Myers and Diener

Question 1

Background

Answer 1

Happiness is the core of the positive approach.
The approach doesn’t just seek to improve people’s lives but also to find evidence that indicates how this can be done.
The positive approach is a psychological approach and therefore aims to be scientific and evidence based.
Myers and Diener took on the task of looking at the evidence for what makes people happy.
This approach is in contrast with the traditional psychological emphasis on what causes negative emotions.

Question 2

Methodology

Answer 2

This study / article is a literature review of research on the topic of happiness.
1980s and early 1990s - there was a flood of research exploring people’s sense of well-being.

Question 3

Interviews and questionnaires

Answer 3

One way to assess happiness is to consider a person’s sense of their own happiness or well-being.
This is called subjective well-being (SWB).
This is 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?
Alternatively, a multi-item scale (a form of questionnaire) can be used which includes a number of questions related to happiness.
In both cases a quantitative measure is produced to represent happiness.

Question 4

Observations

Answer 4

One way to discover what people are doing is asking them to report what they are doing at selected times (a form of observation).
Researchers may use beepers to remind participants to send a message saying what they are doing and / or thinking at a particular moment.
This a way to sample people’s behaviour.

Question 5

Correlations

Answer 5

Another way to understand happiness is to consider what factors co-vary with it.
Some of these factors may contribute to making a person happy.
Other factors are a consequence of being happy.
It’s not always clear which is cause and which is effect.

Question 6

Correlations - example

Answer 6

People with high SWB tend to have a positive appraisal of life events around them.
It could also be the other way round.
If a person tends to see events around them in a rose-coloured way, this may create a higher SWB.

Question 7

Reviews

Answer 7

This study is a review of other research.
Some of the research referred to is also based on multiple studies.
Some of these are reviews and some are meta-analyses.

Question 8

Inglehart (1990)

Answer 8

A survey of almost 170,000 people of all ages in 16 different countries found no differences. People of all ages were equally happy.
However, at different ages, different factors contribute to happiness.
Mean score was 80% satisfaction with life.

Question 9

McCrae and Costa (1990)

Answer 9

People do experience crises, but these are not restricted to a particular age such as the supposed mid-life crisis in one’s early 40s.

Question 10

Herzog et al (1982)

Answer 10

Social relations and health becomes more important factors with age.

Question 11

Inglehart - men and women

Answer 11

Inglehart’s survey of people in 16 different countries found that 80% of men and 80% of women said they were “fairly satisfied” with life.

Question 12

Haring and et al (1984)

Answer 12

It was calculated that a person’s gender accounted for 1% of global well-being.

Question 13

Robins and Regier (1991)

Answer 13

Women are twice as vulnerable as men to depression.

Question 14

Is happiness related to race or culture?

Answer 14

People in individualist cultures report greater SWB than in collectivist cultures:
In an individualist culture people are more concerned with their individual needs whereas in collectivist cultures people focus on the needs of the group.
In individualist cultures, individual happiness matters more.

Question 15

Diener et al (1993)

Answer 15

African-Americans report nearly twice as much happiness as European-Americans.

Question 16

Inglehart (1990)

Answer 16

In Portugal, 10% of people reported that they were happy compared to the 40% in the Netherlands.

Question 17

Is happiness related to money?

Answer 17

In a poor country such as Bangladesh, people with money report higher SWB than those without money.
Affluence does increase happiness but only up to a point.
Once a certain level of comfort is reached (basic needs for food and warmth are met) increased wealth makes little difference.

Question 18

Astin et al (1987)

Answer 18

A survey in 1933 found that 75% of American college students selected “being well of financially” as an essential life goal, compared with 39% in 1970.
Not everyone agrees that money buys happiness, but most agree that having more money would make them a little happier.

Question 19

Diener et al (1993)

Answer 19

The correlation between income and happiness is only modest.
Found a correlation of +.12 between income and happiness.

Question 20

Diener et al (1985)

Answer 20

People who are rich don’t report greater happiness.
A survey of people on the Forbes rich list found that 37% were less happy than the average American.

Question 21

Argyle (1986)

Answer 21

People who win the lottery only report brief increases in their happiness.

Question 22

Happy people

Answer 22

It seems that some people are simply happier than others, regardless of life’s ups and downs.

Question 23

Costa et al (1987)

Answer 23

Found the people who reported being happy in 1973 tended to be the happy ones a decade later.

Question 24

The traits of happy people

Answer 24

High self-esteem.
Sense of personal control.
Optimism.
Extraversion.
(It is not clear whether these traits make people happier or the traits develop because a person is happy)

Question 25

The traits of happy people - high self-esteem

Answer 25

Such individuals like themselves and typically agree with statements such as “I’m a lot of fun to be with” and “I have good ideas.”

Question 26

The traits of happy people - sense of personal control

Answer 26

People who feel empowered rather than helpless do better at school, cope better with stress and are typically happier.

Question 27

The traits of happy people - optimism

Answer 27

Such people agree with a statement such as “When I undertake something new, I expect to succeed.”

Question 28

The traits of happy people - extraversion

Answer 28

People who are more outgoing are happier when with other people and also when alone.

Question 29

Poloma and Pendleton (1990)

Answer 29

In North America and Europe people who are religious report higher levels of happiness.

Question 30

Witter et al (1985)

Answer 30

Happiness is associated with strength of religious affiliation and frequency of worship attendance.

