Category: Happiness

How the same genes can be linked to both happiness and depression.

Certain genes linked to mental health can lead to both happiness and depression.

It all depends on the environment in which a person is brought up.

Supportive environments can foster positive ways of interpreting the world, boosting wellbeing and happiness.

Unsupportive environments can encourage negative interpretations that increase vulnerability to mental health problems.

Professor Elaine Fox, the study’s first author, said:

“‘Cognitive biases are when people consistently interpret situations though particular mental ‘filters’ – when people have a cognitive bias that emphasises negative aspects or thoughts, they are more at risk of mental health disorders.

There is a lot of research about these biases, and a lot of research about genes that may make people susceptible to mental ill health.

However, we suggest that it could make more sense to bring together these two areas of research.”

Professor Fox is investigating how genes and life experiences interact to shape the mental filters through which we view the world.

Professor Fox said:

“If you take a gene that is linked to mental illness, and compare people who have the same genetic variant, it becomes clear that what happens to their mental health is based on their environment.

We suggest that while no gene ‘causes’ mental ill health, some genes can make people more sensitive to the effects of their environment – for better and for worse.”

She continued:

“If you have those genes and are in a negative environment, you are likely to develop the negative cognitive biases that lead to mental disorders.

If you have those genes but are in a supportive environment, you are likely to develop positive cognitive biases that increase your mental resilience.”

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The study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry (Fox & Beevers, 2016).

Researchers found that the happiest and unhappiest moments share something unexpected in common.

People are at their happiest and least happy when they spend time with others.

Whether being with others increases happiness depends largely on one factor: choice.

When people are with others by choice, they are, on average, happier than when alone.

But, when they are with others not by choice, they are, on average, less happy than when alone.

Whether solitude is chosen or not appears to have less impact on happiness.

Intense social experiences

Experiences with other people tend to be emotionally more intense than time spent alone.

Other people can make us extremely happy or unhappy, whereas time alone tends to produce a more emotionally neutral state.

The differences could be partly explained by the sense of meaning that people give to actions with others, the study’s authors write:

“People felt that their actions were more meaningful ‘with others’ than alone.

This, though, does not necessarily imply that the alone setting was less desirable, as it could reflect the sense that having others observe your actions makes them more consequential.”

Interactions with other people are often more emotionally engaging and make people more aware of how they are perceived.

Being alone, though linked to less happiness, is still beneficial, the authors write:

“Aloneness (by choice and not) emerged as a setting of relative stability, with participants experiencing their different alone conditions quite similarly.

Therefore, solitude might not present immediate benefits to well-being, but it does appear to offer a more predictable experience, and if utilized effectively could be a source of personal growth.”

Study details

The study included 155 students whose experiences were sampled on ten occasions across ten consecutive days.

They were asked to report whether they were alone or not and how they were feeling.

The results showed that they were with others 60 percent of the time, and that 64 percent of those occasions were by choice.

Dr Liad Uziel, the study’s first author, said:

“The current research expands upon these conclusions by learning about people’s experiences in real life, outside the lab, and by addressing the choice element as an important moderating factor.

In both cases, social experiences are more intense, for better or worse.”

The study was published in the Journal of Happiness Studies (Uziel & Schmidt-Barad, 2022).

A simple grocery habit that has a similar impact on happiness to landing a dream job.

Eating eight portions of fruit and veg a day provides the ultimate boost to your everyday happiness.

The positive emotional effect comes more quickly than the boost to health.

Up to eight portions, the more portions people eat, the happier they are.

The effect on happiness of eating those eight portions compared with none is dramatic.

In terms of life satisfaction, it is equivalent to the difference between being employed and unemployed.

Beyond health benefits

The graph below shows the increase in life satisfaction with portions of fruit and vegetables consumed each day.

Graph courtesy of Mujcic & Oswald (2016)

It is the first time a large study has found that fruit and vegetables contribute to happiness on top of their well-known protective effects against cancer and heart disease.

