HUMAN HAPPINESS - ITS NATURE & ITS ATTAINMENT
VOLUME I: THE NATURE OF HAPPINESS
CHAPTER 6

 

THE HAPPY PERSON

 

Researchers have discovered two basic things about happiness that makes this chapter possible. One is probably obvious to you. The other may come as a surprise.

The first: some people are much happier than others.

The second: the happiest people have dozens upon dozens of common traits.

These two discoveries about happiness provide the foundation for the next two chapters of this book. In these chapters we'll examine both the outer world and the inner world of happy individuals through the research.

In the present chapter, we examine the outer world: the demographic, situational, and objective characteristics of happy people. Here we'll answer the most often asked questions most people want to know about happy people. What is their income? Are they married? How successful are they? How old are they? How do they spend their time? What occupations do they choose? These, and many other, will be explored.

In the next chapter, we'll move into the inner world of of happy people and examine their personality and psychological profile. There, we'll answer questions such as: What do happy people value? How do their personalities differ from others? What are their most typical traits? How do they deal with others?

Together, the next two chapters combine to provide a complete picture of the research findings regarding the happiest people, and as the picture unfolds, some of the most important lessons for your own pursuit of happiness should also emerge.

 

SOME PEOPLE ARE MUCH HAPPIER THAN OTHERS

We saw, in the last chapter, how glorious it is to be in a happy mood. But happiness, as it is understood by most of us, goes beyond just a fleeting mood. Most people think of "happiness" as a more long-term condition -- an overall sense of personal well-being and contentment with life, and so do the researchers in happiness studies.

Everyone has a happy mood at one time or another -- even the unhappy. But some people are happier overall. They have many more happy moods than unhappy ones (21, 147, 201, 235), and they spend more of their time in happier moods than most of us do (21, 147, 201, 202, 235).

These are the happy people...

The research shows that these people not only spend more time in happy moods, but the quality of their happiness they feel is even more remarkable. It is a deep happiness. The happiest people feel happy most of the time. Their mood is typically ebullient and enthusiastic. They carry with them a strong sense of personal contentment and self-satisfaction. They're happy with the way their life is going, and are highly pleased with most every aspect of it.

Things couldn't be going any better for the happiest people!

When psychologists ask about a person's happiness, the answer provides a profound evaluation by that person concerning how good or bad things have been going for them in their life as a whole. A persons happiness is the most basic "index of life satisfaction." In a word or two, a person's evaluation of their happiness reveals how their whole life is going on a multitude of levels (21, 55, 147, 201, 230, 235).

In the hundreds of thousands of studies on happiness, not one has failed to detect rather large differences among people in their level of happiness. Apparently, there is a great diffusion of happiness levels that transcends culture and geography, no matter where around the world one travels.

But more basically, no matter the population or location -- equal variations in happiness wherever psychologists have studied it. In other words, research has confirmed the obvious:

Clearly, some individuals are much happier than others.

This being the case, psychologists have studied the happier people and compared them to the less happy, and according to the collected data, happy people differ from unhappy people in many significant ways.

What makes happy people so different? We'll turn to the answers in a moment, but before we begin, let's talk about you and your own happiness.

In the pages that follow we'll be examining the many characteristics that psychologists have seen in happy people, and it should be interesting for you to read the next two chapters with your own life in mind. How well does it stack-up against the happy people we'll be looking at? Are their things about the life of happy people that you might apply in your own life? Do you place your priorities in life on the same things happy people do?

Keeping these questions in mind as you read, can make this a valuable education into the nature of your own personal happiness. And don't be discouraged if you find that you don't fall into every category we discuss -- very few people do! The categories we'll be looking at are simply generalizations that are true of most happy people. But they are not necessarily true of all happy people. It works this way: the more happiness categories a person falls into, or the more "happiness traits" a person has, the happier the person generally is.

Of course, the "happiness quiz" you took in Chapter 2 was based on the very same idea, so you already know how you stand on many of the items we'll be covering. During the quiz, though, we offered only a brief overview of the happiness findings. Here we get down to the details!

 

FINDING HAPPY PEOPLE

To discover anything about the nature of happiness, researchers have had to identify, locate, and study them thoroughly.

How have they done this? Primarily through scientific measurement .

If you're going to study happiness, you first have to measure it. Otherwise, how can you determine who's happy and who's not?

How can you make such a scientific determination? Psychologists have developed many specific techniques to do this, but basically all the techniques do just one thing: they ask the person.

Now one might imagine that psychologists could do a little bit better than this, but actually they have little choice. There are no known physiological measurements that distinguish happiness from other emotions (in fact all emotions are quite similar physiologically). No behavioral or gestural expressions are reliable enough to use (53). The opinions of friends and peers have been proven to be too varied and inaccurate to use (42, 59, 129, 135, 301, 306). Indirect measures and projective techniques have questionable reliability and validity themselves, so they too are of little value. Even the evaluation of trained clinicians, though better than other, outside measures, have not proven to be as as accurate as one might hope.

No, since happiness is primarily a subjective experience, the only accurate source about personal happiness is the person himself. Thus, psychologists simply ask the person how happy he is using various questionnaires.

In some research the person is simply asked "are you very happy, fairly happy, or not too happy?" In other research a multi-item questionnaire has been used. And in recent years, full-scale inventories, like the Psychap Inventory (230, 225), have been developed. But the standard instrument in the field has usually been a self-rating scale like the one below.

Where, for example, would you place your general happiness on this scale?

10  Extremely Happy
  9  Very Happy
  8  Pretty Happy
  7  Mildly Happy
  6  Slightly Happy
  5  Neutral (not particularly happy or unhappy)
  4  Slightly Unhappy
  3  Mildly Unhappy
  2  Pretty Unhappy
  1  Very Unhappy
  0  Extremely Unhappy

 

Wherever you rank yourself, this would seem to be  a pretty "dinky" scientific measure of happiness. Such measures appear rather transparent and obvious. You'd think clever psychologists would have come up with more sophisticated ways to assess happiness. But surprisingly, despite the best efforts, these simple questions appear to be far superior to the indirect or physiological attempts to measure happiness some researchers have tried.

How good are the happiness measures currently used? According to scientific standards, they are exceptionally good!  Over years of testing, the most widely used happiness indices surpass most psychometric standards regarding their inherit ability to accurately and truly measure happiness.   Studies show happiness measures are reliable (in other words, the results gained testing the same person over many different time-spans remains consistent) (21, 59, 108, 118, 130, 132, 133, 135, 161, 164, 171, 230, 235, 241, 286). Furthermore, happiness measures demonstrate high validity (they accurately indicate the true level of happiness of any given individual) (11, 50, 66, 128, 132, 135, 147, 165, 201, 220, 221, 222, 230, 235, 241, 286, 320, 329). And finally, happiness measures are less prone to the kinds of response biases (like lying, concealment, internal repression or denial, understatement or overstatement, the need to agree, and the need to appear "socially desirable") that jeopardize most other psychological instruments (7, 132, 166, 220, 230, 235, 241, 329, 339).

Currently, there there is unanimous agreement among experts in test design: the happiness measures currently in use are indeed truly accurate measures of personal happiness.

More simply put, psychologists have developed the necessary scientific tools to accurately identify happy people to study, and have successfully done so for years.

Still, once researchers find truly happy people, how do they study them?

The methods used by happiness researchers run the entire gamut of all the traditional techniques employed by social and medical scientists...

Some researchers have taken a "total" approach by studying just a few happy individuals as exhaustively as possible. Here, selected happy individuals have been studied using virtually every form of psychological analysis available. In such "scrutinized" studies, the strategy has been to study a few happy people as completely as possible, using every possible psychometric tests; complete life-history analysis, frequent clinical interviews, observation in various social and testing settings, and long-term monitoring of their  mood, feelings and activities (e.g., 132, 200, 224, 230).

At the other extreme, many researchers, instead of studying a few people thoroughly, have focused on studying masses of people briefly. In this vein, thousands upon thousands of people in this country and around the world, in statistically representative samples, have been studied in national and international opinion interviews concerning happiness (e.g., 21, 55, 108, 130, 147, 241, 286, 316, 331, 332, 336). Using the most careful interviewing techniques and analytic methods, hundreds of specific details regarding personal happiness have been discovered. The data from these sources is particularly valuable since such interviews have involved masses of "average" people from all walks of life and have been repeated, with different samples, dozens of times, over many years.

In between these extremes are the standard sorts psychological research studies designed to test specific questions or hypotheses about happiness. Hundreds of such studies have been made -- some generating information on a single question, others providing information on numerous questions. Hundreds of specific factors have been studied and restudied to see what relationships exist with happiness (and the more pertinent will be referenced in appropriate sections as we continue).

One example of the thoroughness of this research effort is shown in the testing area. Virtually every major psychological testing instrument has been used in studying happy people (132, 201, 202, 230, 235). Scores of clinical and personality tests have been used from the MMPI to the Rorschach (the famous "inkblot test"). All the major I.Q. and cognitive ability tests have been examined. An incredible array of lesser known tests (which measure such things as anxiety, worries, problems, attitudes, psychometric tendencies, personal adjustment, the use of time, optimism, self-concept, psycho-motor functioning, and other factors) have been thrown at happy people. Indeed, over the years, happy people have probably been scrutinized with a wider assortment of psychological tests and measures than any group ever studied by psychologists.

Happy people have been observed with the widest variety of research techniques available to the social sciences.

After all this research effort, then, what has been discovered? The answer is: a tremendous amount!

 

HAPPY PEOPLE HAVE IT MADE

Yet to reduce it to its most basic finding, the overall conclusion of happiness research is a simple one: Happy people have it made!

Happy people seem to have the best of everything. They enjoy a situation of highly satisfying success in most every important area of life. In most every respect, happy people have more of the "good things" in life, in greater abundance, and for longer periods of time, than most people (especially unhappy people) ever have. And as this Chapter unfolds, we'll see this general theme repeated time after time.

 

ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT WITH LIVING

Let us begin with one of the most characteristic traits of happy people: the happiest people appear to be actively involved with living (21, 55, 129, 132, 147, 202, 230. 235, 286, 329).

Happy people are intent with living fully. They fill their life with activity -- they are always busy with something. Active involvement is the hallmark of a happy personality. Happy people are involved with other people; they are involved with their families; they are involved with their work; they are involved with their activities -- indeed, they are involved with every aspect of life.

