POSITIVE Evidence - Myers and Diener

Question 1

METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES

Answer 1

Did not carry out their own investigation or experiment
Collected together the findings of many studies into happiness and used this to come to some overall conclusions about the factors that make people happy
Literature review
Interviews, questionnaires, observations, correlations and meta analysis

Question 1

Aim

Answer 1

This study aims to pool together a lot of the previous research into happiness to look for overall conclusions
Aim is to answer a few key questions

Question 2

FINDINGS

Answer 2

170,000 people of all ages in 16 different countries found no differences
Equally happy
Inglehart (1990)
80% if both men and women said they were ‘fairly satisfied’
Persons gender accounted for 1% of global wellbeing
Having et al (1984)
Women are twice as vulnerable to depression
Robins (1991)
African - Americans are nearly twice as happy as European - Americans
Diener et al (1993)
Individualist cultures report greater subjective well being than collectivist cultures
A survey in 1993 found that 75% of American college students selected that ‘being well off financially’ as an essential life goal, compared with 39% in 1970
Astin et al (1987)
People who are rich do not report greater happiness
People on the Forbes list are 37% less happy than the average American
Happy people have high self esteem, sense of person control and optimism
For some, relationships cause stress
Jean - Paul Sartre (1973) ‘Hell is other people’
Married people are happier than non - married people
39% vs 24%
Lee et al (1991)
In North America and Europe, people who are religious report higher levels of happiness
Paloma and Pendleton (1990)
‘Flow’ is the extent to which we become caught up in an activity so that other things matter less

Question 3

Conclusions

Answer 3

The importance of adaptation
Effects of positive / negative events fade over time
A study found that it is only events in the last three months that influence the SWB
Human capacity to adapt to life circumstances
Cultural worldview
Cultural attitudes predispose people to interpret life events differently
Values and goals
People with a high sense of SWB have goals
Other factors (money / intelligence) only matter if they are relevant to goals

Question 4

Evaluation methodology and procedures

Answer 4

Literature Review
Researcher bias
Could not include every single piece of research
May not be representative of all research into this area
Self - Report data
Social desirability
May overemphasis happiness
Subjectivity
Hard to define concept
Participants may each have a different idea of what this term is
Lack of insight
May not have had insight into their own behaviour
Difficult to assess your own wellbeing
Reliability
Only asked once about thoughts / feelings
The sample
Culturally biased

Question 5

Alternative evidence

Answer 5

Howell and Hill (2009) investigated the effect of money on happiness
Money could produce happiness, but only if it was spent on experiences rather than material goods
Suggests that the relationship between money and happiness is more complex than previous research suggests
Schinka et al (2004) found that some people have a form of gene that reports higher instances of life satisfaction
Lyubomirsky (2013) argues that happiness is 50% genetics, 40% self control and 10 % circumstances

Question 6

Ethical and social implications

Answer 6

A literature review does not involve any experimentation on participants by the researcher themselves
Impossible for participants to have come into harm from Myers or Diener
Being asked to rate your own happiness may cause unwanted psychological harm
Bring up painful thoughts
Privacy is being invaded
Personal questions
If using beeper, could cause stress if they have to record private details
Findings could be considered to be socially sensitive
Could be used to fuel discrimination
Non Europeans / Americans