Category: Happiness

The simple pleasures like a delicious meal or enjoying nature make most people happy, but the psychological mature often need more.

The search for meaning in life promotes greater happiness in those with high levels of psychological maturity, a study suggests.

People with advanced ego development tend to seek out more opportunities for personal growth, the nurturing of others and overcoming challenges.

However, the simple pleasures in life also play an important role in happiness for people at all levels of psychological maturity.

It is the psychologically mature, though, that benefit most from the search for meaning in life.

Paths to happiness

These conclusions come from a study that looked at how people’s paths to happiness change along with their psychological maturity.

The researchers used a theory of ego development introduced by the American psychologist Jane Loevinger.

As people mature psychologically, Loevinger proposed, they attain new strategies for establishing relationships, making sense of life experiences and regulating the self.

Essentially, people move from a preoccupation with their own desires and emotions to understanding how they differ to others, cope with their feelings and make difficult decisions.

In other words, people slowly learn that they are not the only person in the world and everything does not revolve around what they want, feel or think.

Higher ego development

The researchers tested the ego development, or psychological maturity, of 360 people by using a projective sentence completion task.

These were then assessed by experts.

Dr Evgeny Osin, the study’s first author, explained the test:

“For example, completed sentences such as ‘Being with other people is cool’, ‘… is something I enjoy’ or ‘… is awful’ indicate an early stage of ego development.

In contrast, sentences like ‘Being with other people can be tiresome but often useful’ or ‘…means observing their personality and learning from them’ suggest a more advanced stage of ego development and higher complexity of self-perception.”

Participants were also asked about their levels of happiness and life satisfaction.

This provides an insight into people’s happiness, but only a limited one, explained Dr Osin:

“Emotional well-being functions like a thermometer: we can measure a person’s temperature to assess their overall state—does their life go well? —but the temperature alone is insufficient to make a diagnosis—what kind of life is it?”

Accepting new challenges

The results revealed that people at higher levels of ego development continue to seek out hedonic pleasures, such as pleasure (say, from eating, travelling, entertainment etc.) and comfort.

However, unlike those with lower levels of ego development, they also sought out more meaning in life.

They had a greater desire for personal development; to reach out and accept new challenges for themselves and explore.

Age, though, was no barrier to psychological immaturity, Dr Osin said:

“Interestingly, in adults, the level of ego development is no longer contingent upon age.

While some individuals progress to higher levels of psychological maturity as they age, others remain at the impulsive or self-protective stages without further advancement.

The study demonstrates that the meaning of life is not an abstract notion, but a real-life challenge that individuals encounter as they attain a higher level of personal maturity.

It is highly likely that everyone, at some point in their life, will confront this challenge.”

Related

• 11 Tiny Habits That Skyrocket Happiness — Without Reinventing Yourself (P)
• Happiness Hacks: 20 Simple Strategies For A Brighter, Joy-Filled Life (P)

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology (Osin et al., 2023).

Giving makes us feel connected to others and reinforces a positive self-image.

The joy of giving does not fade like the joy of getting.

Usually when people repeat pleasant experiences, happiness fades after each one.

However, when people keep on giving to others, the happy feeling remains powerful.

In fact, people in the study were just as happy giving money away after the fifth time as they were the very first time.

It may be because giving makes us feel connected to others and reinforces a positive self-image.

Dr Ed O’Brien, the study’s first author, said:

“If you want to sustain happiness over time, past research tells us that we need to take a break from what we’re currently consuming and experience something new.

Our research reveals that the kind of thing may matter more than assumed: Repeated giving, even in identical ways to identical others, may continue to feel relatively fresh and relatively pleasurable the more that we do it.”

For the study, people were asked to either spend $5 per day on themselves or to give it away to others.

Those that spent the money on themselves saw a pattern familiar to psychologists.

The first day they got a kick out of it, but that quickly faded as the days past (this is called ‘hedonic adaptation’).

But, for those that gave their money away, the joy was just as strong on the fifth day as it was on the first.

