Category: Happiness

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 who push themselves to feel happy can end up feeling worse.

Putting too much value on being happy, paradoxically makes that happiness more difficult to achieve, research finds.

In fact, a greater need to enjoy experiences is linked to more depressive symptoms.

In other words, people who push themselves to feel happy can end up feeling worse.

One reason is down to disappointment.

Imagine listening to some music and trying to force oneself to enjoy it more.

The disappointment felt if it does not work could make one feel worse than if they had not bothered trying to feel happier.

None of this means that pursuing happiness is a waste of time — it just has to be done in the right way.

A happiness culture

There is also a cultural factor to consider.

Culture plays an important part in how we think about happiness, the new study reveals.

Researchers carried out happiness surveys on groups of people in the UK and EU and compared them to previous results from people in the US.

The results showed that people in the US and the UK who valued happiness more also found it harder to focus on and savour positive experiences.

Dr Julia Vogt, study co-author, explained:

“We observed that the inability of participants to focus attention while feeling a range of emotions was a major factor in this idea of not being able to savor a positive experience.”

However, the link was not as strong in the EU, suggesting that culture is a factor.

Dr Vogt continued:

“The relationship between valuing happiness and depressive symptoms was seen far more significantly in UK [and US] participants than those from other nationalities or dual citizens.

We don’t go so far as to test what those differences are, but there seems to be a significant divide between English-speaking western cultures and other cultures when it comes to how our internal value of experiencing happiness shapes our experiences and mood.”

→ Read on about sustainable happiness.

The study was published in the Journal of Happiness Studies (Kahriz et al., 2019).

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).