As we explore the research on the happy people, we'll notice this quality of active involvement underlies the whole picture. We'll see that this quality is one of the most fundamental differences between happy and unhappy people. Happy people are seekers. they approach life; they attack life's problems; they become totally immersed in living. The unhappy, on the other hand, are more likely to withdraw from life -- to avoid deep involvement with it. Happy people have it made, and the key to their success may well be their active involvement with life. As I wrote many years ago,

"Happy people get more out of life because they put more into it" (229)

 

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE HAPPY PERSON

One thing that involves happy people is their social life. We're speaking of social life in a broad sense here. It includes married life, family relations, and social activities of all kinds -- both formal and informal. In this broad sense, a rewarding social life, more than any other factor we'll study, is the most important single factor contributing to happiness (7, 21, 38, 39, 72, 78, 79, 80, 104, 108, 113, 117, 130, 132, 135, 140, 143, 147, 200, 241, 255, 261, 262, 310, 317, 338).

Psychology has learned a lot about the social life of happy people in recent years. First, happy people are more involved,more active, more participatory in social activities. Second, happy people are more successful in their social relationships. Third, they gain great satisfaction from their social life.

Let's look closely at each of these...

First, happy people display a high degree of social participation (7, 21, 72, 80, 104, 108, 117, 133, 143, 147, 230, 235, 259, 230, 235). Happy people are more socially active than ordinary people. They participate more in social situations and activities on both formal and informal level. On a formal level, happy people are more likely to be in all types of organizations, clubs, and associations (129, 202, 230, 235). Happy people can well be described as "joiners." But more than formal activities, happy people are also typified by high participation in informal relationships (147, 201, 230, 235). In fact, it is this more private, informal socializing with friends and the immediate family that shows the strongest relationship to happiness (147, 202, 241, 286). The main point is, however, happy people are highly involvement in social things. Compared to other people -- particularly the unhappy -- happy people simply invest much more of themselves and their time in relationships with others.

Second, happy people are usually most successful at social relations (129, 130, 133). They are successful in communicating to others, they are successful in relating deeply to others, they are successful in everyday dealings with others. In college, they tend to be much more successful at dating (133) and are more optimistic than others about their chances of eventually finding a marital partner (172). Put an other way, social things work out favorably for the happy person. As we shall see later, happy people possess numerous social skills that help them towards social success, and, indeed, it appears that they are the kind of person that others see as a desirable companion. We'll also see that happy people often end up being popular, being leaders, and being in the best love and family relationships.

Third, in addition to their high degree of social participation and social successfulness, happy people also gain great emotional rewards, satisfaction, and support from their social life (130, 132, 133, 147, 202, 216, 255, 261, 262). This satisfaction shows itself in many ways. For example, happy people are usually more pleased with their current social environment than most people are, and they view it as holding ample opportunity to satisfy their desired social needs (172). They feel that they have a number of friends they could count on in times of trouble (216, 259). Happy people also express high satisfaction with their present circle of friends; so satisfied, in fact, that other possible friendship groups hold little attraction in comparison (130). That the "grass is always greener" in terms of friendship possibilities, is mostly typical of unhappy people, who see other groups as more attractive than their own.

Humans are The Social Animal, and there must be a good reason for it. One main reason, apparently, is that social activity produces great rewards. Social psychologists believe human contact is innately reinforcing to our species (147, 852) and evolutionary theory suggests that it has to be. Human beings evolved, like many weaker species, in large thanks to social structure and cooperation -- Humans finding the strength and adaptive edge in the group that they lacked alone. Social bonding is perhaps the primary reason that Humans are around today and why our species has succeeded and prospered so well. Natural selection thus developed in human beings a strong need for human contact, and like all the needs and drives Nature has provided us, satisfying this social need provides rewards that are instinctively fulfilling.

Thus it is natural that human contact is strongly involved in human happiness -- it can be seen as a biological imperative. Successfully fulfilling this primary inborn need for social relations naturally leads us to Nature's primary emotional reward: happiness.

Jean Paul Stare's famous play No Exit ends with the line "Hell is other people." But happiness research shows just the opposite: Happiness is other people!

 

MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE OF HAPPY PEOPLE

If the social life, in it's global sense, is the Number One factor contributing to personal happiness, then it should come as no surprise that the most significant relationships in life (marriage and family relationships) have a tremendous impact on happiness -- for better or worse.

Indeed, of all the specific areas of life happiness researchers have studied, none compare to the effect these relationships have on our mood. More than success, more than fortune, fame, or wealth, more than a life or ease and play -- nothing effects happiness more than our home-life. A recent, world wide Gallop Poll showed the family-life as providing the greatest happiness of all factors, no matter what the income or social level (316).

The family provides the nucleus of our lives, and its' continuing life-long influence on our happiness dwarfs most other factors (55, 130, 316). Happiness, in other words, hits pretty close to home, and, once again, here is another factor in which "happy people have it made!"

Research finds that happy people enjoy a highly satisfying family life (55, 63, 75, 113, 125, 130, 133, 147, 209, 216, 241, 270, 316, 329). The effect of family relationships on happiness appears critical: people who are satisfied with their marriage and family life are generally happy while people who are dissatisfied with these aspects of their lives are generally unhappy.

Of course, the basic unit of a family is the married couple, and one of the basic findings of the happiness research is that married people are happier than single people. Happy people are far more likely to be married (21, 34, 55, 75, 122, 129, 130, 147, 176, 241, 286, 305, 317, 329, 389, 402, 406). Despite the image, "swinging singles" and "gay divorces" are generally unhappier. In fact, the divorced, the widowed,the separated,and those who have lost in love are among the most unhappy groups in society (21, 30, 55, 129, 247, 216, 259, 317).

Most people intuitively believe that married people are happier (130) and this belief is especially true among people who have been married themselves (whether currently married, divorced, separated, or widowed) (130). The desire to marry remains a strong cultural obsession, even today. And the research finds a solid basis for this cultural preference. Being married is one of the best single predictors of a person's happiness-level (as it is in other fields where being married is also found to be one of the better predictors of good physical health, longevity, and mental health).

At this point, however, two points need clarification.

First, when we speak of "marriage" most researchers would include in this classification all close love relationships. Studies which include other types of couple relationships (cohabitation, steady dating, common-law marriages, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc.) find happiness rates for these groups almost as high as for legally married couples. Simply put, "love" is what we're really talking about here. People who have a "special" mate in their lives are usually much happier than people who don't. So although technically, married couples have a slight statistical edge over other couple-types, the difference is minimal compared to people living their life alone.

Second, we've yet to discuss how good the marriage or relationship is -- as if that didn't matter. The surprise is: in some respects it doesn't matter! Much of the data gathered in the broad national samples cited above was concerned with demographics only. In other words, happiness was compared to simply to one's marital status ("Are you married, single, divorced, or widowed?"). In most of these studies, nobody was asked, "How good is the marriage?" and, apparently, it didn't matter. On a broad, statistical level, people in a relationship were shown to be happier than those who were not -- no matter how good or bad the relationship might have happened to be!

But don't be misled. The quality of a love relationship counts a lot. In research where relationship-quality has been studied, there is a strong and direct correlation between the rewardingness of a relationship and the happiness it engenders. Here, the research clearly shows that the more satisfied one is with their relationship, the happier they tend to be. In fact, perhaps more than anything else we'll speak of, one of the most significant characteristics of happy individuals is how warm, loving, satisfying, and enjoyable their couple-relationship tends to be (21, 55, 71, 125, 130, 147, 209, 241, 244, 259, 286, 312, 402). Happy people express rather high levels of personal adequacy in their relationship and report relatively low levels of relationship tensions and problems (21, 55, 147). Even among adolescents, those who are in the happiest dating relationships more concerned with the "relationship aspects" rather than the sexual or status aspects of their teen relationships (123). Thus, the quality of the relationship also appears to add a big difference to a person's happiness.

So how do we rectify all this? Psychologists who've reviewed the research completely suggest this hierarchy: people involved in a close, satisfying marriage or love-relationship are the happiest, those involved in an average-quality relationship come in second, people in poor relationships come in third, but are probably only slightly ahead of singles who've been on their own for many years, and the least happy are those who've recently lost their significant other.

So, quality counts a lot, but just having a relationship -- even if the quality is not all that good -- seems a happier condition than having no relationship at all.

What is it about a marriage-like relationship that contributes so much to happiness? Theories vary...

Psychologists have identified a variety of rewards that go with marriage: such things as greater social and community acceptance, a "home," extended family ties, the joys of parenting, economic security, a "sense of belonging," etc. These are the kinds of "extras" that typically advantage the married couple over the single individual. But the research indicates that these "extra" benefits have little to do with an individual's personal happiness (55, 147, 312). No, the main source of happiness within a marital context is the couple's relationship itself  -  the warmth, the intimacy, the support, and the companionship a person achieves with their mate (71, 125, 130, 147, 312).

Close love relationships are the ones that mean the most to happiness. Indeed, of all the factors psychologists have studied, "relationship satisfaction" is the most sensitive indicator of personal happiness we've ever found in the research. Increases or decreases in "relationship satisfaction," even over short periods of time, are almost always matched with corresponding increases or decreases in a person's happiness (147).

When one reflects on a personal level, this finding is easy to understand. If asked to remember the happiest periods of our life, the most typical time most recall is when "love" came into our lives. Indeed, for the majority of us, our love-life rules our emotional lives. The greatest highs and the lowest lows seem inextricably tied to how our close love relationships are faring. No matter how things are going in other areas, our love-life seems to make us (or break us), emotionally speaking. This is why the research shows that of all the individual things that contribute to our happiness, our love-life has the greatest impact of all!

 

CHILDREN

In most cultures, having children is professed to be an indispensable requisite for happiness. Both males, and especially females, are raised to believe that a life without children can never be a completely happy life. Thus we might assume that this cultural message would find confirmation in the happiness data. But it does not...

The research shows that having children, or not, makes little difference to happiness (130, 147, 167, 168, 216, 241, 259, 286, 290, 317). Couples with children appear to be no more happy than couples without (in fact, in recent years, childless couples appear to be slightly happier (287)). This finding appears in the data, not just in Western countries, but all over the world.