Dr O’Brien said they tested all sorts of alternative explanations for their results.

For example, perhaps people thought longer and harder when giving the money away.

This did not explain the effect, though:

“We considered many such possibilities, and measured over a dozen of them.

None of them could explain our results; there were very few incidental differences between ‘get’ and ‘give’ conditions, and the key difference in happiness remained unchanged when controlling for these other variables in the analyses.”

Related

• 10 Wonderful Ways Kindness Transforms Your Well-Being (P)

The study is to be published in the journal Psychological Science (O’Brien & Kassirer, 2018).

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 because they focus our attention on the experience to a greater extent.

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.

The reason for this greater enjoyment is that rituals enhance our involvement with the experience.

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

And if your Christmas meal is a little late, then take heart from another 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!

Related

• The 12 Psychology Studies of Christmas

The research was published in the journal Psychological Science (Vohs et al., 2013).

An easy, everyday activity that makes people feel confident, comfortable, appreciative and reflective.

Taking selfies and sharing them with friends makes people happier.

Participants in the study took smiling selfies every day over a couple of ordinary weeks.

Selfies were not the only types of pictures that cheered people up.

The researchers found that sharing images that made the taker feel happy also worked.

So did sharing photos that the taker knew would make other people happy.

Yu Chen, the study’s first author, said:

“Our research showed that practicing exercises that can promote happiness via smartphone picture taking and sharing can lead to increased positive feelings for those who engage in it.

This is particularly useful information for returning college students to be aware of, since they face many sources of pressure.”

The research was carried out on college students, who often feel the strain going to college for the first time.

Ms Chen said:

“The good news is that despite their susceptibility to strain, most college students constantly carry around a mobile device, which can be used for stress relief.

Added to that are many applications and social media tools that make it easy to produce and send images.”

More confident, comfortable and reflective

The three types of photos people were told to take had subtly different effects:

• Taking selfies was linked to feeling more confident and comfortable.
• Taking photos of things that made them happy was linked to a more appreciative and reflective state of mind.
• Photos that would make others happy made the taker feel calmer and less stressed as well as strengthening social connections with friends.

All the different types, though, made people feel happier.

Professor Gloria Mark, a study co-author, said:

“You see a lot of reports in the media about the negative impacts of technology use, and we look very carefully at these issues here at UCI.

But there have been expanded efforts over the past decade to study what’s become known as ‘positive computing,’ and I think this study shows that sometimes our gadgets can offer benefits to users.”

The study was published in the journal Psychology of Well-Being  (Chen et al., 2016).

The study compared TV show genres to see which makes people happiest.

Watching nature documentaries — like being out in nature itself — can help you feel happier.

The survey of 7,500 people around the world found they felt happier after viewing clips from BBC nature documentaries.

The study compared watching the documentary to the news or a popular drama show.

People reported that after viewing the nature documentary they felt more:

• joy,
• amazement,
• awe,
• and curiosity.

At the same time it reduced feelings of anger, tiredness and stress.

Professor Dacher Keltner, who teamed up with the BBC for the study, said:

“I have long believed that nature and viewing sublime and beautiful nature in painting, film and video shifts how we look at the world, and humbles us, brings into focus our core goals, diminishes the petty voice of the self and strengthens our nervous system.

When the BBC approached me about working together, it was a no-brainer.

I think their video content inspires green tendencies in viewers.”

Here is taster of the study:

Professor Keltner said:

“The importance of the Real Happiness study is that brief exposures to Planet Earth II content bring greater awe, positive emotion, and wellbeing to people in six countries.

The results also show that younger people are highly stressed out, and that viewing videos about the natural world reduces their stress, which tells me that we can turn to other kinds of new social media content to find calm during these highly stressful times.”

The research white paper was published on the BBC Earth website (Keltner et al., 2017).

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.

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.”

Related

• The Happiness Paradox: 7 Ways Pursuing Pleasure Backfires (P)

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