The psychology of happiness Flashcards
What is happiness/subjective wellbeing defined as?
A pervasive sense that life is good
What factors is SWB related to?
Optimism, extraversion, social connections, marriage, engaging work, religion and spirituality, leisure, good sleep and exercise, social class (lifestyle and better coping methods) and subjective health
Not related to age, attractiveness, money, gender, education, sunnier climates, objective health etc
What are the 3 elements of subjective wellbeing>
Happiness - emotional state of how feel about yourself and the world
Satisfaction with life - cognitive global assessment about acceptance of your life; one is satisfied where little discrepancy between present and ideal situation
Emotional stability - Low level of neuroticism (a long term tendency to be in a negative or anxious state, not a medical condition but one of the BIG 5 PERSONALITY TRAITS) - people with neuroticism generally have more low mood and suffer from feelings such as guilt, anxiety and anger more often, often displaying poor ability to adapt to environment and inability to change life patterns
What are the big 5 personality traits?
Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism
What is the most widely used scale for measuring life satisfaction?
Ed Diener’s Satisfaction with life scale
5-Item instrument that measures global cognitive judgement of life satisfaction
Answers given as extent of agree/disagree and ratings for each question are added to produce the total score
Questions include things like “In most ways my life is close to ideal” and “if I could live my life over I would change almost nothing”
What is the one potential criticism of Diener’s scale?
Can we trust self-reports? are we seeing the truth or just socially acceptable answers?
But Diener did find high correlations between self-report and reports of friends/family, which offers validation
Also found agreement between overt behaviour i.e. between actions and expressions
How do the majority of people in economically developed countries score on the scale?
A score of around 20-24 is average, and indicates that the majority are satisfied but have some areas where they would like to see improvement
What did Diener define as 3 key components affecting life satisfaction?
Social relationships - people who score high on the scale tend to have close and supportive relationships, while those who don’t are likely to be dissatisfied; loss of a close individual can also lead to dissatisfaction and it may take time to come back from that
Work/school/role performance - when a person enjoys their work and feels that it is meaningful this contributes to life satisfaction; when work is going poorly due to bad circumstances or bad fit with person’s strengths this lowers life satisfaction, as can having important goals with inadequate progress towards them
Personal satisfaction with the self - religion, leisure and learning/growth are sources of satisfaction for most people, but can be powerful sources of dissatisfaction when these sources of worth are frustrated; temperament can colour responses to other factors affecting satisfaction
What are 4 traits of happy people?
Self-esteem, extraversion, optimism and sense of control
Why is work so important to happiness?
Provides sense of personal identity
Sense of community
Sense of pride and belonging helps construct social identity
Purpose and focus - a sense that your life matters
However, being overwhelmed or underwhelmed at work can lead to dissatisfaction
What is the Flow model?
In the zone between anxiety and boredom we enter a state of flow - where challenges engage and match skills i.e. high challenge, high skills
To be in flow is to be un-self-consciously absorbed
How was the stability of SWB over time tested?
Using an event sampling method in which adolescent participants were given beepers and asked to enter feelings/actions and thoughts into a journal at random intervals whenever the beeper went off
They found that there were small changes in SWB but it largely remained stable over the course of the study - even teens with mood swings were no more unhappy or troubled on average than adults than those with more level emotional lives
What was Danner’s nun study?
Longitudinal study scoring emotional content of application letters by looking for expressions of happiness
Those who expressed positive themes were found to still have high SWB at later age, with lower levels of AD
Happiness expressed at 18 also seemed to predict life duration, with 90% of nuns whose happiness at 18 was in the upper quarter still alive compared to 34% of those who were least happy
Obviously happiness alone won’t have been the sole reason for longevity but it certainly seems to have contributed
What is the Duchenne smile?
A physical marker of genuine life satisfaction and pure enjoyment - raised cheeks, appearance of eye wrinkles and raised mouth corners (contraction of zygomatic major muscle which raises mouth corners, and orbicularis oculi
When you witness a Duchenne smile you naturally feel positive emotions for the person
What are the 6 psychological components of SWB?
High self-esteem - most important predictor, cultural differences e.g. western individualism attaches esteem to individual achievement but eastern inter-dependent cultures tie self esteem to group membership and successes
Sense of perceived control - “acts of God” are outside of control, but where possible it is important to feel some measure of internal/personal control; sometimes may want to turn control over to higher power, relinquishing control to external locus, but it is crucial to know when to depend on religious beliefs and when to rely on internal locus
Extroversion - interest in things outside self
Optimism - tendency to expect best possible outcome and to dwell on most hopeful aspect of a situation, look to future with positive expectation
Positive social relationships - strongest external source of SWB
Sense of meaning and purpose - defined as spirituality but doesn’t have to be religious, simply belief that life connects to greater good and makes a difference; “post-traumatic growth” i.e. when terrible events propel people to grow rather than deteriorate because they managed to find a purpose in the pain