Professor Andrew Oswald, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Eating fruit and vegetables apparently boosts our happiness far more quickly than it improves human health.

People’s motivation to eat healthy food is weakened by the fact that physical-health benefits, such as protecting against cancer, accrue decades later.

However, well-being improvements from increased consumption of fruit and vegetables are closer to immediate.”

The chemistry of optimism

The conclusions come from following over 12,000 people.

Participants kept food diaries and their psychological wellbeing was measured.

The results revealed a striking trend: within just two years, participants who loaded up on greens reported a massive shift in how they felt.

Dr Redzo Mujcic, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Perhaps our results will be more effective than traditional messages in convincing people to have a healthy diet.

There is a psychological payoff now from fruit and vegetables — not just a lower health risk decades later.”

One possible mechanism by which fruit and vegetables affect happiness is through antioxidants.

There is a suggested connection between antioxidants and optimism.

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The study was published in the American Journal of Public Health (Mujcic & Oswald, 2016).

The benefits of travel might begin long before the journey itself starts.

Regular travel makes people happier overall, with people who frequently travel more than 75 miles from home being around 7 percent happier overall.

Dr Chun-Chu Chen, the study’s first author, said:

“While things like work, family life and friends play a bigger role in overall reports of well-being, the accumulation of travel experiences does appear to have a small yet noticeable effect on self-reported life satisfaction.

It really illustrates the importance of being able to get out of your routine and experience new things.”

The findings are based on a survey of 500 Taiwanese adults about their travel experiences over the previous year.

They were asked how much time they spent planning, how many times they went away and how satisfied they were with their lives in general.

Just over half reported going on at least four pleasure trips per year.

The results showed that people who frequently discussed their travel plans were more likely to go on regular trips.

People who travelled more frequently reported greater overall satisfaction with their lives.

Dr Chen said:

“This research shows the more people talk about and plan vacations the more likely they are to take them.

If you are like me and chomping at the bit to get out of dodge and see someplace new, this research will hopefully be some additional good motivation to start planning your next vacation.”

Of course, not everyone travels for pleasure.

Many are required to travel for work and this can be considerably less enjoyable.

Frequent, long-distance travel has been linked to high levels of stress and loneliness and long-term health problems by research.

This helps to show that travel is more than just moving from one place to another: the pleasure comes from the meaning we ascribe to it.

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The study was published in the journal Tourism Analysis (Chen et al., 2020).

Noticing these sources of happiness makes people more optimistic and increases their wellbeing.

People who experience more moments of ‘felt love’ during the day have better mental wellbeing.

This type of love does not need to be romantic — it can come from all sorts of sources.

These moments can include a friend asking after your health, receiving a compliment or getting heartfelt thanks from a colleague.

Brief everyday experiences of connection and love like these are also linked to greater optimism and a stronger sense of purpose.

The study suggests that paying closer attention to small moments of everyday connection could improve happiness and optimism.

Dr Zita Oravecz, the study’s first author, said:

“We took a very broad approach when we looked at love.

Everyday felt love is conceptually much broader than romantic love.

It’s those micro-moments in your life when you experience resonance with someone.

For example, if you’re talking to a neighbor and they express concern for your well-being, then you might resonate with that and experience it as a feeling of love, and that might improve your well-being.”

The conclusions come from a study of 212 people who used smartphone prompts to report their feelings of love and wellbeing six times a day over four weeks.

The results showed that as the study went on, people noticed more examples of love and connection in their own lives.

It could be that being asked to notice these moments increased people’s awareness.

Dr Oravecz said:

“It’s something that we’ve seen in the literature on mindfulness, when people are reminded to focus attention on positive things, their overall awareness of those positive things begins to rise.

Similarly, just by paying attention to those everyday moments of felt love, we may also increase our awareness of the overall positive aspects of love in our daily lives.

This effect replicates in both studies, implying that raising awareness of felt love in day-to-day life may itself be an intervention that raises levels of felt love over a longer period of time.”

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The study was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences (Oravecz et al., 2020).