For most couples, having children or not having children seems an equally happy alternative. For those who do have children, "the kids" are often mentioned as a highly important source of personal happiness for the parents (55, 130). Some studies, in fact, have found that children were considered even more important than the marriage to the overall happiness (55). On the other hand, there is data to suggest that child-free couples may be freed to achieve a deeper, more meaningful relationship; a relationship that may be more happy and less burdensome than might be possible with children in the house (167, 168, 286).

It appears, however, that sex differences have a powerful undercurrent in these findings. Having children or not seems a more equal happiness alternative for males than for females. Males in most cultures appear equally happy with or without offspring (though the happiest males are those whose children have grown and left the nest). The major statistical differences appear mainly among females where it is found that: 1) the happiest females are those who are married and have no children, and 2) the unhappiest females are unmarried mothers (317).

All this is based on statistical averaging. To say children make no difference to happiness is a general conclusion. Yet such a conclusion is based on many individual variations summed together. If we look closer at the data we find that many combinations are possible. When it comes to children, for example, we find some couples who don't have children and are very unhappy primarily because they are unable to have them. Yet, there are also couples who are very happy because they decided not to have children. There are also couples included in our samples who have children, and   decided not to have children. There are also couples included in our samples who have children, and those children have brought them much happiness. Yet there appear to be just as many couples who have children, and, for them, children have created a strongly negative contribution to their lives. And, certainly, there are couples, either with or without children, who are probably just as happy as they might have been otherwise. When you add all this up and throw it in the computer, the statistics will show that, on the average, children have no effect.

What this means is that for some individuals having children may be a plus, while for other it will end-up being a minus -- but for many more it will make no happiness difference at all. You have to know yourself well to make a wise choice, but statistically speaking, there is no guarantee that children will improve your happiness-status.

As Angus Campbell, a founder of happiness research, put it, "The surveys show that children are not necessary either for a successful marriage or a happy and satisfying life" (317).

Let's assume, however, that you're going to have a family. What should you shoot for? One child? Two? Three? All boys? All girls?

Once again, the data shows it doesn't matter. One child, a few children, many children, all one sex, or mixed batch -- happiness levels are about the same in each case. Only when the numbers of children start to impose a harsh economic burden, do we find that unhappiness grows with the size of the family (147).

Parenthetically, it should be noted that most of the data in this section deals mostly with intact couples. The research has only begun to address the happiness of single parents, which now account to a sizable percentage of all American households. The preliminary evidence from a variety of studies indicates great unhappiness among such single parents, but it has yet to be determined whether children are the critical factor or whether economic and social detriments are to blame.

 

SEX LIFE

Everybody likes to hear about sex, but there is nothing very sensational to report regarding sex and the happy person. The evidence suggests that the level of sexual activity does not relate to happiness. The sex life of college students, from the most free and experienced to the most conservative and inexperienced, showed no relationship to happiness (133, 134, 140). Other studies suggest sexual preferences make little difference either. Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual -- kinky and wild, or just ordinary and boring -- whether one has remained monogamous or had extramarital affairs --overall happiness rates are about the same for people in each of the categories (133, 134, 139, 295). One's sexual activity-level, orientation, or style doesn't affect happiness, by itself. Something else is at work...

Experts in this area feel that the key is one of healthy sexual adjustment (139). Happy people report less sex difficulties in their relationships in one study (112), and in another, where happiness was found related to adjustment, adjustment was not related to the level of sexual activity (139). We reported earlier that happy teenagers saw sex as subordinate to the relationship aspects of dating. These findings tend to support the notion that healthy sex is the key to happiness -- but that healthy sex adjustment can go with most any level of sexual activity or proclivity.

 

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS

Happy people have it made -- especially in terms of status. Persons of higher social standing invariably report higher social levels of happiness than persons of lower status. This is a universal finding. In studies of over sixty countries around the world it always holds true (27, 65, 286), and it is just a true here in the United States as anywhere else.

"Socio-economic status" is the term sociologists use, and the general finding is that the higher one's socio-economic status, the happier one tends to be (12, 21, 55, 107, 130, 147, 230, 293, 329).

"Socio-economic status" is an all-encompassing term however, it includes many specific factors like income, social class, and occupational prestige in its definition. Thus, to get a better idea about the connection between high status and high happiness, we need to examine these specific factors more closely.

 

MONEY

We've all heard that money can't buy happiness. It's a rather consoling thought to most of us who have accumulated so little of it, isn't it? If only it were true...

The sad fact is that it isn't.

Income and wealth are positively associated with happiness. The more money you make, the happier you're likely to be. Studies show a fairly strong relationship between happiness and income (21, 34, 55, 130, 132, 147, 176, 209, 216, 241, 259, 272, 293,336, 338, 405), not just here in the U.S., but, universally, in every nation around the world (27, 130, 136, 286, 316).

However, in a closer look, something interesting emerges. It's not so much that wealth creates happiness -- it's that poverty robs it.

The findings stack up this way: if you're well-off you may be happy -- then, again, you may be unhappy. But if you're poor, it's almost a guarantee you're unhappy. In other words, when it comes to money, the stress is on an "adequate" income -- enough to meet one's basic needs (27, 55, 130, 338). At low income levels, even small increases in income show a significant increase in happiness, but beyond a certain level, somewhere near the median income, the association between happiness and income begins to taper-off appreciably (130, 147, 241). And eventually, in the higher income brackets, there's virtually no happiness distinctions at all.

In other words, a person making $10,000 annually is likely to be much, much happier than another making $5,000; but a person making $100,000 is likely to be only slightly happier than one making $50,000, if any happier at all.

A classic study, by happiness researcher Ed Diener and his associates, compared the happiness of multimillionaires (with incomes over $10 million a year) to a group of middle income wage earners (who made, on average $36,000) (401). The wealthy were only slightly happier, overall. And, in many cases, members of the non-wealthy sample were actually happier than the average millionaire! Similar findings were discovered by researchers who studied the happiness of Illinois State Lottery winners, and, surprisingly, found these multimillion-dollar winners ended up no happier than other people of the same soico-economic background (394).

No, it is mainly the poor whose happiness is most critically chained to income! For example, the relationship between happiness and income almost disappears in population samples where all are employed (63, 175). Moreover, statistics show that persons at all income levels carry varying degrees of financial debt, and being in debt rarely effects happiness, except when is poor (147). Furthermore, only the poor overwhelmingly answer "yes" when asked, "Would more income boost your happiness?" (130). (Interestingly, the rich answer with an insightful "no"; and the middle class is evenly split on the issue.) In the Third World, where the vast majority of individuals know only poverty, the number one answer to "What would make you more happy?" is "money" (27). Yes, poverty and misery do go hand in hand. Virtually every study ever conducted shows that poverty creates more unhappiness than most any other factor (27, 130, 136, 286, 316).

The social sciences have always paid close attention to the things that go along with poverty, and the research sees poverty to be strongly related to a host of negative and costly things. There is the high cost of crime, of decaying cities, of overcrowded prisons, of increasing police, fire, insurance, welfare, and social service costs. There is the tragic cost of mental illness, and there are the emotional costs of frustration, hopelessness, desperateness, violence, child abuse, and broken homes. Poverty exacts a heavy price in terms of human suffering -- both for the individual and for society.

But now the research adds one more toll: poverty even robs the poor of their happiness. There is no bliss in poverty -- the idea that the poor are actually more carefree, self-indulgent, and innately happy is simply myth (147). The poor are very unhappy -- and it doesn't take much imagination, or research findings like these, to understand why.

In sum, as psychologists Wortman and Loftis put it,

"Wealth doesn't guarantee happiness -- but it does provide opportunities for leisure activities, better education and better health care, among other advantages -- that can contribute to happiness" (390, p. 339).

 

OCCUPATIONAL STATUS

Income is just one indication of status. Job prestige is another.

Happy people typically hold higher status jobs. Studies around the globe, examining the major occupational classifications and found, in general, that the higher a person's occupational status and job prestige is, the happier the person is (12, 21, 55, 130, 143, 216, 259, 286).

From these studies, a general picture of happiness and occupational status has been developed. Professionals (like doctors, attorneys, college professors, etc.) are the happiest of groups. Executives, managers, proprietors, business owners, and the self-employed appear to be next in line. White collar workers, school teachers, and lower-level managers come next. Then come farmers, clerical and secretarial workers, skilled and semi-skilled blue-collar workers. And at the bottom of the happiness ladder are unskilled, minimum-wage workers.

Most studies examining happiness and occupation have looked only at the broad occupational categories (professional, white-collar, blue-collar, etc.), and there, the upward-mobility of achieved happiness appears quite distinct. Yet, subtle happiness distinctions have been been found, even in studies examining specific occupations -- and they tend to rank, as predicted from the above, according to the culturally-perceived status of the occupation.

Physicians, for example, are generally perceived as slightly higher in status than attorneys, and attorneys, in turn, are seen as being more prestigious than accountants, accountants more than plumbers, etc., etc., and researchers who've looked at these specific occupational-categories find expected differences in happiness-levels as one moves up the prestige ladder.

"Relative job status" is another sociological measure of success, and it too is a status the that happy people typically possess -- prestige within the occupation. Happy people prefer, and generally have, higher status positions compared to others in their occupation (129, 130, 147, 175). Some studies suggest that this "relative status" is more important to happiness than "occupational status" (147, 175). In other words, the success and status enjoyed by the person relative to others in their own occupational niche is more important to happiness than the general occupation the person is in. Successful blue-collar shop foremen, for instance, are found to be more happy than unsuccessful white collar workers, and successful skilled workers are often happier than many low-level managers and clerks (147).

So one can have a job in a high status occupation, or one can have high status job within his occupation. But happy people don't have to choose, since they are likely to have both: high occupational status and high position within the occupation. Here again, happy people have it made!

Overall, however, the status of one's occupation is minor compared to a person's most basic employment concern: whether one has a job or not. The largest and most significant gap in happiness occurs between the employed on one hand and the unemployed on the other. Indeed, happiness-differences between employed persons (on any status level) and unemployed persons is far more significant than any other occupational-group comparison seen in the data (21, 96, 108, 147, 216, 241, 272, 305, 317).

Most people who have a job enjoy relative degrees of happiness, statistically speaking. But, those who are unemployed are generally unhappy -- especially the unemployed who are actively seeking work, but cannot find it.

In addition to all this, there is one more finding of interest. Happy people, it seems, have a much lower chance of loosing their jobs -- and, when unemployed, appear to have a much higher chance of finding re-employment (413).

