Category: Happiness

Study on rituals before eating reveals why they should be observed.

Every family has their Christmas rituals: it may be who hands out the presents, what songs are played or sung, what is watched on TV or where you sit at the table.

While these may all have special significance as making it your particular Christmas, are they just regular routines that have evolved over the years or do they have a psychological impact?

In fact, a study finds, rituals performed before eating or drinking can indeed enhance the pleasure we get (Vohs et al., 2013).

Professor Kathleen Vohs, who led the study said:

“Whenever I order an espresso, I take a sugar packet and shake it, open the packet and pour a teeny bit of sugar in, and then taste.

It’s never enough sugar, so I then pour about half of the packet in. The thing is, this isn’t a functional ritual, I should just skip right to pouring in half the packet.”

In the study some people were given very specific instructions for how they should eat a chocolate bar:

 “Without unwrapping the chocolate bar, break it in half.

Unwrap half of the bar and eat it.

Then, unwrap the other half and eat it.”

Compared with another group who ate the bar how they wanted, those who performed this ritual rated the chocolate more highly and savoured it more.

So perform all those Christmas rituals just as you always have: that way you’ll enjoy and savour it more.

And if your Christmas lunch is a little late, then take heart from the second part of the study, which found that a longer wait after the ritual and before eating increased the pleasure even more…

…even when people were only eating carrots!

Happy Holidays!

• Read on: The 12 Psychology Studies of Christmas

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How to have a happy Christmas according to psychology, the best type of chocolate, when gifts go wrong and more…

1. How to have a happy Christmas

We all want a happy Christmas (or cultural equivalent), but how do we get it?

This research into the psychology of happiness and Christmas suggests that a focus on spending and consumption is associated with less happiness while family and religious experiences are associated with more happiness.

Not exactly earth-shattering, but satisfying to quote to little Billy when he complains about his presents.

2. What’s the best type of chocolate?

Should we find ourselves unhappy at Christmas (shock! horror!), perhaps a little chocolate will help rectify the situation?

But what to choose for maximum pleasure: normal chocolate, milk chocolate or dark chocolate?

For the answer we turn to the Chocolate Happiness Undergoing More Pleasantness study.

That’s right, the CHUMP study.

It’s a real thing, and it’s a randomised controlled trial.

Unfortunately the results were inconclusive so you’ll be forced to conduct your own research.

3. The psychology of when gifts go wrong

Giving and receiving gifts can be a no-win situation.

We assume people close to us know us well enough to get us good gifts.

So, when a bad gift comes it tends to reflect poorly on the relationship.

However, men and women seem to have different psychological defence mechanisms for dealing with poor gifts: women pretend the gift is just what they’ve always wanted whereas men are more likely to say what they think.

And then the arguments start.

4. Don’t give money!

And talking of poor gifts, this study finds money is probably a bad gift perhaps because it can’t send a meaningful message about intimacy and tends to send the wrong message about status differences.

Perhaps that’s why it seems to be OK to give money to children, but not adults.

5. It’s all about the giving

As you know, Christmas is not about the getting, it’s all about the giving.

This neat research found that spending money on others promotes our own happiness better than spending money on ourselves.

6. What do your decorations say about you?

Research in Christmas psychology suggests that decorations on a home’s exterior make other people think you’re more sociable and perhaps more integrated with the community and with its social activities.

7. The smell of Christmas psychology

It’s the season of rampant commercialism and the shops have gone into overdrive.

Christmas music has been playing everywhere for months, but have you encountered any Christmas smells?

According to this study Christmas music interacts with Christmas scents to boost our attitudes to stores and increase our likelihood of visiting them.

I can’t help wondering what a ‘Christmas smell’ is though…

8. Good food is mostly in the mind

We all do a lot of eating at Christmas but does the chef get enough credit?

Brian Wansink, a food psychologist, describes all sorts of cool tricks for boosting people’s perceptions of the food they are eating.

It’s all about harnessing the ‘halo effect‘.

Leave parsley and chervil lying around, talk about the organic turkey farmer you know, use evocative labels for the food you’re serving, tell them the wine is first rate, even if it’s all just talk.

9. Hallucinating

This isn’t alcohol related but a neat little study where participants were asked to listen to white noise and press a button when they heard Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’.

Almost one-third of the participants pressed the button at least once despite the noise being white-only with not a hint of Christmas.

To the researchers this suggested a link between auditory hallucinations and being prone to fantasy.

To me it suggests too much time spent in department stores.