Question 31

Gallup (1984)

Answer 31

People with a high “spiritual commitment” were twice as likely to say they were very happy.

Question 32

Jean-Paul Sartre (1973)

Answer 32

“Hell is other people”

Question 33

Burt (1986)

Answer 33

For most people the benefits of relationships outweigh the strains.
Research shows that people who can name several close friends are healthier and happier than people who can’t name such friends.

Question 34

Lee et al (1991)

Answer 34

Married people are happier than non-married people.
In one study the rates were 39% compared to 24%.

Question 35

Wood et al (1989)

Answer 35

In a meta-analysis of 93 studies, women and men reported similar levels of happiness for marriage and non-marriage.

Question 36

Work and the “flow” of happy people

Answer 36

Work satisfaction affects happiness.
People who are out of work are less happy than those in work.
Work provides a personal identity, a sense that one’s life matters and also a sense of community (working with other people).
However, work can also be unsatisfying and / or stressful and is then associated with unhappiness.

Question 37

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Answer 37

Introduced the concept of “flow”:
The extent to which we become caught up in an activity so that other things matter less.
Csikszentmihalyi used beepers to question people throughout their day about what they were doing and whether they were happy.
He found that people were happiest when they were engaged in mindful challenge and experiencing flow.

Question 38

Self-report

Answer 38

The data collected about SWB is inevitably subjective.
When someone reports they are very happy we have no way of confirming or challenging that.
It may be that respondents are not telling the truth.
On questionnaires people often provide socially desirable answers because they want to appear in a good light.
Research has found that social desirability scores correlate reasonably with happiness scores.

Question 39

Self-report - examples

Answer 39

People who represent themselves as happy also tend to give socially desirable answers.
However, when friends are asked to rate the happiness of the same people, their ratings also correlate with the target individual’s social desirability scores.
This confirms the validity of the original answers.
Another possibility is that people only think they are happy but are actually repressing their true feelings of unhappiness (a psychodynamic view).
However, this is unlikely since research has found that those people who describe themselves as happy and satisfied with life are described in the same way by family and friends.
Overall, there is reason to believe that we can trust subjective reports of happiness.

Question 40

Correlations (evaluation)

Answer 40

Many of the findings are correlational.
This means that we can’t assume that a particular factor is a cause of happiness.
There may be important intervening variables.

Question 41

Correlations - example (evaluation)

Answer 41

The link between marriage and happiness may be due to other things in a marriage rather than the relationship.
It might be that married people have more disposable cash than single people because they have two incomes but only need one house, one car etc and this makes them happier.
A further issue with correlational data is that we don’t know the direction of the relationship.

Question 42

Mastekaasa (1992)

Answer 42

Research shows that happy people are more appealing as marriage partners.
Therefore it could be that happiness makes marriage more likely than vice versa.

Question 43

The samples

Answer 43

A lot of the data is based on Western samples as the researchers are American and have conducted much of their research in the USA.
The roots of happiness may be different in other cultures.
There is a hint of this in the article when comparing individualist and collectivist cultures.
People in former report higher levels of happiness: It may be that people in collectivist cultures are equally happy but just don’t express it as happiness.
Their pleasure comes from the success of the group rather than the individual.

Question 44

Psychological harm

Answer 44

One of the benefits of this kind of research is that there is very little risk of harm to participants because behaviour is not being manipulated.
However, it is possible that some people, who are unhappy, may not welcome being asked about their happiness and in fact may feel more depressed after being asked about their sense of well-being.
Therefore researchers must be sensitive to participants’ needs and debrief them appropriately.

Question 45

Psychological harm - British Psychological Society’s code of ethics

Answer 45

One important point to note is that the ethical guidelines (e.g. the British Psychological Society’s code of ethics) advise psychologists to practise within the boundaries of their competence.
This means that they shouldn’t try to help someone who might, for example, start to discuss their depression during a debriefing session, it would be the psychologist’s duty to recommend a good source of professional help.

Question 46

Socially sensitive research

Answer 46

One reason why some research is classed as “socially sensitive” is that it might make us more likely to think (positively or negatively) about a certain group of people, such as a particular culture, in a particular way.

Question 47

Inglehart (1990) - socially sensitive research

Answer 47

In Portugal 10% of people reported that they were happy compared with 40% in the Netherlands.
This may lead people to assume that any Portuguese people they meet will be unhappy and that you are more likely to meet a happy Dutch person.
Also we may need to be cautious about statistics such as this because we don’t know if the sample used was a fair representation of the Portuguese and Netherlands populations.

Question 48

Alternative evidence

Answer 48

One of the emergent ideas in this classic study is that happiness stays at a fairly steady level through life, with occasional highs or lows.
Some researchers call this your happiness set-point and believe that it could be at least partly due to genetics.
One gene has been linked to happiness:
The 5-HTTgene.
This controls levels of serotonin.

Question 49

Schinka et al (2004)

Answer 49

Some people have a form of this gene and report higher instances of life satisfaction.
However, not all psychologists agree with this view.

Question 50

Sonja Lyubomirsky (2013)

Answer 50

Argues that happiness is 50% due to genetics and 10% due to circumstances.
The remaining 40% is caused by “self-control”. (Factors the individual themselves is able to have influence over).
Lyubomirsky arrived at these percentages from a review of studies that asked people about their happiness:
Studies comparing happiness levels in twins and family members (to estimate genetic factors) and studies comparing people who had “easy” lives and “more difficult” ones (to estimate the role of circumstantial factors).