of dates and reported happiness: students who had been out on more dates reported being significantly happier.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>The fact that people\u2019s judgments of their own happiness varied as a function of the context in which they were made suggests that whenever you think about how happy you are you don\u2019t appear to be equipped with anything like a \u201chappiness-ometer\u201d that you can consult on your \u201cmental dashboard\u201d. Instead, it seems that your judgement of your own happiness is influenced by whatever you happen to be thinking about at the time that seemed relevant.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Lots_of_different_things_can_affect_your_happiness\"><\/span>Lots of different things can affect your happiness\u00a0<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Deciding how happy you are is a complicated matter &#8211; but what comes to mind when you think about how happy you are will affect your judgment of your own happiness. Consequently people who had just been thinking about how many dates they had been on recently used that information to judge how happy they were which is why those who went on more dates thought that they were happier than people who had been on few \u2013 or none.\u00a0 But the students who were asked about how happy they were <em>before<\/em> thinking about how many dates they had been on were probably thinking about other things so the number of dates they had been on didn\u2019t influence how happy they thought they were.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Feelings_can_be_influenced_by_trivial_events\"><\/span>Feelings can be influenced by trivial events<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>That our feelings about our lives can be almost absurdly influenced by trivial<br \/>events is shown by <a href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/assets\/sites\/780\/docs\/schwarz_strack_happiness_einstein-ch_2004.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">another study<\/a> by University of Michigan psychologist<br \/>Norbert Schwarz. He arranged it so that some of the students who went to use a photocopier found a small value coin &#8211; worth less than 10p &#8211; on the machine. After finishing copying, an interviewer asked: \u201cTaking all things together, how happy are you with your life as a whole?\u201d Those who had found the coin reported significantly higher satisfaction than those who had not.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>But sometimes drawing attention to some temporary effect on your mood<br \/>will discount its effect on your happiness. In another study Norbert Schwarz and his team telephoned interviewees on sunny or rainy days and found that they reported being more satisfied with their life as a whole on sunny days. Yet if, before asking people how satisfied they were, the interviewers subtly drew attention to the weather as a plausible cause of current feelings by asking \u201cBy the way, how\u2019s the weather down there?\u201d those differences between sunny and rainy days disappeared.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"New_influences_on_our_happiness\"><\/span>New influences on our happiness<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>While these effects are almost certainly very short term \u2013 every day, even every hour, will bring new influences on our happiness &#8211; another surprising finding from research on happiness is the extent to which people adjust to long term changes in their lives.\u00a0 A famous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.talenteck.com\/academic\/Brickman-Coates-Janoff-1978.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">study<\/a> by Paul Brickman and colleagues using a 0-5 happiness scale to measure happiness showed that major lottery winners were no happier than people who had not won the lottery and that accident victims who had been rendered paraplegic or quadriplegic less than a year earlier rated themselves above the midpoint on the 0-5 happiness scale and were only slightly less happy than a comparison group of people with a similar background. It is hard for most of us to believe but the happiness of people living with chronic diseases is no different to that of healthy people.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>How can that be possible? The good news is that while changes to our health and circumstances can impact our feelings people adapt in the long term so we learn to cope with adverse changes. The effect of positive changes also diminishes after time as Brickman found for lottery winners \u2013 the increased happiness measurable with marriage also declines, though for marriages that survive, there is also <a href=\"https:\/\/openaccess.city.ac.uk\/id\/eprint\/2556\/3\/ZimmermannEasterlin.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a persisting long term happiness benefit<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph --><!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"We_can_worry_about_%E2%80%93_and_hope_for_%E2%80%93_all_sorts_of_things_in_life\"><\/span>We can worry about &#8211; and hope for &#8211; all sorts of things in life<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>but <a href=\"http:\/\/people.virginia.edu\/~tdw\/current.directions.2005.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a lesson from the scientific research<\/a> is that the impact of events is usually smaller \u2013 and shorter lasting than we think it will be.\u00a0 People overestimate how unhappy they would be two months after the breakup of a romantic relationship, women overestimate how unhappy they would be upon receiving unwanted results from a pregnancy test, football fans mispredict how they will feel 3 days after winning &#8211; or losing &#8211; a match.\u00a0 These mispredictions are due to the way we think &#8211; we tend to overestimate the importance of the events we are hoping for or worried about and we underestimate the extent to which other events will influence our thoughts and feelings. As Nobel prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it \u201cNothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it\u201d.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\">4<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span> How happy do you think you are? Can you be sure you know?\u00a0 It sounds unlikely that you wouldn\u2019t know something so basic about yourself but consider a study conducted at the University of Mannheim in Germany in the 1980s. Psychologist Fritz Strack and his colleagues asked university students the following two questions: \u201cHow happy&hellip; <br \/> <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/the-psychology-of-happiness\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[83,85,84],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5990,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions\/5990"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monahansen.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}