10. Searching for the Christmas spirit

Again, not alcohol related but a asking the question: what exactly is the ‘Christmas spirit’?

According to this survey of 450 people, the Christmas spirit has five components:

1. bonhomie,
2. gay abandon,
3. ritual,
4. shopping
5. and little bit of dejection.

Yup, sounds about right to me.

11. Bad jokes

The unholy union of Christmas and bad jokes can be blamed on Londoner Thomas J. Smith who in 1847 invented the Christmas cracker.

Almost none of us find the jokes inside funny as an online survey of 2,000 people has confirmed.

The top rated joke raised a reluctant smile in just 12% of people.

For posterity here it is: “What do you call a penguin in the Sahara desert? Lost.”

*GROAN*

12. Santa Claus

This Christmas psychology study asks why we persist in promoting the myth of Santa Claus to children.

From the 318 parents surveyed, they found that it’s the myth and magic in the story that we like.

I don’t understand all this talk of myth and magic though, Santa Claus is clearly real.

Season’s Greetings to all!

Merry Christmas and season’s greetings to you all and thank you for the kind emails and support throughout the year.

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Are people who choose not to have children any less happy, or perhaps happier, than those who do have children?

Couples who choose not to have children are just as happy as those with children, a survey suggests.

Happiness in this study was measured in terms of life satisfaction.

Life satisfaction is an overall judgement about one’s life as opposed to moment-by-moment happiness.

In this sense, child-free couples are judging their lives as just as satisfying as those with children.

The term ‘child-free’ is intended to convey the idea of choice about child-bearing, explained Dr Jennifer Watling Neal, the study’s first author:

“Most studies haven’t asked the questions necessary to distinguish ‘child-free’ individuals — those who choose not to have children — from other types of nonparents.

Nonparents can also include the ‘not-yet-parents’ who are planning to have kids, and ‘childless’ people who couldn’t have kids due to infertility or circumstance.

Previous studies simply lumped all nonparents into a single category to compare them to parents.”

The conclusions come from a survey of 1,000 adults in Michigan.

Dr Zachary Neal, study co-author, explained the results:

“After controlling for demographic characteristics, we found no differences in life satisfaction and limited differences in personality traits between child-free individuals and parents, not-yet-parents, or childless individuals.

We also found that child-free individuals were more liberal than parents, and that people who aren’t child-free felt substantially less warm toward child-free individuals.”

The researchers were surprised by the number of child-free couples in Michigan, Dr Jennifer Watling Neal said:

“We found that more than one in four people in Michigan identified as child-free, which is much higher than the estimated prevalence rate in previous studies that relied on fertility to identify child-free individuals.

These previous studies placed the rate at only 2% to 9%.

We think our improved measurement may have been able to better capture individuals who identify as child-free.”

Child-free couples are happier

Other studies have suggested that child-free couples are happier, especially in the United States.

The happiness gap between parents and non-parents is greatest in the US across 22 industrialised countries.

This could be down to policies that are relatively unsupportive for families.

Many parents will naturally disagree with the finding that non-parents are happier.

One reason parents feel that children make them happier is the happiness boost from having a first and second child (but not a third — by then it is commonplace).

One study has found that it provides a happiness boost equivalent to getting married or getting a new job.

It is this increase in happiness early on that gives the impression that having children is linked to more happiness.

The boost is relatively short-lived, probably lasting only through the first year of the child’s life.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Neal & Neal, 2021).

Exposure to nature provides improvements to focus, mood, blood pressure and heart rate.

As little as 10 minutes spent in nature is enough to make people feel happier, a study shows.

While 10 minutes in nature works, a little more is even better.

Up to around 50 minutes spent in nature provides the largest improvements to focus, mood, blood pressure and heart rate.

People only need to be either sitting or walking to get the boost.

Physicians should ‘prescribe’ a dose of nature to people to help prevent depression and anxiety, the researchers believe.

Dr Gen Meredith, the study’s first author, said:

“It doesn’t take much time for the positive benefits to kick in—we’re talking 10 minutes outside in a space with nature.

We firmly believe that every student, no matter what subject or how high their workload, has that much discretionary time each day, or at least a few times per week.”

For the study, scientists reviewed 14 separate pieces of research on the effects of exposing young people to nature.

The results of all the studies revealed that between 10 and 50 minutes exposure to nature provided the maximum benefit.

Dr Donald Rakow, study co-author, said:

“It’s not that there’s a decline after 50 minutes, but rather that the physiological and self-reported psychological benefits tend to plateau after that.”