 

JOB SATISFACTION

Even more important to a person's happiness, though, is the dimension of "job-satisfaction," or how much pleasure one gets from their work.

Happy people love their jobs! It is a primary source of their overall happiness. Such "job-satisfaction" is the most significant occupational factor of all, according to the research.

Statistics show that most working people in industrialized countries spend about 80% of their waking hours working throughout their lives. That's a huge chunk of one's life spent working. No wonder that one's job-satisfaction plays such an enormous part in one's happiness.

This is why I place such a strong emphasis on career- choice when I lecture to younger students. Indeed, I admonish them that their choice or career is the "Number 1 happiness choice they'll ever make."

Happy people, typically report that they get more enjoyment from their jobs, that they have more interest in their jobs, and that they are more satisfied with their work than most others tend to (21, 63, 74, 130, 139, 147, 216, 259, 310). They also report lower levels of monotony and fatigue, and enjoy better working relationships with their superiors and peers (63, 130). Even the workday seems to pass more quickly for happy people -- for the unhappy, the workday seems to drag on and on (130). And if there is nothing else that has been learned from the massive research done in the field of "job satisfaction," it is that happy workers work harder and are more productive (413, 414).

"Work and love" was the basic dictum Freud gave for a happy life, and modern research into the nature of happiness confirms his wisdom. Having work -- having productive employment -- appears to be essential to happiness. Even groups that don't need jobs (successful retirees, homemakers, and others not in the labor force) are often found to be as unhappy as the able unemployed who can't find the jobs they seek (21). Working does much for a person's happiness, while lacking employment, whether seeking it or not, puts one in a position of being non-useful, nonproductive, and dissatisfied with their lives.

But is it really the job, or is it just the income a job brings with it?

We've seen that income and happiness directly relate. Perhaps the increase of happiness as we march up the occupation scale is simply a reflection of increased income?

The research shows that income is, indeed, part of the story, but there are many things beyond income that a person's job contributes to happiness. Take the unemployed for example. The loss of one's job means more that just the loss of income, unemployment eventually "affects the individual's self-esteem, his social relationships, and especially his position within the family" (147). Likewise, with those who have a job, income is just one of many things that affects happiness. This is especially true of those in high status occupations. People with high status jobs derive much of their overall happiness from the social interaction, status, freedom, and autonomy their jobs afford them -- income, in fact, is much less important to their happiness than these other job-related rewards (147, 175).

Anthropological evidence shows a strong value on work and its rewards is not typical of all societies (147), but in most parts of the world, particularly in industrialized societies, work has been found to be fundamental to life and and fundamental to happiness. Research, not just in the U.S., but around the world, stresses the fundamental importance of satisfying work to happiness (21, 27, 50, 63, 64, 74, 75, 76, 81, 96, 108, 129, 130, 143, 147, 152). In the U.S., people typically feel their happiest periods in life are work-related (81, 143, 152). For example, people who believe they're now holding " the best job they've ever had" are among the happiest groups of people studied (147).

All this shows the critical importance of work to happiness and psychological well-being in general. Indeed, the more psychologists study humans and other animals, the more evident it becomes that there is a strong inborn need to be active and productive. Voluminous evidence shows that human beings need something to do, they need to be busy, they are highly curious, and they seek stimulation and novelty from their environment. Early psychology saw humans as simply a passive organism, merely reacting to outside events. Today psychology sees humankind as actively interacting with these events. Human beings are not merely motivated to eliminate negative conditions like hunger, thirst, pain, fear, and discomfort, we are also born with what appear to be instinctive needs to seek, to create, and to progress in positive directions. People prefer to work, even when salary is not a factor (156).

Work is fundamental to the expression of our proactive, self-actualizing drives in our evolutionary makeup. Work is like a marriage -- even when it lacks satisfaction, it is better than no work at all. The status and prestige of our occupation counts a lot toward our happiness, but nothing counts as much as the satisfaction we get from our work.

 

EDUCATION

Certainly an education makes a significant difference in one's life. Voluminous research shows that am education paves the way to higher-status employment, a vastly enriched life, and a somewhat higher income. But does is contribute to happiness?

The findings say, "Yes." The more educated one is, the happier one is (21, 34, 55, 103, 122, 130, 147, 216, 241), not only here in the U.S., but around the world (27, 130, 136), (although the differences appear greater in poor countries than in rich ones (286)). High school graduates are usually happier than high school drop-outs; persons with a little college are happier still; those with a college degree, still more happy; and those with graduate degrees are at the head of the happiness class.

The relationship is generally liner, i.e., the more education, the happier the person. But there are some exceptions. Education seems to have the strongest effect on individuals from poorer economic backgrounds (108). People from poorer families who achieve educational success tend to be quite happy, while people from affluent families gain little happiness from a similar level of achievement.

Also interesting, is the finding that it is only the level of education that counts! As we shall talk of in more detail later, how well one does in school doesn't matter, as long as one progresses toward a degree. Happy people are not any brighter (in terms of I.Q.), nor do they achieve especially high grades, nor are they particularly gifted academically. What matters apparently, is how far one goes educationally, not how exceptionally well one did.

That education leads to happiness is not too surprising. Students of Sociology know that education goes with many of the other qualities we've seen associated with happiness. It is widely established that people with higher levels of education usually have higher incomes, higher social and job status, a more stable marriage, and typically display higher involvement in social activities. One of the most pervasive findings in the social science is that the best things in life go together (147). That is because things like income success, occupational success, educational success, social success, etc., are all interrelated. Success in one area almost automatically leads to success in another. As pioneer researcher, Norman Bradburn, put it:

"...the more one has the more one gets. To those who have the attributes that go with positions higher in the social structure such as higher education and income, also go the psychic rewards of greater happiness" (147, p. 226).

Though education may lead to other rewards that contribute to happiness, when these other factors are eliminated from the data, the effect of education on one's life-long happiness appears minor. Compared to other factors like an active social life, a good marriage, a satisfying job, etc., educational attainment has only a slightly positive influence (27, 130, 136, 216, 241, 286).

Education, like each of these other factors, adds its own, separate and "extra" input on life-long happiness. For those who attain it, education has its happiness rewards -- perhaps on a deeper, more abiding level. There is something inherent in an education enriches individual lives, expands one's appreciation and understanding of life, and widens a person's sources of enjoyment in later life. And in these ways, an education can increase one's potential for happiness. So although education is a minor source of happiness, it is a permanent one. Unlike income, job status, or a marriage, the joys one finds from their education can never be taken away.

 

ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE

Would you be happier if you lived somewhere else? Possibly... The data shows a number of interesting things regarding happiness and hometown.

To begin with, happy people are more satisfied with their city of residence (compared to alternatives) (130), and second, that city is more likely to be a small town or rural area (55, 108, 122, 129, 130, 216, 259, 335), at least in America.

The larger the town, the unhappier its residents; and it appears that this trend is not just an American phenomenon, urban residents around the world tend to be less less happy (27), though in poorer countries such distinctions between urban and rural are not as marked (286).

Of course, here we are speaking of averages. Urbanity, itself, may not be the problem. Rather, the problem may be in the general economic decay of urban centers themselves. Clearly as this century has progressed, the "well-off" have tended to flee the cities leaving behind growing pockets of those who are too poor to escape. At the same time, the cities continue to be filled by other poor who are attracted to urban centers, hoping to find a new chance, but finding little opportunity.

It is not that living in a metropolitan area decreases your chance for happiness, it is only to say that, statistically, most residents of metropolitan cities are a lot less happy than their rural counterparts because of the variance in poverty rates.

 

GEOGRAPHICS

Assuming, therefore, the size of a city makes no difference to your happiness -- where, then, is the best area to live? In other words, are there special pockets in the country (or elsewhere in the world) where happiness tends to flow more abundantly? Is there anywhere we might live where are chances for happiness are greater?

The answer is largely, no.

One may imagine that certain people in certain areas of the country one lives in (or in certain areas of the world) are happier than others, simply because of their geographic location -- but there is little research evidence to support it.

We often imagine that there are certain places in the world where happiness is a way of life. We envision such places as the tropical islands of the Caribbean or South Pacific, or certain cities like Los Angeles, Paris, or Acapulco where the "good life" is more accessible than it might be elsewhere.

Are there such "golden" places to live as far as personal happiness is concerned?

Perhaps sadly, the answer is "No."

In the United States, for example, studies show that geographical location makes little difference when it comes to happiness (55, 201, 202, 295, 314). Apparently folks in one area of the country are just as happy as the folks in another.

World-wide studies show the same. Virtually no geographical differences in happiness have been found, nor have any differences in happiness-rates been shown between cold, moderate, or warm-weather areas of the globe (314, 316).

Geographic location of one's hometown may not make much difference to happiness, but the economic climate of one's community does! Residents of poorer economic communities are, on the average, unhappier than are the residents of prosperous communities, irrespective of the income they actually make (21). This means that everything else being equal, a person is less likely to be happy in a poor community than they are in a wealthy one.

Economists have often referred to poorer communities as "depressed" areas -- and the term, ironically, appears to be appropriate both economically and psychologically, for happiness rates at all income levels tend to decline almost in proportion to the general fall of a city's or region's prosperity.

Indeed, the happiness levels of a particular region follow patterns that are quite like the individual patterns of happiness we've seen. Members of "declining" communities are rather unhappy, members of "stable" communities hold their own, while members of "improving" communities are the happiest of all. In fact citizens of "improving" communities report higher happiness rates than do long-stable prosperous communities (21).

This is not just a U.S. trend, economics effect happiness the world around. Differences in happiness rates are quite pronounced from country to country, and it seems to increase and decrease in relationship to the country's level of economic development. Without exception, the poorer nations report the lowest levels of happiness, while the richer nations report the highest (27, 130, 136, 286, 316).

Still, no matter where one lives, the happy people in any area tend to like where they live more than others do, no matter where they choose to life. Happy people usually enjoy their local environment and feel a close bond with it. They have strongly positive feelings about their surroundings, they feel that they are in close participation with their environment, and they feel a close identification with it (21, 101, 102, 132). They feel that they and their environment are similar, and sense a "matchingness" between themselves and their world (101, 102). In other words, there is a harmony between the two -- a sort of natural balance between the person's needs on one hand, and the environment's provisions on the other. Happy people perceive their environment as generally ample in providing for their needs, whereas unhappy people see their environment as providing little opportunity to meet theirs (171, 172). Happy people also tend to feel freer in their environment. They believe they have great freedom of choice in their activities, and this wide choice allows them more chance to engage in activities they feel are important (24, 63, 130).

