RE: [Futurework] How to be happy

[Harry Pollard]

Arthur,

Never said it was.

Of course, when you begin to get peckish  .  .  .

Harry
---------------------------------------
Arthur wrote:

The good life is not the "goods" life.

arthur

-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Pollard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2003 4:13 PM
To: Selma Singer; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Keith Hudson
Subject: Re: [Futurework] How to be happy


Keith,one

".  .  .  for example, Americans were asked to list the material goods they
thought important to "the good life". The researchers found that the more
of these goods people already had, the longer their list was, so the good
life remained always just out of reach."
Those unlimited desires keep intruding on our discussion,don't they?

Harry

--------------------------------------

Keith wrote:

>This week the New Scientist is starting a series on happiness -- a complex
>subject which is coming under increasing scrutiny by various life sciences
>(even economics!). This will be going into my project database because the
>basis of my evolutionary economics hypothesis is that we have now reached
>life-work constraints to the satisfactions given by consumer goods and
>services, and thus that we might now be coming to the end of their
>continuing efficacy in stimulating economic growth in the conventionally
>measured way -- and this, quite besides the increasing scarcity of cheap
>energy fuels in the coming decades.
>
>One of the articles in the NS series is "Reasons to be cheerful". Ten of
>these have been given, and the rapporteurs have given them weightings
>after consultation with those who are researching in the field. I have
>changed their graphic weightings into numbers of asterisks below and
>rearranged them in order of what they consider to be important.(The
>authors have scattered the order about -- goodness knows why!)
>
>My own main stimulus for happiness is not mentioned. This is to
>think/ponder/soliloquise by myself early in the morning when no-one is
>around. Some would say that this makes me an excessive introvert -- and
>thus likely to be unhappy, as the first item below says. But a very close
>second cause of happiness in my life is chatting with people I meet on my
>morning dogwalk. When I meet people I know, or strangers who seem inclined
>to chat for a few minutes, I stuff my Economist or Financial Times into my
>pocket and engage. No matter how interesting or important an article may
>be, it's nowhere near as fascinating as someone else's personality and
>experiences. Thus I start every day with a double dose of happiness and I
>count myself a lucky old man.
>
>Keith Hudson
>
><<<<
>REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
>Bob Holmes, Kurt Kleiner, Kate Douglas and Michael Bond
>
>1. MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR GENES
>Rating**********
>
>Are some people born happy or unhappy? David Lykken, a psychologist and
>behavioural geneticist at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis,
>believes our feeling of well-being at any moment is determined half by
>what is going on in our lives at that time and half by a "set point" of
>happiness, which is up to 90 per cent genetically determined and to which
>we eventually return after dramatic events.
>
>"Our happiness set point is largely determined by our grandparents," says
>Lykken. "But whether we bounce along above it or slump along under it
>depends on our -- or our parents' -- good sense and good training." Lykken
>bases his claim on his study of more than 4000 adult twins born in
>Minnesota between 1936 and 1955. He found that genetic variation accounted
>for between 44 and 55 per cent of the difference in the twins' happiness
>levels, while neither income, marital status, religion nor education
>accounted for any more than about 3 per cent (Psychological Science, vol
>7, p 189).
>
>Personality and happiness do seem to be linked: many studies have shown
>that extroverts tend to be happier than most people, and a lot happier
>than introverts. This could be because extroverts are more likely to do
>the things that bring happiness, such as have friends, climb the job
>ladder and get married. Or it could just mean that being happy makes you
>extroverted. Several studies have found that putting people in a good mood
>makes them more sociable. For example, Michael Cunningham at the
>University of Louisville in Kentucky showed that people were more
>talkative and open with others after watching a happy film than after
>watching a sad one (Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol 14, p
283).
>
>But being an extrovert doesn't always equate to happiness: it depends on
>your environment too. Gerhard Kette at Johannes Kepler University in Linz,
>Austria, found that in prison, introverts are happier than extroverts.
>
>2. GET MARRIED
>Weighting******
>
>In an analysis of reports from 42 countries, a team in the US found that
>married people are consistently happier than singletons. The effect is
>small, accounting for between about 1 and 2 per cent of the variance in
>subjective well-being. But that still begs the question: does marriage
>make you happy, or are happy people simply more likely to get married?
>
>Both may be true. In a study that followed more than 30,000 Germans for 15
>years, Diener and his colleagues, including Richard Lucas from Michigan
>State University, found that happy people are more likely to get married
>and stay married. But anyone can improve their mood by getting married.
