Lecture 11: Well-Being and Interventions Flashcards
How can happiness harm us?
The pursuit of happiness makes us more self-focus & less other-focus
* but, happiness is associated with more concern for others
Makes us more idle
* but, happier on more active days
* more prosocial, better performance on cognitive tasks, more expansive writing movements on happier days
Make us less healthy
* but, happiness associated better health & longevity
Swb positively and moderately related to a number of outcomes
- more prestigious jobs, higher job performance ratings, earn higher incomes
- get married, have happier marriage & interpersonal relationships
- more social support from colleagues and loved ones
- lower mortality rates & higher survival rate
Lyubormirksy et al’s (2005) and pressman & cohen’s (2005) meta- analyses
PA motivates individuals to act in ways to continue to improve their well-being (positive reinforcement)
Broaden our attentional focus & enhance coping & problem-solving
* benefits are compounding
* generally speaking, we have evidence that happiness isn’t just an outcome of
it can foster life success
life success, it can foster life success
Happiness and Goals
We know that goals allow us to enjoy swb without explicitly pursuing it
- so we can pursue happiness (implicitly) while pursuing other things (explicitly)
- you don’t have to pursue happiness in order to be happy, you need to pursue optimal goals
What are optimal goals; Self-concordant
self-concordant
* ex. important & personally valuable
* approach-orientated rather than avoidance-oriented
* moderately challenging
* attainable
* instrumentally related (not in conflict)
Intentional positive activities
taught students in his class what happy people do and then had students practice those behaviours in everyday life
* well-being improved relative to comparison group
* insight group (take notes from research findings & do activities)
* fundamentals group (specific findings & do activities) LARGEST GAINS IN HAPPINESS
* activities (create own list & do activities)
Positive activity model
Deliberately practicing simple, intentional and regular activities meant to mimic the healthy thoughts, behaviours and goals of happy people, can boost happiness
What kinds of activities linked to positive activity model
what sorts of activities? – simple, intentional & effortful
Dosage: Frequency & timing
* optimal dosage is difficult to determine
* depends on person-activity fit
* variety (avoid habituation, same thing over and over)
* trigger: activities that trigger each other ex. gratitude making us prosocial
* multiple acts
* some acts may “trigger” further positive acts * sociallysupportedacts
* sustained practice
Person Features and Positive activity model
what kind of people?
* have to be motivated and believe efforts will payoff (self-efficacy) > believe you have what it takes, helps you sustain effort
- personality traits (ex. extraversion & openness to experience)
- initial affective state
- low pa or moderate depressive symptoms
- perceptions of social support > may make it harder to engage in social attributes
- demographics
- age, culture
Positive activity model and Fit
- Activities must fit with personal characteristics (ex. personality traits, affect, values, preferences, goals)
Self-oriented (ex. practicing optimism) vs. other-oriented (ex. expressing gratitude)
* individualists vs. collectivists
Social-behavioural (ex. being kind) vs. reflective cognitive (ex. savoring happy times)
* lonely vs. “frazzled” individuals
Past-focused (ex. counting blessings) vs. future-oriented (ex. optimistic thinking) * older adults vs. youths
Why does performing positive activities benefit well-being
Intentional and require some degree of effort
* you have to do something
Increase happiness
* foster pa, positive thoughts & positive meaning, satisfies human needs (recall sdt)
Lead to enduring happiness by countering hedonic adaptation
* activities are episodic, transient, and can be varied
* activities can help draw attention to the features that produced initial happiness and help us to not take them for granted
Specific well-being interventions
Gratitude
* as an emotion
* as an affective trait
* a virtue/character strength
Why gratitude?
* prevents hedonic adaptation
* strengthens social relationships
* counters depressive affect (a positive memory bias)
Gratitude as resiliency
* buffers responses to negative events
Gratitude acts as a moral…
* barometer, motivator, reinforcer
counting one’s blessing
several empirical studies document short-term benefits of counting one’s blessings and expressing gratitude to well-being
- 1 week to write & deliver a letter in person to someone who had been esp. kind to them, but who had never been properly thanked
- largest immediate boost in happiness relative to control
- short-term benefits
- by 3 months returned to baseline
Expressing optimism
Mixed evidence of focusing on “best self” or “best possible self” to well-being
Experiement
* write about “best possible” self
* temporary boost in swb
* increase lasted for several weeks post-intervention
Ex. seligman et al. (2005)
* write about a time when you were at your best and reflect on personal strengths
* immediate boost in happiness relative to control
* immediate benefit
* by 1 week returned to baseline
Focusing on the good things
empirical evidence supports benefits of focusing on the positives
- write down daily 3 things that went well and why they went well
- relative to control
- long-term sustained increases in happiness