Such feelings are ones we'd all like to have about the place we live, yet the research can't seem to find the particular locations in this world where we all might experience them. All things being equal in our lives, the research seems to suggest that we would be just as happy in Jamaica as we would in New York City.

Where you live, therefore, has very little influence on one's overall happiness. If things are going well in your own life, it probably doesn't matter where you live. If things are going poorly in your personal life, you could live in Shangri-La and it wouldn't help that much.

 

MINORITY STATUS AND HAPPINESS

High status, high social participation, high occupational prestige, high education, high income -- we've seen each of these things associated with happiness. The world-wide data clearly shows that the lower one is on the economic ladder, the more likely one is to be unhappy

Such is bad enough, but can it be worse? Sadly the research shows that it often is!

In addition to the economic disadvantages that usually accompanies minority status, the findings reveal there is an extra, compounded unhappiness which adds to the unhappiness of minority persons in most every society -- simply as being part of a minority in the country they reside.

Minority groups in most every society, world-wide, appear slightly unhappier than their majority counterparts -- even when all other socio-economic factors have been factored-out.

In the United States, African-Americans are the most studied example, and it should come as no surprise that Blacks are less likely than Whites to be happy (27, 34, 55, 82, 108, 122, 130, 136, 147, 216, 241), especially at low income levels (317). The number of unhappy Blacks is about twice that of Whites in most studies (108).

Even in world-wide data, Blacks end up unhappier compared to Whites (27, 241, 259, 329, 286), but this only seems true in countries where people of African descent are in "minority" status (215, 259, 286). The collected data, however, clearly shows that such differences in happiness are not racial differences, they are minority-status differences. What ever the cultural, racial, religious, or ethnic distinctions, groups in minority-status tend to be unhappier in most parts of the world (216, 241, 259, 286, 329).

There's little doubt in the evidence that much of the differences between majority and minority groups in any society is due to the obvious disparity in the social and economic differences between them.

In the United States, for example, African Americans, as a group, have yet to achieve the kinds of high income, status jobs, high participation, and high social status that we have already seen are critical to happiness. Yet, regrettably, when these socio-economic factors have all been cancelled out, African Americans still appear more unhappy as a group (136, 147, 216, 259). Race in America is, in and of itself, a factor in a person's happiness. Poor Blacks are unhappier than poor Whites; middle class Blacks are unhappier than middle class Whites; and even Blacks who make it to highest social levels still pay a price in their happiness that is traceable to subtle racial prejudice (147, 216, 259).

The problem, as many continue to point out, is more economic than educational (175). As evidence of this we see that the happiness of Blacks and Whites of equal educational attainment is unequal -- the equally educated White is typically happier (147). But, given equal pay, Whites and Blacks appear just as happy (147). Income equity does more for happiness than education equity -- an important point for national policy.

Income is only part of the story. Freedom is another thing social scientists have found to be unequally distributed in society. Many studies show that a consistent by-product of high social status is increased respect, freedom, autonomy, and power (65, 147). Contrary to popular belief, both actual and felt freedom is not equally available to all -- something minority-group leaders have been trying to tell us for years. Some people are rich with freedom, others are poor. In fact, freedom varies so directly with income, it supports the cynic's view that freedom in our society is more of a commodity than a birth-right.

 

GENDER AND HAPPINESS

Being born male or female does make a difference to your happiness in our culture. But, the difference is not in how happy you are -- rather, it is how you achieve your happiness.

Before going further, however, it is important to underscore that there are no overall sex differences in actual happiness. On a strictly gender level, at least, there is a true equality between the sexes. In virtually every American study, and most multinational investigations, men and women are statistically equal in happiness (16, 18, 21, 55, 80, 129, 130, 132, 133, 140, 147, 201, 202, 216, 230, 235, 241, 259, 286, 294, 339, 388).

Since men and women appear equally happy, we could end our discussion of sex differences right here, but if we did, we'd be missing a richness of information the data has shown regarding how both men and women achieve such equal happiness results in a society which raises and treats the sexes so differently.

To begin with, let's look at how men and women live.

Psychologists know that men and women experience entirely different social lives. In virtually every culture, boys and girls are raised in completely different fashions. Each with different sets of norms and values supposedly appropriate to their sex. Rituals, expectations, and obligations differ greatly -- as do stresses, rewards, and roles. Certainly, anthropologists find extensive differences between cultures, but hardly ever have they found any culture where profound sex-role differences don't exist, and in most situations the differences advantage males...

In most cultures, women are cast in a subordinate role to men. This creates a unique set of pressures and stresses for each sex. In advanced societies, these differences have narrowed in the last century, yet, even still, strong and unfair discriminations still remain. Even in America, the most advanced nation in the world, women have a much rougher lot than men. Women in America, live far more stressful lives than men (241). Compared to men, women experience higher levels of negative, unhappy feelings (21, 55, 197); they have higher levels of stress, tension, and worry (55, 176, 206); they have more dissatisfactions with life and more traumatic adjustment crises (55); they are less satisfied with their marriage or relationship; they are three times more likely to have been sexually abused or molested as children; they are one hundred times as likely to have been the victim of violent adult episodes (spouse abuse, rape, etc.); they suffer more, financially, from divorce; and, in general, they have many more emotionally upsetting expenses in life (21, 147, 201, 202). Women, however, have the ability to express and dissipate such negative pressures far better than men (55), and this ability to vent such negative emotional build-up tends to help offset the many pressures women experience.

Males, on the other hand, tend to bottle their feelings. They are trained to suppress their emotions as children ("big boys don't cry," etc.), and as adults, men generally end-up emotionally silent. This emotional inhibition shows itself indirectly: cyclic mood swings and outburst or temper are far more common for men (132, 201, 202). Though their pressures in life are generally less than that of women, the bottling of those pressures displays itself more in long-term moodiness than the short term emotionality that is characteristic of women. Anger appears to be the only exception -- it is the only emotion men feel free to express spontaneously.

So who's the winner? Women have more stress and pressure, but they handle it better because they can ventilate their negative emotions away. Women are typically more emotionally expressive than men, and this ability to express emotion appears to be one of their more healthy qualities. Men, on the other hand, live more advantaged lives, but, because they tend to bottle their emotions, they suffer more internally, and, on the average, die ten years earlier (due to stress-related illnesses) than women.

The choice is moot, however, when it comes to happiness. Despite different avenues and obstacles, men and women each manage to achieve equal levels of happiness.

And what of the happiest men and women? Here too, the research finds some rather remarkable differences...

How a person relates to culturally defined sex-roles, for example, is an important part of the happiness picture. Happier women are those who are best adjusted to expected female roles (21, 88, 147, 201, 294), but as we will see, this is in part because women tend to be barred from many of the satisfactions available to males in our society.

Women tend to be more socially oriented than males (55, 132, 171, 172, 202, 389) and culturally they function as "social-emotional leaders" (while males traditionally function as "task leaders") (173). And, accordingly, it is in such activity that each sex gains the majority of their happiness rewards. Happier females, for example, tend to derive most of their happiness in social and interpersonal areas (131, 132, 171, 202, 501). Men, on the other hand, tend to gain more of their happiness through the job. Take college, for an example. Male happiness seems more related to success in academics and other directly college-related goals, but female happiness is more related to non-academic, social goals (131, 132, 171, 172).

One of my earliest, personal investigations into personal values, and their relation to happiness, found similar happiness differences between men and women (201). The values of happy women, compared to those of happy men, were more oriented to social activity. Values on social interaction, love for others, affection, friendship, and group participation were all generally important only to the happiness of women, not of the men I studied. The happier women appeared to show a much stronger concern for others than the men did. Values on helping others, being acceptant, and being sympathetic, were strongly related to female happiness. Happy men, in contrast, showed only a modest concern for others among their important values, but this is in line with traditional, sex-role expectations (251). I also found that religious values were more important to the happiness of females than males -- something to be expected considering the bulk of sociological research indicating that religion is far more important to females, than males, in our culture.

But what about those areas that men and women share together? Marriage, for example. Are there sex distinctions in happiness there? Indeed, there are.

Earlier, of course, we saw that people in a marriage-like relationship are generally happier than single individuals. That fact was true for both men and women. But when we look closer at the data, we find that men, not women, derive the greatest happiness from such relationships!

It's a curious picture. When single, women appear to be happier than men (21, 55, 147, 176, 389). Being single seems to be an especially negative condition for men (147). Even male widowers and males who are separated or divorced are more unhappy than females in the same situation (21, 147, ). The only exception to this general rule that single women are happier than single men, is that of young, unwed mothers, who appear to be among the most unhappy of all groups (317).

After marriage, however, a reversal has taken place. Married men appear to be far happier than their wives! Remarkably, marriage has a happier effect on the husband's happiness than on the wife's (21, 71, 147, 55). Apparently males can jump from one of the unhappiest situations in life to the very happiest, simply by saying "I do!"

These findings seem especially unfair when one considers how much more important marriage is to women than to men when it comes to happiness.

Studies comparing the avenues through which the sexes derive their happiness have always shown that marriage is a much more important source of a women's happiness than it is of a man's. This appears to be true even in modern societies where both men and women hold jobs. But the difference is most pronounced in world-wide studies which find that marriage is the most important source of happiness for women, while for men, marriage is only one of many sources of happiness (147, 272).

Men have traditionally enjoyed a much wider range of arenas upon which to base their happiness (although this trend is declining in recent years as women have begun to move into the public and work arenas themselves) (272). Still, though gap may be narrowing, we are left with the irony that, even though a woman's happiness is more dependant on a marriage, it is the man (with his many other areas of satisfaction) that gets the most, actual happiness from the marital arrangement.

When it comes to finances, a married woman's happiness is inextricably dependent on her husbands performance. A wife's happiness appears to be directly tied to the husband's income and job status. As we move up the ladder of occupational status we find the same kind of increase in happiness for wives as we found for the husbands themselves (21, 55, 96, 135). Conversely, a husband's unemployment, destroys the wife's happiness equally as much as it does the husband's (96, 147, 216). Married women do indeed take their husbands on a "for better or worse, for richer or poorer" basis when it comes to their own happiness. These trends appear to be true even for wives who have jobs themselves.

