Category: Happiness

The face can express this emotion in 17 different ways.

Happiness can be expressed in 17 ways on the face, over half the total number of expressions we use for all emotions, research finds.

We change the type of happiness we convey by adjusting the size of our smile and the crinkles that appear around our eyes.

In contrast, disgust, only requires one facial expression, while fear has three and there are five each for anger and sadness.

Happiness, though, is way out in front, said Professor Aleix Martinez, study co-author:

“This was delightful to discover, because it speaks to the complex nature of happiness.”

The conclusions come from a study of over 7 million images collected from 31 different countries.

It was inspired by the ancient idea that there are only around 7 or 8 emotions.

Professor Martinez said:

“To think that humans are only capable of eight emotions is absurd.

We are complex creatures.

What about the different forms of joy?

We experience the world on a much deeper level than just eight emotions.”

The results of the study showed that there are 35 separate facial expression that convey how we are feeling to others across all these cultures.

Professor Martinez said:

“We were shocked, I thought there would be way, way more.”

The researchers found only eight expressions that are used in almost all cultures.

Happiness, though, continually emerged as the most varied.

It suggests happiness is the most complex emotion, if you consider the number of facial expressions required to show its variety.

Professor Martinez thinks it is because happiness helps bind people together, perhaps more than other emotions:

“Happiness acts as a social glue and needs the complexity of different facial expressions; disgust is just that: disgust.”

The study was published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing (Srinivasan et al., 2018).

Survey of 160 countries finds the age at which people are the least satisfied with life.

Life satisfaction dips in middle age, after which it starts going up again beyond the age of 54, a study of worldwide well-being finds.

The dip in life satisfaction occurs around the age of 45 until 54, and is seen across many wealthy English-speaking countries, including the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia.

There were similar findings in these countries for the emotional aspects of happiness.

This was likely because people experienced higher levels of stress, worry and anger in middle age than they do in old age.

Professor Angus Deaton, one of the study’s co-authors, said:

“This finding is almost expected.

This is the period at which wage rates typically peak and is the best time to work and earn the most, even at the expense of present well-being, so as to have increased wealth and well-being later in life.”

Not a universal pattern

Economics is only one of many possible factors.

Western, wealthy countries have better healthcare systems, which are better able to ameliorate some of the problems of ageing.

The U-shaped pattern for life satisfaction was not universal, though, as many poorer countries show a simple decline in life satisfaction with age.

In the former Soviet Union, for example, life satisfaction declines with age, as it does in Latin American countries.

The only exception was African countries where average life satisfaction remained low throughout the lifespan.

Here are the graphs for how average life satisfaction changes with age for four different areas of the world:

Professor Deaton said:

“Economic theory can predict a dip in well-being among the middle age in high-income, English-speaking countries.

What is interesting is that this pattern is not universal.

Other regions, like the former Soviet Union, have been affected by the collapse of communism and other systems.

Such events have affected the elderly who have lost a system that, however imperfect, gave meaning to their lives, and, in some cases, their pensions and health care.”

Sense of purpose

The data the findings are based on comes from 160 countries which represents over 98 percent of the world’s population (Steptoe et al., 2014).

When the researchers looked at happiness and mortality, the key to a long life appeared to be a sense of purpose.

When older people feel their life has purpose, their chance of dying was dramatically reduced.

The study’s authors conclude:

“Even though the results do not unequivocally show that eudemonic well-being is causally linked with mortality, the findings do raise intriguing possibilities about positive well-being being implicated in reduced risk to health.”

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People felt significantly happier afterwards and were less likely to take days off work sick.

Becoming happier makes people healthier, research finds.

People who used standard psychological techniques to feel happier over 12 weeks subsequently felt healthier and were less likely to be off work sick.

Participants worked at improving their core self, experiential self and social self over 12 weeks.

The approaches taught to people during the study included increasing feelings of gratitude, focusing on personal strengths and learning to be more mindful.

Dr Kostadin Kushlev, the study’s first author, said:

“Though prior studies have shown that happier people tend to have better cardiovascular health and immune-system responses than their less happy counterparts, our research is one of the first randomized controlled trials to suggest that increasing the psychological well-being even of generally healthy adults can have benefits to their physical health.”

The study included 155 people aged 25-75, half of whom worked at boosting their happiness over 12 weeks.

They were taught three different psychological techniques for boosting their happiness.

The first, which they focused on for 3 weeks, was ‘core self’.

This involves identifying personal strengths, goals and values.

People who identify and practice their personal strengths — in other words, do what they are good at — tend to feel happier.

For the next 5 weeks, people focused on their experiential self.

This involved practising mindfulness and emotional regulation.

For the final 4 weeks, people cultivated their social selves, looking at ways to improve their feelings of gratitude and to increase positive social interactions.

Dr Kushlev said:

“All of the activities were evidence-based tools to increase subjective well-being.”

The results showed that people in the intervention group felt significantly happier afterwards and were less likely to take days off work sick.

People who were taught the happiness techniques online improved just as much as those taught face-to-face.

Dr Kushlev said:

“These results speak to the potential of such interventions to be scaled in ways that reach more people in environments such as college campuses to help increase happiness and promote better mental health among students.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Kushlev et al., 2020).