>The effect begins about a year before the "happy day" and lasts for around
>a year afterwards. On average, satisfaction levels do return to their
>baseline, but the researchers say this conceals the fact that a good
>marriage has a permanent positive effect. Furthermore, people who are less
>happy to begin with get a bigger boost from marriage (Journal
>ofPersonality and Social Psychology, vol 84, p 527).
>
>And it seems there's something special about signing that piece of paper:
>the research shows that you can't get as much benefit from simply
>cohabiting. "My hunch is that cohabiting couples lack the deeper security
>that comes with the formal band of gold, and that is why they are not
>quite so happy," says Oswald. "Insecurity, we know from all data, is bad
>for human beings."
>
>3. MAKE FRIENDS AND VALUE THEM
>Weighting*****
>
>It is hard to imagine a more pitiful existence than life on the streets of
>Calcutta or in one of its slums, or making a living there as a prostitute.
>Yet despite the poverty and squalor they face, such people are much
>happier than you might imagine.
>
>Diener interviewed 83 people from these three groups and measured their
>life satisfaction using a scale where a score of 2 is considered neutral.
>Overall, they averaged 1.93 -- not great, but creditable, compared with a
>control group of middle class students in the city who scored 2.43. And
>the slum dwellers, who were happiest of the three disadvantaged groups,
>scored 2.23, which is not significantly different from the students' score
>(Social Indicators Research, vol 55, p 329).
>
>"We think social relationships are partly responsible," says Diener. He
>points out that all three deprived groups got high satisfaction -ratings
>in specific areas such as family (2.5) and friends (2.4). Slum dwellers
>did particularly well, perhaps because they are most likely to be able to
>cash in on the social support that arises from the importance of the
>extended family in Indian culture. "This is what the American homeless do
>not have, and they are unhappy despite better material conditions," says
>Diener. His latest, still unpublished, findings seem to bear this out.
>
>4. DESIRE LESS
>Weighting****
>
>Wise men down the ages have said that curbing your desires is a surer
>route to happiness than a fat bank balance -- and they may be right.
>
>In the 198os, political scientist Alex Michalos, now at the University of
>Northern British Columbia in Prince George, asked 18,000 college students
>in 39 countries to rate their happiness on a numeric scale. Then he asked
>them how close they were to having all they wanted in life. He found that
>the people whose aspirations -- not just for money, but for friends,
>family, job, health, money, the works -- soared farthest beyond what they
>already had tended to be less happy than those who perceived a smaller
>gap. Indeed, the size of the gap predicted happiness about five times as
>well as income alone. "The gap measures just blow away the absolute
>measures of income," says Michalos.
>
>This "aspiration gap" might explain why most people fail to get much
>happier as their salaries rise. Instead of satisfying our desires, most of
>us merely want more. In surveys by the Roper polling organisation in 1978
>and 1994, for example, Americans were asked to list the material goods
>they thought important to "the good life". The researchers found that the
>more of these goods people already had, the longer their list was, so the
>good life remained always just out of reach.
>
>5. FIND GOD (OR A BELIEF SYSTEM)
>Weighting***
>
>Karl Marx was close to the mark when he described religion as an "opiate
>for the masses". Of the dozens of studies that have looked at religion and
>happiness, the vast majority have found a positive link. Harold Koenig at
>Duke University Medical Center in Durham. North Carolina, uncovered 100
>papers on the subject, 79 of which showed that people who get involved in
>a religion are happier or more satisfied with their lives -- or have more
>positive emotions - than others.
>
>But why? Believing in God or an afterlife can give people meaning and
>purpose and reduce the feeling of being alone in the world, says Koenig,
>especially as people get older. "You really see the effect in times of
>stress. Religious belief can be a very powerful way of coping with
adversity."
>
>And it seems you're better off adhering to some belief system than none at
>all. Gary Reker at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, says this is
>most apparent when it comes to fear of death. Those who are deeply
>religious and those who are deeply irreligious have described themselves
>as less fearful of death than others, he says. "The most fearful are those
>who are uncertain, or uncommitted, to any specific belief system."
>
>Another reason why being religious improves well-being is the social
>interaction and support it brings. "Just seeing other people go up to the
>altar and come back with some sort of refreshment gives people a strong
>sense of satisfaction," says Abbott Ferriss at Emory University in
>Atlanta, Georgia. "Many people attend religious services for their social
>strengths. This is something few religious figures acknowledge."
>
>Koenig believes it is not just about receiving support. "It's really about
>giving. Studies have shown that people who provide support to others are
>better off themselves. They even live longer." This, researchers agree,
>makes religious involvement a source of greater satisfaction than other
>socially inclusive activities, such as joining a football supporters' club.
>