And what about working women? Are they happier than their non-working counterparts?

Most studies suggest that working women are happier than housewives and other women not in the labor force (12, 21, 130, 295, 389), although data from other cultures around the world show no appreciable difference between working and non-working women (286). On the other hand, a few studies show that unemployed, married housewives are quite happy (147), especially those who truly enjoy housework and child rearing.

Sex distinctions pale, however, when it comes to the desire to work, when no work is available. Here both sexes suffer equally: the unhappiest men as well as the most unhappy women in society are those seeking a job, but unable to find one (21, 147). Unemployment, as we've seen before, affects happiness heavily -- irrespective of sex.

What about sex differences on the job?

Around the world, at least in most recorded cultures, men have the advantage here when it comes to happiness. Even in America, where such differences are less distinct, men enjoy tremendous happiness-advantages over women.

Statistics confirm the obvious: women, on the average, have more dislikable jobs than do men, they generally get less pay for the same kind of work, they usually are afforded jobs at a lower-paid and lower-status level than men, and their chance for advancement is more limited than it is for men with the same qualifications. Clearly, as we have seen in earlier sections, such job-status and income restrictions work against women's happiness; especially since women are equal to men in their job expectations...

According to the studies, men and women tend to be equally dissatisfied with boring, disagreeable, unimportant, dislikable work (156). Women and men also have the same basic needs and expectations on the job (with the one exception being that women don't want advancement as strongly -- knowing, realistically, that they're less likely to get it (156)). Typically, women get less satisfactions from their work as men do (147). Even in higher status occupations, women are less happy than men on the same level (147). Overall, most women get far fewer rewards from their jobs than do men, and consequently their jobs don't mean much to their happiness (156).

Rewarding work is the key. Where women and men hold positions that are truly equal in "job satisfaction", the differences in happiness between men and women almost disappear (147), but not quite. Even when equal in job income, status, and responsibility, women in America still suffer a happiness-handicap -- simply because they're female.

Where husbands and wives both work, "it's a Man's World" once again. Typically, a husband's job is more important to the psychology of both spouses, than a wife's (147, 216). When the man is unemployed, he suffers much unhappiness, and his wife (even though she might retain employment) tends to suffer almost equally, on an emotional level. But when the wife looses her job, the emotional effect is mostly hers to bear. Husbands rarely report any happiness-loss when a wife is in a period of unemployment.

This may seem a little unfair, at first glance. But it cuts both ways...

Although a man's happiness is affected more by his employment than his spouse's, his wife's resentment is affected more by his employment than hers. Women appear to strongly resent their husband's lack of employment -- far more than a man might resent his wife's (147). So although the average husband may seem rather unaffected by his wife's employment vicissitudes, he may have "hell to pay" when his employment situation goes sour.

Sex distinctions in happiness are also evident when people asked "what years are the happiest in life." Women tend to pick more youthful periods of peak attractiveness as the happiest time in life; men pick the middle years of peak occupational productivity. (And, in fact, the objective research seems to confirm these perceptions, as it is generally found that women are indeed happier at younger ages than are men [241, 286, 334]).

In addition, high school studies shows that female happiness and self esteem drops markedly during the secondary education years (Atwood). And in college, female happiness barely holds on to its initial entry level (171, 172). During the same periods, however, (both in high school and college) male happiness shows a steady and significant rise. All this happens despite the equal, if not superior, academic performance of females in most educational contexts. The explanation, according to the researchers, is, sadly enough, that these are the years in which most women become aware of their more limited opportunities in life.

In an early study on the values of happy people, I saw how subtle such sex-distinctions can be (201). Although the statistics weren't strong, the indications were interesting. Happy males valued "self-respect," and "being capable" -- but women who stressed such personal values were unhappy. Conversely, happier women stressed values like "waiting in quiet receptivity" as a desirable way to live, but for males such an approach to life was negatively related to happiness. Male chauvinism reared its ugly head on the value "preserving the best that MAN has attained." As we might guess, such a value was related far more to male, than female, happiness.

All this shows that gender is an important factor in happiness. Yet, as unequalitarian and sexist as the situation is, it is astounding to find that both males and females emerge equally in happiness!

What this indicates is that there are many alternative paths for fulfillment and happiness available to all individuals. Furthermore, on a deeper level, despite the sex distinctions we've noted, the most important sources of happiness (marriage, family, and social contact) are essentially the same -- and equally available -- to both men and women alike (294).

 

AGE

Are we happier when we're young?  Are the happiest days when we're old and gray?

The answer is mixed...

Age is a factor in happiness, but it is only a minor one (21, 34, 55, 73, 75, 88, 91, 103, 122, 130, 140, 216, 286, 299, 337). By itself, one's age doesn't make much difference to happiness compared to income, marital, occupational, social, and other factors.

If things are going well in the major life areas, you can be happy at any age. And if things are going poorly, it doesn't matter what age you are -- you're probably going to be unhappy.

Still, some periods of life are typically more happy than others for most people. The happiest periods for Americans are in the middle age years; the unhappiest are adolescence and old is old age that is the most unhappy (21, 34, 55, 73, 75, 88, 91, 103, 122, 130, 140, 147, 292, 299, 317).

The typical life-span picture in America goes like this.

Childhood appears to be a relatively happy period in most people's lives, but following it comes adolescence which ranks among the least happy periods of all. In adolescence a teenager's main development task involves movement away from the family to the outside world, and family tensions and conflict that go with this process are extremely high (10, 127). Because of this the adolescent years, especially the early ones, are found to be an especially unhappy time for most individuals (10, 127).

The college years are a bit happier than the adolescent years for most students, according to university studies (108), and as the college years go by, happiness tends to increase (171, 172).

Young adulthood, from ages 20 to 30, is a fairly happy period in most people's lives, especially the latter part of that period. In a few studies, this period is found to be the happiest time of life (317), but in most studies it generally ranks third from the top. However, it is interesting to note that this period is most often the happiest time in life for women, who attribute their happiest years as the years of most attractive appearance (88, 130, 147).

The period from 30-40 is one of the happiest period of life for the majority of people, especially men. Indeed some studies are even more precise, however, and select the period from 30-35 as the happiest of all, and the period for 35-40 running a close second. It is these years of early family and adult social responsibilities that seem to bring the most happiness in life, but after that, happiness seems to go on the decrease.

The ages from 40-50 show a slightly lower level of happiness than the period between 20-40. But beyond 50 happiness begins to take a slight downslide, ending with the age period of 65 and older, which is generally found to be the most unhappy time in life.

This is a sad picture. Apparently, as the typical individual grows into his last years of life, instead of joy and reward, unhappiness appears to be the typical manner in which most people end their lives. Many things combine to create this old age unhappiness. Illness, of course, is the major reason the old are unhappier (157). The lowering of income is also a major factor affecting a person's happiness (21) (the elderly-poor being among the unhappiest of all groups the research has found). Retirement from meaningful work, and the accompanying lack of social status and participation, also contributes to the unhappier status of the elderly (286). Interestingly, however, the aged tend to worry less than other age groups, thus eliminating one source of unhappiness for them. Unhappiness in old age is more a problem of apathy than of insecurity or anxiety (147). And it is also comforting to know that a good marriage in old age can minimize the typical unhappiness of this period (108).

For most Americans, happiness has a somewhat predictable pattern of ups and downs over the life-span.

However, the pattern we've described is more typical of Western, industrialized societies. In cross-cultural studies, the picture is often completely reversed. Particularly in the Third World, the happiest happiest periods of life are the childhood and elder years. In such societies, life begins with a happy and protected childhood, then enters an almost lifelong period of endless work and toil, and finally ends with a respite in the senior years when one's lifelong journey is merited with a period of respect, influence, and care from the community (27).

We have to view these differences not as due to age, per se, but rather due to the fact that certain age-groups in a particular culture are given special rewards or pressures that are often unique to their age. Some cultures afford these rewards to the young, others to the elderly. Still other cultures provide such rewards to the most educated, while others provide them to the most enterprising and successful.

In other words, how happy one is at a particular age depends on the culture you find yourself. At age 60 in one culture you may find yourself at the height of your social respect and care -- and thus, most happy. In another culture, at the same age of 60, you might find yourself abandoned of care and at your lowest ebb of social utility -- and thus, most unhappy! In a society which values youth and success, the young and successful will tend to be happier. In a society which prizes maturity and wisdom, the old and wise will be the happier. Age has only to do with happiness insofar as a culture determines it.

The net statistical result of this is zero...

Data from world-wide studies continually show no age differences in happiness (yet this may only be the result of "averaging" between cultures which depreciate or advantage various age-groups). However, the most sophisticated data, shows the same thing. When all other socio-economic factors are culled from the data -- especially health factors -- the age factor shows no difference at all when it comes to happiness (241, 286, 292, 337).

And how do people in various age groups feel about their happiness?

For the most part the feel about the same. Virtually all studies show that the basic ingredients of happiness (love, success, health, etc.) are the same for all age-groups (303). Likewise, at least in American studies, people in every age-group believe that their opportunities to attain happiness is equal in availability (292). Most fascinating of all, according to the research of American psychologist, Paul Cameron (, 292), people in each of the age groups he examined each proclaimed that their age group was the happiest of all! (The only difference found was that young adults seemed to want happiness a bit more than the others).

There is one more thing about age and happiness that is instructive here. When asked about the happiest time in life, a definite difference occurs between the answers of the happy and the unhappy. Unhappy people are far more likely to say that childhood, or perhaps the school or college years, were the happiest years of their lives; but the happy, on the other hand most typically say "right now" (113, 130, 289). Again we see the kind of important distinctions between the happy and the unhappy -- the happy are most content with the here-and-now, the unhappy having to recall the there-and-then.

 

HEALTH AND HAPPINESS

Health is another factor shown in the research to be related to happiness. The general finding is that happy people feel healthier and enjoy better physical health than unhappy people (75, 80, 112, 130, 133, 147, 174, 216, 230, 255, 286, 329, 336). They generally appear outwardly -- and tend to feel inwardly -- vital and zestful (132). They are energetic and less apt to tire quickly (63, 129, 230, 261, 262, 415). Additionally, they are ill less often, recover more quickly, and age more slowly (345).