Sitting and walking were the only two activities the research looked at, Dr Rakow said:

“We wanted to keep this access to nature as simple and achievable as possible.

While there is a lot of literature on longer outdoor programs, we wanted to quantify doses in minutes, not days.”

Doses of nature could be prescribed by physicians, said Dr Meredith:

“Prescribing a dose can legitimize the physician’s recommendation and give a tangible goal.

It’s different than just saying: ‘Go outside.’

There is something specific that a student can aim for.”

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology (Meredith et al., 2020).

Urban parks improved emotional well-being, even without doing any exercise.

Just 20 minutes in an urban park makes people feel happier, research finds.

There is no need to do any exercise (although it may help), just being there is enough.

The park provides time for the mind to recover from stress and fatigue.

Professor Hon K. Yuen, the study’s first author, said:

“Overall, we found park visitors reported an improvement in emotional well-being after the park visit.

However, we did not find levels of physical activity are related to improved emotional well-being.

Instead, we found time spent in the park is related to improved emotional well-being.”

The study included 94 people who were visiting one of three urban parks in the US: Overton, Jemison and Cahaba River Walk Parks in Mountain Brook, Alabama.

Each was asked about their emotional health.

The results showed that being in the park improved emotional well-being, even without doing any exercise.

Dr Gavin R. Jenkins, study co-author, said:

“There is increasing pressure on green space within urban settings.

Planners and developers look to replace green space with residential and commercial property.

The challenge facing cities is that there is an increasing evidence about the value of city parks but we continue to see the demise of theses spaces.”

The study was published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research (Yuen et al., 2019).

Money increase the sense of control over life.

More money does indeed make people more happy, the latest U.S. research finds.

Well-being related to income does not level-off at around $75,000 a year as previous studies have found.

Instead, it keeps increasing in proportion to income.

This includes the two main forms of happiness: being satisfied with life overall and moment-by-moment happiness.

This means that someone who earns $50,000 a year is measurably happier than someone who earns $25,000 a year.

It also means someone earning $200,000 is happier than someone earning $100,000.

The research might come as a surprise to some psychologists who have maintained that money only makes people happier up to a point — usually around $75,000 a year.

Dr Matthew Killingsworth, the study’s author, said:

“It’s a compelling possibility, the idea that money stops mattering above that point, at least for how people actually feel moment to moment.

But when I looked across a wide range of income levels, I found that all forms of well-being continued to rise with income.

I don’t see any sort of kink in the curve, an inflection point where money stops mattering.

Instead, it keeps increasing.”

The study included 33,000 people and 1.7 million data points.

Participants were asked about their moment-by-moment feelings and their general satisfaction with life.

Dr Killingsworth said:

“This process provided repeated snapshots of people’s lives, which collectively gives us a composite image, a stop-motion movie of their lives.

Scientists often talk about trying to get a representative sample of the population.

I was trying to get a representative sample of the moments of people’s lives.”

The reason that richer people are happier is partly down to a greater sense of control over life.

Dr Killingsworth said:

“When you have more money, you have more choices about how to live your life.

You can likely see this in the pandemic.

People living paycheck to paycheck who lose their job might need to take the first available job to stay afloat, even if it’s one they dislike.

People with a financial cushion can wait for one that’s a better fit.

Across decisions big and small, having more money gives a person more choices and a greater sense of autonomy.”

It is better to avoid thinking of success in monetary terms, though, said Dr Killingsworth:

“Although money might be good for happiness, I found that people who equated money and success were less happy than those who didn’t.

I also found that people who earned more money worked longer hours and felt more pressed for time.”

Overall, money only plays a modest part in the equation of happiness:

“If anything, people probably overemphasize money when they think about how well their life is going.

Yes, this is a factor that might matter in a way that we didn’t fully realize before, but it’s just one of many that people can control and ultimately, it’s not one I’m terribly concerned people are undervaluing.”

Whether or not these findings apply to people outside the United States is not clear.

Certainly, though, Americans have seen changes in the connection between money and happiness.

For example, recent research from the U.S. concludes that in the last fifty years, money has become more strongly linked to happiness.

The benefits of more money to people’s happiness, instead of tailing off, may have increased over the last fifty years.

In effect, the rich are not just getting richer, they are getting happier.

At the same time, the poor are getting more unhappy.

This has created a happiness gap between rich and poor.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Killingsworth, 2021).