>Do some religions make you happier than others? Ferriss looked at the US
>General Social Survey, an ongoing study that measures attitudes and
>behaviours across American society (Journal of Happiness Studies, vol 3, p
>199). He found that Protestant Christians were happiest of any religious
>denomination, though not by much. There was a stronger link with the
>doctrinal nature of worship: evangelicals and fundamentalists, with their
>conviction that they are on the only true path, are significantly the
>happiest worshippers.
>
>6. DO SOMEONE A GOOD TURN
>Weighting***
>
>Religions teach that charity is good for the soul. It might also make you
>happier.
>
>Several studies have found a link between happiness and altruistic
>behaviour. But as with many behavioural traits, it is not always clear
>whether doing good makes you feel good, or whether happy people are more
>likely to be altruistic.
>
>Again, both could be true. In a study of 3617 people who were each
>interviewed once and then three years later, Peggy Thoits and Lyndi Hewitt
>ofVanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, found that happy people
>were more likely to sign up for volunteer work. But they also found that
>volunteers became happier, and the more voluntary work they did the
>happier they got (Journal of Health and Social Behavior, vol 42, p 115).
>
>James Konow, an economist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles,
>California, tried to tease apart cause and effect in a lab experiment. He
>recruited subjects to answer questionnaires, and towards the end of the
>session gave half of them $10 and half of them nothing. He then told the
>subjects who had been paid that they could share their money with those
>who hadn't been paid. Konow found that the more satisfied a student was
>with their life overall, the more likely they were to share the money.
>However, being in a happy mood on the day of the test did not make them
>any more generous, and students who gave did not report any immediate
>increase in happiness -- in fact, they were slightly less happy.
>
>But those who shared their money were more likely to show the personality
>traits of a "self-actualiser"-- someone concerned with their own personal
>growth and improvement. Among other things, such people experience deep
>interpersonal relationships and empathy for others (American Economic
>Review, vol 90, p 1072). Konow thinks that while a single act of
>generosity did not make his subjects happier, the cumulative effects of
>being a generous person did.
>
>7. STOP COMPARING YOUR LOOKS WITH OTHERS
>Weighting**
>
>First the bad news: good-looking people really are happier. When Diener
>got people to rate their own looks, both with and without make-up, there
>was a "small but positive effect of physical attractiveness on subjective
>well-being".
>
>Perhaps the explanation is that life is kinder to the beautiful. Or it
>could be more subtle than that. The most attractive faces are highly
>symmetrical, and there is evidence from animal research that symmetry
>reflects good genes and a healthy immune system. So perhaps beautiful
>people are happier because they are healthier: many studies have found
>that health and happiness go hand in hand.
>
>The good news is that you can cash in on beauty's emotional high, even if
>you are no oil painting. The secret is to believe you look great.
>Unfortunately, this is harder than it sounds. Only 1 in 20 people
>accurately judges where they lie on an attractiveness ratings scale. Most
>have a distorted self-image that errs on the side of loathing, rather than
>loving, according to a meta-analysis published by Alan Feingold at Yale
>University (Psychological Bulletin, vol 111, p 304). Women tend to think
>they are too fat and men worry about being puny.
>
>In a new study, Laurie Mintz and her colleagues from the University of
>Missouri- Columbia found that women who saw advertisements featuring lithe
>and flawless young models for just one to three minutes rated their own
>bodies more negatively and showed an increase in depression. Mintz was
>alarmed how quickly the women's self-esteem was undermined. And she
>believes people are becoming more dissatisfied as new technology allows
>the media to create ever more unrealistic images.
>
>What can be done? One published round-up of patients' reactions suggests
>that a successful nose or boob job can leave you happier in the long term.
>But the fact that many patients keep coming back for more implies that
>they are still not happy with how they look.
>
>Mintz recommends less drastic steps to contentment: avoid unrealistic
>media images; understand that such pictures are airbrushed and
>"Photoshopped" to perfection; appreciate your body for what it does rather
>than how it looks.
>
>8. EARN MORE MONEY (UP TO A POINT)
>Weighting*
>
>Can money buy happiness? The short answer is, yes -- but it doesn't buy
>you very much. And once you can afford to feed, clothe and house yourself,
>each extra dollar makes less and less difference.
>
>Whenever and wherever they look, researchers find that, on average,
>wealthier people are happier. "There are rich people who are miserable.
>There are poor people who are happy all the time. But if you're an unhappy
>rich person, you're going to be happier than if you were poor," says
>Robert Frank, an economist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The
>same seems to be true of people who suddenly strike it rich. Lottery
>winners and people who come into large inheritances end up somewhat
>happier than they were before, according to studies by Andrew Oswald, an
>economist at Warwick University.