People in ill-health are generally unhappy, particularly so, if the illness is painful, debilitating, or financially burdening.

Clearly, health affects one's happiness. It's hard to imagine a person maintaining happy morale when they're ill (though, in actuality, studies find many ill individuals who are able to do so in spite of their maladies). An ordinary headache, a bout with the flu, a sprained back muscle -- any of these are enough to greatly undermine an otherwise happy day.

But it is more than simply feeling bad, it is also the restrictions poor health places on other aspects of one's life. As Ed Diener put it:

"...part of the influence of health on [happiness] is not simply the direct effect on how people feel physically, but also on what their health allows them to do" (241, p. 560).

No, poor health obviously creates unhappiness. But that's not to say that good health automatically leads to happiness.

Health is simply a prerequisite for happiness.

When one's health is poor, it's hard to be happy. But when one is healthy, happiness is "up for grabs." People in good physical health vary up and down the happiness scale: from the most fulfilled and happy, to the most clinically depressed. Good health just gets you to the starting gate. Other good things are needed in a person's life for happiness to flower. Thus, although most happy people enjoy good health, it doesn't follow that all healthy people enjoy happiness.

 

HAPPINESS IS THE BEST MEDICINE

That health and happiness go together is no surprise to contemporary medical thought. The correlation between physical health, mental health, and happiness is remarkably strong. As one researcher put it, "modern psychosomatics has demonstrated that physical health may be as dependent upon psychological well-being as is the reverse (130)". Such ideas are based on the stress theory of disease, which suggests that the germs, viruses, and outside factors causing diseases are around us all the time, but it is the person under chronic stress and tension that will most likely "catch" these diseases. This is basically because chronic stress takes a heavy toll on the body's capacity to defend itself from disease. Research finds a psychosomatic basis for many diseases, including the most dreaded. In fact, recent studies show a strong correlation between the type of psychological tensions the individual is typically under and the kinds of diseases he will likely develop as the location in his body where the diseases will occur (779).

Clinical estimates indicate that between 60 to 85 percent of all initial contacts with physicians involve ailments and complaints based on psychosomatic causes. Happy people, however, have less psychosomatic ailments than other people (147, 153, 174, 261, 262), just like they enjoy better health in other areas. Happiness, in other words, is actually conducive to good health! The state of happiness is the natural opposite of the deleterious states of chronic stress and tension that are so injurious to one's health. A good dose of happiness may well be the best preventative medicine available. Health plays a lifetime role in happiness. For example, happy people tended to have better health as children and adolescents (129). Likewise, poor health is considered in the research to be the main reason old age is such an unhappy period in most peoples lives.

And perhaps the most dramatic finding of all: happy people actually live longer! (202, 286, 315, 326, 340, 345, 410). Two, completely independent studies of longevity have found that happiness was the best single predictor of a long and healthy life. Between them, these studies examined every conceivable health factor (health history, family health history, current health status, health habits, exercise, smoking, drinking, environmental stresses and pollution, diet, work hazards, regular medications, and more). But at the conclusion of these studies, a simple happiness assessment proved to be the most important piece of data collected.

Certainly this does not mean that exercise, diet, and good health habits don't matter. Most all medical studies show they contribute greatly to health and longevity. But none quite compare to a good shot of happiness.

Happiness may well be the best medicine!

 

A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP

How about a good nights sleep? Back in the days when psychologists thought happiness was primarily physiological, sleep was studied a lot. The logic was this: researchers felt that happiness was caused more by inner biochemical conditions than outside circumstances, thus they reasoned that it was important that good health habits be maintained to give the body's biochemistry the best chance to trigger happiness. And what could beat a good night's rest to put the body's chemistry in tip-top shape?

As a result, researchers spent a lot of time trying to find a connection between sleep patterns and happiness.

They didn't find much. Some show that happy people sleep more (17), others show they sleep less (67), one found that happy people had "more regular" sleep habits (16), but most have found not particular pattern at all (132, 286).

Such findings, of course, do not directly relate to the massive new work in psychology regarding sleeping and dreaming. Laboratory research, for example, has shown startling psychotic reactions in persons deprived of regular sleep and dream cycles. Clinical research, too, has found that sleep disturbances, insomnia, and the like, contribute to irritability and depression. But when these more abnormal, sleep disturbances are put to rest (no pun intended), for the average person, normal variations in sleep-patterns seem to have little effect on overall happiness.

 

GOOD LOOKS

Good looks appear to have only a little to do with happiness (130, 216, 259, 286). Within rather wide, normal limits, one's appearance is unimportant; happy people come in wide variety of shapes, sizes, and attractiveness.

Some evidence indicates happy people are more likely to be just the "right" height. For men, the taller the merrier -- taller men tend to be slightly happier (130). For women, the middle heights appear to be the happiest -- not too tall nor too short (130). Why are these the "right" heights? It probably relates to culturally shared power and sex role beliefs. Taller men are generally held in greater esteem, according to sociological research; and women of more average height are seen, according to traditional analysis, as more attractive.

One would also think that weight would relate to happiness. But to the contrary, being average, overweight, or underweight makes no difference in your chances of happiness (130).

Early psychologists were quite certain that body-types might provide insight into personality. Sheldon, an early theorist, actualized a personality scheme based on such appearance characteristics. In his scheme, the fat person was seen to be the happiest of persons. Indeed historically, conventional folk wisdom over the centuries, has always viewed the "fat" person as the most jolly and happy. Only in our century, has "fatness" become associated less and less with happiness and more and more with unhappiness. Today, thin is "in," along with the assumption, one supposes, that the sleek and slender are the happiest.

But more than just "non-fat," in the last few decades, the American obsession with overall good looks has become even more extreme. Muscular build, slimness, and sexual attractiveness have become critical appearance issues, especially among the young. These days, it sometimes seems that how one develops their looks on the outside, is more important than what one has developed as a person on the inside.

One would think that the achieving of such new, "good looks" standards would lead to greater happiness -- but there's not much evidence that it does. Perhaps because so few people ever achieve their mental ideal. The vast majority of people tend to feel their looks are less than ideal. For most, appearance issues are more a source of insecurity than of self-satisfaction. Studies report as many as 4 in 5 women and 2 in 3 men are dissatisfied with their body's appearance, eating disorders appear at record high- levels, and Americans are spending billions annually diet plans, plastic surgery, health clubs, exercise equipment, etc.. Yet despite all the expense, effort, and dissatisfaction associated with our appearance, "looking good" appears to contribute little to our overall happiness. It's impact on happiness is quite small compared to factors like love, social satisfaction, and occupational success.

Certainly, when extreme unattractiveness is involved (deformity, disfigurement, obesity, etc.) happiness tends to be reduced significantly, in part because it is only at the extreme, that unattractiveness imposes limits on success in the more important social and occupational areas of life.

But what if one is blessed with exceptional attractiveness? It appears as if those who possess extreme beauty, good looks, and/or sexual appeal may find it more of a happiness detriment, than an asset. Often their attractiveness forces them into only the most superficial forms of social and occupational categories. They find it more difficult to be taken seriously, often are considered as more of an "object" than an individual, and sometimes (particularly in the case of young, early-developing females) find themselves used more a commodity than accepted as a person. In some cases, highly attractive people become unhappily vain and narcissistic -- unable to enjoy deep social relationships. And the most surprising thing of all: many extremely attractive people are terribly insecure about their looks!

On the other side of the coin, there are many good looking people who are just as happy and beautiful on the inside as they appear on the outside. Likewise, there are many, seemingly unattractive, people who also excel in happiness. People in both these groups have found, what the research suggests: looks don't count much when it comes to happiness. Good looks may help some, but love, good friends, occupational satisfaction, and warm family relationships count a whole lot more!

 

BAD HABITS

Do you do smoke cigarettes? Drink? Gamble? Eat sweets? Avoid exercise?

One would generally think that such "bad habits" would reduce one's happiness. But the research shows such is only true in excess. Studies show that smoking, drinking, eating and exercise habits have little to do with happiness (129, 133, 286).

This is not to say that smoking, drinking, gambling, and other, severe "bad habits" make no difference to happiness. In the extreme, overindulgent behavior with any unhealthy substance or activity can lead to a dependency problem with devastating medical, mental, and social side-effects. Substance abuse and other compulsive problems destroy the lives of millions of individuals and their families every year, throughout the world. When our "little vices" begin to effect our health or our family life they can lead to great unhappiness.

In moderation, however, such "bad habits" appear to make no difference in overall happiness by themselves. In the general population, drinkers and non-drinkers, smokers and non-smokers, those who exercise and those who don't, all show equal happiness rates.

 

FUN

When you think of "fun," think of happy people.

Happy people appear, according to the studies, to have a lot more fun in life than unhappy people do. The research clearly shows that the happiest people tend to have many more activities and interests that they enjoy than most people do, and they usually spend far more time, on average, doing such "fun" things (21, 27, 40, 130, 132, 209, 272, 286, 336).

And what do happy consider fun to do? Practically anything you could think of. The variety of activities different happy people do for fun ranges from sky-diving to reading a good book. Travel, sports, hobbies, outings -- the list is endless. And the list is quite individual. No two happy people are alike in the kinds of things they do for fun. Indeed, no specific kind of spare-time activity appears any more happiness-producing than any other (21, 34, 128, 129). Your chances for gaining happiness from playing golf is no greater than playing computer games -- or any other hobby, sport, or avocation for that matter.

For example: going to the movies; watching T.V.; taking classes; going to sports events; participating in active, competitive sports; outdoor sports like hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and boating; swimming; picnics; going to nightclubs and bars; attending concerts, plays, fairs, museums, or exhibits; gardening and yard work; home repairs; shopping; playing cards or other indoor games; working on hobbies; creating art projects; enjoying nature, painting, or music have all been studied -- yet not one of these activities appears to be any more strongly associated with happiness than the others (21, 34, 128, 129).

To date, then, no particular, spare-time activity is a true happiness "winner." Going dancing won't make you any happier than going fishing; painting won't make you any happier than gardening; going to a museum won't make you any happier than going to a show; etc.. Nor are frequent hunters any happier than frequent concert goers, nor are those who frequent nightclubs demonstrably happier than those who frequent movies.

What you do for "fun" matters little, it's how much you enjoy yourself doing it -- and, even more importantly, much "fun" you have, overall, in your day-to-day life.