>
>But the link between money and happiness is a bit more complex than that.
>In the past half-century, average income has skyrocketed in industrialised
>countries, yet happiness levels have remained static. It seems absolute
>income doesn't make much difference once you have enough to meet your
>basic needs. Instead, the key seems to be whether you have more than your
>friends, neighbours and colleagues. "Human beings make the mistake that
>they think another X thousand dollars in an absolute sense will make them
>better off. It's not that. It's that dollars buy status, and status makes
>them better off," says Oswald. This helps explain why people who can seek
>status in other ways -- scientists or actors, for example -- may happily
>accept relatively poorly paid jobs.
>
>Oswald's research bears this out. In lab tests, he asked college
>undergraduates how satisfied they would be with various salary offers for
>a hypothetical job. He found that the offer's ranking within a range of
>possible salaries made a huge difference to the students' satisfaction:
>they rated a particular salary much more favourably if it was one of the
>top ones on offer rather than one of the lower ones. Similarly, in a
>recent survey of more than 16,000 workers in the UK, Oswald found they
>reported being more satisfied with a given salary if it ranked higher in
>the company's salary hierarchy.
>
>He has developed a "happiness equation" that prices the ingredients of
>happiness. This allows him to ask, for example, how much additional money
>it would take, on average, to make a single person as happy as a married
>one. The answer puts money firmly in its place: it would take an
>additional £70,000 per year, far more than most people's annual salary.
>Similarly, the happiness benefits of having a job far exceed the actual
>income involved (International Journal of Epidemiology, vol 31, p 1139).
>"Money matters, but it's not as important as the average citizen thinks,"
>Oswald concludes.
>
>9. GROW OLD GRACEFULLY
>Weighting*
>
>Old age may not be as bad as people presume. Elderly people are on average
>just as happy as the young, and actually rate themselves more satisfied
>with their lives overall. "People refer to it as the paradox of ageing.
>Given all the problems of ageing, how could they be more satisfied?" asks
>Laura Carstensen, a psychology professor at Stanford University in
California.
>
>In one study, Carstensen gave pagers to 184 people between the ages of 18
>and 94, and paged them five times a day for a week, asking them to fill
>out an emotions questionnaire each time. Old people reported positive
>emotions just as often as young people, but they reported negative
>emotions much less frequently (Journal of Personality and Social
>Psychology, vol 79, p 644).
>
>In a larger study using survey data from 2727 people aged between 25 and
>74, Daniel Mroczek and Christian Kolarz of Fordham University in New York
>City got similar results. But they also found that other things such as
>gender, personality type and social factors affect how you will feel as
>you get older. For instance, both men and women tended to experience more
>positive emotions as they aged, but only married men experienced fewer
>negative ones (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 75, p
1333).
>
>Why are old people so happy? Some researchers suggest they may expect life
>to be harder and learn to live with it, or they're more realistic about
>their goals, only setting ones that they know they can achieve. But
>Carstensen thinks that with time running out, older people have learned to
>regulate their own emotions, focusing on things that make them happy and
>letting go of those that don't.
>
>"People realise not only what they have, but also that what they have
>cannot last forever," he says. "A goodbye kiss to a spouse at the age of
>85, for example, may elicit far more differentiated and complex emotional
>responses than a similar kiss to a spouse at the age of 20."
>
>10. DON'T WORRY  IF YOU AREN'T A GENIUS
>Weighting
>
>Though few surveys have examined whether smart people are happier, they
>have usually found that intelligence has no effect. At first glance that
>seems surprising, since brighter people tend to earn more money and richer
>people tend to be happier. "I think if you were entering the world today
>with a choice between being born smart and not smart, it wouldn't be a
>hard choice," says Frank.
>
>Some researchers think there must be some other, unmeasured factor messing
>up the lives of smarter people, but so far they have only been able to
>speculate about what it is. Brighter people could have higher expectations
>and thus be dissatisfied with anything less than the highest achievements.
>
>Or, perhaps it is simply that psychologists have been measuring the wrong
>kind of intelligence. "Maybe scoring high on an IQ test -- which means you
>know a lot of vocabulary and can rotate things in your mind -- doesn't
>have a lot to do with your ability to get along well with people," says Ed
>Diener, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
>He speculates that "social intelligence" could be the real key to
happiness.
> >>>>
>New Scientist -- 4 October 2003


****************************************************
Harry Pollard
Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles
Box 655   Tujunga   CA   91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141  --  Fax: (818) 353-2242
http://home.comcast.net/~haledward
****************************************************


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