The happiest people seem to be having fun practically all day long! As we've said, they spend more time doing things they find enjoyable -- and they enjoy a greater variety of things. But part of the reason they find their life so "fun" is because two of the main things happy people consider "fun" is the time they spend on the job and/or with their loved ones.

It's hard, I imagine, for many people to view their job, even on the best of days, as a "fun" thing to do. Harder still, in more discordant households, to honestly categorize their homelife as a truly "fun time." Let's be honest. How many of us are greeted by our boss in the morning with "Boy, are we going to have a fun work-day today"; or find, upon returning home at the end of the day, our family anxiously jumping up and down, greeting us with "Dad's home! It's time to have fun!" Hardly...

Certainly few people, even among the happy, have such "fun filled" home and job situations. Yet still, the happiest people have a lot of fun on the job and at home. And when this is combined with the fun they get from their spare-time activities and social life, it becomes clear that happy people appear to have fun most all the time.

 

THE "EIGHT LAWS OF HUMAN HAPPINESS"

So far we've been looking at the specific things happy people have in their lives, but now, to conclude this chapter, let's turn our attention to some general, overriding principles regarding happiness that are clear from the research findings. These general observations about happiness could be considered, as I refer to them, as the eight "laws of human happiness."

 

I. THE LAW OF PERSONAL CONCERNS

The first law is the "happiness law of personal concerns". Happiness, according to this general principle, is a highly personal matter. In other words, your happiness, for better or worse, is far more dependent on your own personal experiences and concerns than on the experiences and concerns of the people around you, your community, or your country. Simply put, "happiness hits pretty close to home."

As examples: the data shows that your own economic situation is much more crucial to your happiness than is the economic condition of your community or nation (130, 259, 286, 328); your closest personal relationships, like marriage, are far more important to your happiness than more formal, outside social activity (147, 259, 286) and, as we noted;  earlier, your status among co-workers and peers is more important to happiness than your status in society-at-large (130, 129, 147, 175). A country's political and social conditions have little effect on an individual's personal happiness, unless those conditions repressively intrude on one's personal life (286).

Similar evidence comes from studies on mass events -- things that most people share in common. Take "blue see Mondays" for example, is there any truth to the idea that most people feel worse on Mondays? Perhaps just a little, but in general psychologists find that such commonly experienced, mass events have virtually no effect on individual happiness levels. Hours of the day, days of the week, months of the year, seasons of the year, phases of the moon, and the weather have all been studied, and none seem to have any significant effect on overall happiness (29, 67, 118). Special events too -- like weekends, final examinations in college, major holidays, and important social functions -- show little effect on the happiness of people-at-large (67, 201).

Likewise, economic ups and downs appear to have little effect on individual happiness, unless such trends have a strong and direct effect on one's own livelihood (328).

Even major national crises have little effect on individual happiness. Classic studies conducted during the Cuban Missile Crisis (21) and after President Kennedy's assassination (147) showed that although the public was highly emotional, individual happiness remained unchanged. Even the elderly who lived through "The Great Depression" showed no later effects when it came to their happiness (286).

Apparently, the only mass event that can effect one's long-term happiness is war (10, 130, 286); and even war appears to only effect happiness when one is intimately and directly touched by it (in which war is no longer just a national event, but a highly personal one).

Happiness, then, is something that relates much more to an individual's own world, than to events in the world at large. We may feel quite upset by news of an airline crash or of pictures of children starving in a foreign country, but unless those events effect us directly, they tend to have little effect on our happiness-level.

Happiness is personal in yet another way -- it is generally something only known to each of us privately .  Surprisingly, people around us are found to be pretty poor judges of it. Psychologists find that friends, acquaintances, or even outside observers are downright dismal in their ability to assess another's happiness (59, 129). Only trained, clinical experts do adequately (50, 132). (And interestingly, most people intuitively understand this; feeling that their friends won't accurately guess their true happiness level (50, 129)). Happiness is a highly personal affair: it is something not readily perceived by other people; it is something known only to the self.

 

II. THE LAW OF PERMANENT CONCERNS

A second general "law" is the "happiness law of permanent concerns." This principle states that permanent situations, not temporary ones, affect your happiness the most (241, 286, 338).

Holidays, weekends, the weather, the immediate pressures of work, temporary worries, a good or bad day -- these passing events don't effect your happiness greatly. It is the more long-term situations and circumstances of one's life that really effect happiness. How things are going with one's family, marriage, or job has a far greater impact on their happiness than short-lived joys or problems that may arise from time to time.

Happiness appears relatively sturdy. It is only slightly rippled by immediate circumstance, and appears hardly ruffled by stressful life-events (286). Only the most extreme and traumatic situations can change one's happiness permanently (286, 327).

Our happiness is related more to the more permanent and enduring aspects of our lives than it is to any temporary conditions we may endure.

 

III. THE LAW OF RECENT CONCERNS

Although happiness is linked to the more permanent conditions of our lives, the recent state of these conditions tends to take priority over how these same conditions were in the past (261, 262, 404).

The "happiness law of recent concerns" states that happiness is effected more by the recent past than by a person's life as a whole. In other words, it's how things are going "these days" that counts!

For example, does one's childhood effect their adult happiness? Certainly the past has an effect on one's happiness, and, as we discussed before, researchers find a positive relationship between a happy childhood and a happy adulthood (10, 129, 132, 202). Yet the statistics shown in these studies are not particularly strong, indicating the past does not dictate the present. Indeed, these very same studies show that "current circumstances" are far greater indicators of happiness than "childhood factors."

Even in shorter time-frames, "the law of recent concerns" holds true. "Current hassles," for example, show a far greater effect on happiness than "past hassles" (404).

No matter how good or bad things have been in the past, immediate circumstances that count the most.

One of the most well-established characteristics of happiness is how it changes, to one degree or another, over time (21, 89, 132, 147, 201, 224, 225, 230, 235). For each of us certain periods in our lives have been happier than others. How happy we are at any given moment of time seems more linked with our recent circumstance, than how things have been at any other times in our lives.

As life changes, happiness changes. That is "the law of recent concerns" in action. If recent change had no primacy over the past, our happiness would stay rather fixed through life, with little chance for betterment.

There is hope in the law of recent concerns. It says to us that no matter how unhappy one's life has been in previous years, the "heavy hand of the past" can't keep us from happiness in the present.

 

IV. THE LAW OF BASIC CONCERNS

The fourth happiness law, is the "law of basic concerns." It states that happiness is related more to the basic things in life (family, employment, close friends) than to any or the more peripheral activities we involve ourselves in. We have seen strong evidence associating happiness with basic areas of life, but when we examine the more peripheral aspects of life, we find only slight relationships to happiness.

Human beings have invented a virtually endless variety of activity to busy themselves. Many of these, like hobbies, sports, cultural interests, entertainment, "fun" activities, community involvement, social gatherings, organizational participation, and so on, each can make a contribution to a person's happiness. But the impact of these, more peripheral sources pales in the face of the major areas of a person's life.

Once again, happiness is far more dependent on how things are going in a person's home-life, love-life, and occupational-life than on the more ancillary aspects of living.

This does not mean that the peripheral aspects of life are unimportant. Though their total impact is small, for the person who's life is going well, they can provide an extra source of happiness to boost an already happy situation -- and for the person who's life is doing poorly, peripheral activities can be critical sources of some happiness in life when the major sources are fleeting.

Still, overall, it is basic needs which count the most. When these are met, most people tend to be fairly happy (329).

 

V. THE LAW OF CUMULATIVE EFFECTS

The "happiness law of cumulative effects" makes sense out of the complex web of happiness-factors we've reviewed in this chapter. It's here we tie the isolated threads together.

So far, we've discussed a vast number of isolated factors that contribute to happiness. Yet you may have experienced a slight case of mental "overload" trying to put the whole picture together. Love contributes to happiness. So does success. Education helps, but not all that much. An active social life fits in there somewhere. Job status is important, but "relative job status" is even more so. Income makes a difference, but only to a point. Men and women are equally happy, though they get their happiness from different sources. Peripheral activities don't contribute much to happiness, but happy people spend more time doing them. One can live in an unhappy community yet still be happy. The list goes on and on...

But how do all these factors work together? Through the "happiness law of cumulative effects"...

This "law" proclaims that happiness is simply equal to the addition of all happiness-sources together -- each according to its weight. This "law" is derived from a number of basic propositions confirmed extensively in the research...

First, there are numerous sources of happiness (love, occupation, "fun," health, status, income, etc.).

Second, each of these sources has it's own individual and independent contribution to make to happiness.

Third, some of these sources have a much greater impact on happiness than others (a good marriage, for example, produces far more happiness than a pleasant hobby).

Fourth, no single source is critical to happiness. As important as some sources are, no one of them is absolutely essential for happiness (130, 216, 241, 259, 305, 344). As frustrating as it has been for we happiness researchers, no one, of the many factors we've studied, appears to be the "ultimate key" to happiness. Sadly, there is no "silver bullet." As important as marriage, social-status, health, etc., are to happiness -- no one factor, all by itself, can claim to separate the happy from the unhappy.

Apparently, the model is additive...

Each and every source has its own contribution to make to happiness, and the more sources one has, the happier one is. Each person adds up their happiness-sources in different ways and with different amounts of happiness. The particular sources can vary greatly: one person may stress an active social life while the another may stress occupational success and both end up just as happy. But overall, the more happiness-sources one has going for them, the happier one is (21, 130, 136, 147). So, just add them up any way you choose. The more -- the merrier you'll be!

But, keep in mind, some happiness-sources have more impact than others! The research has determined the relative potency of the various sources of happiness (27, 130, 136, 147). One's marriage and family life, for example, appears to be the most potent source of all (rewards in this area are far more important to your happiness than rewards in any other area). Next, come the successes you find in your job and your social life. Then come things like your income, social status, and educational attainment. And finally, come the more peripheral things, like "fun," good health, etc..

What we have then, is a formula for personal happiness: happiness equals the sum of satisfactions gained in any area of life (some areas being more rewarding than others).

 

VI. THE LAW OF DIMINISHING RETURNS

The formula is not completely additive, however, it is subject to the "happiness law of diminishing returns." This sixth law states that achievement in any area of life adds to happiness only up to a certain point. Beyond that point, more and more gains in any one particular area adds less and less to happiness.

Income is a good example. If you start at the very bottom of the economic ladder, every thousand dollars you add to