Category: Happiness

Even James Dean looked cooler when he smiled.

People are rated as looking ‘cooler’ when they smile and show their emotions, research finds.

It rubbishes the popular idea that keeping an inexpressive poker face makes you look ‘cool’.

In fact, an inexpressive face makes people look colder, rather than cool.

Dr Caleb Warren, the study’s first author, said:

“We found over and over again that people are perceived to be cooler when they smile compared to when they are inexpressive in print advertisements.

Being inexpressive makes people seem unfriendly or cold rather than cool.”

For the study people were shown a series of adverts in which celebrities were either smiling or not smiling.

It included well-know people, such as James Dean, Emily Didonato and Michael Jordan, alongside less well-known models.

People rated how cool the model seemed when they were smiling versus not smiling.

James Dean, for example, was rated ‘cooler’ in photographs where he was smiling, which surprised the researchers.

James Dean is an icon of cool and often pictured with a sultry, half-frown.

There was only one exception to the general rule that smiling was cool.

That was when mixed martial arts fighters were facing off at a press conference.

Then, it wasn’t cool to smile — better to look tough and serious.

A serious face is more dominant, and looks cooler when the situation demands dominance.

Dr Warren said:

“This inaccurate belief about how to become cool can influence the way we communicate with others, and being inexpressive can hurt relationships.

It also makes it more difficult to understand one another.

For these reasons, being inexpressive isn’t necessarily cool.”

The study was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology (Warren et al., 2018).

40,000 combined years of marriage experience boiled down to these five points.

The largest ever survey of long-term marriages has revealed the five keys to a happy marriage.

Over 700 people who have been married for a combined total of 40,000 years (!) took part.

They were asked how to find a suitable partner, how to get through difficult times and any other advice on love and marriage they had.

Professor Karl Pillemer explained his aims:

“Rather than focus on a small number of stories, my goal was to take advantage of the ‘wisdom of crowds,’ collecting the love and relationship advice of a large and varied cross-section of long-married elders in a scientifically reliable and valid way.”

The top five lessons for a happy marriage were:

1. Learn to communicate

Professor Pillemer explained:

“For a good marriage, the elders overwhelmingly tell us to ‘talk, talk, talk.’

They believe most marital problems can be solved through open communication, and conversely many whose marriages dissolved blamed lack of communication.”

2. Get to know your partner before marrying

Professor Pillemer said:

“Many of the elders I surveyed married very young; despite that fact, they recommend the opposite.

They strongly advise younger people to wait to marry until they have gotten to know their partner well and have a number of shared experiences.

An important part of this advice is a lesson that was endorsed in very strong terms: Never get married expecting to be able to change your partner.”

3. Treat marriage as unbreakable and lifelong

Professor Pillemer said:

“Rather than seeing marriage as a voluntary partnership that lasts only as long as the passion does, the elders propose a mindset in which it is a profound commitment to be respected, even if things go sour over the short term.

Many struggled through dry and unhappy periods and found ways to resolve them — giving them the reward of a fulfilling, intact marriage in later life.”

4. Learn to work as a team

Professor Pillemer said:

“The elders urge us to apply what we have learned from our lifelong experiences in teams — in sports, in work, in the military — to marriage.

Concretely, this viewpoint involves seeing problems as collective to the couple, rather than the domain of one partner.

Any difficulty, illness, or setback experienced by one member of the couple is the other partner’s responsibility.”

5. Choose someone similar to you

Professor Pillemer said:

“Marriage is difficult at times for everyone, the elders assert, but it’s much easier with someone who shares your interests, background and orientation.

The most critical need for similarity is in core values regarding potentially contentious issues like child-rearing, how money should be spent and religion.”

The research is published in Professor Pillemer’s book.

In an unhappy marriage often one partner fails to speak up about problems affecting them both, but why?

People with low self-esteem are more likely to stay in an unhappy marriage, a study finds.

They are also likely to keep quiet about any problems in the relationship.

This is probably due to concerns about being rejected.

Dr Megan McCarthy, the study’s author, said:

“There is a perception that people with low self-esteem tend to be more negative and complain a lot more.

While that may be the case in some social situations, our study suggests that in romantic relationships, the partner with low self-esteem resists addressing problems.”

Unhappy marriage

The study tested the effects of low self-esteem on relationships.

The researchers found that not speaking up about problems led to more overall dissatisfaction with the relationship.

Dr McCarthy said:

“We’ve found that people with a more negative self-concept often have doubts and anxieties about the extent to which other people care about them.

This can drive low self-esteem people toward defensive, self-protective behaviour, such as avoiding confrontation.”

Dr McCarthy said:

“If your significant other is not engaging in open and honest conversation about the relationship it may not be that they don’t care, but rather that they feel insecure and are afraid of being hurt.”

Dealing with serious issues

The study also found that people with high self-esteem who are agreeable tend to disclose their emotions more readily.

The reason is that they are more trusting of their partner’s caring nature.

In contrast, those with with low self-esteem found it harder to admit difficult emotions like sadness or to share risky thoughts with their partner.

Dr McCarthy said:

“We may think that staying quiet, in a ‘forgive and forget’ kind of way, is constructive, and certainly it can be when we feel minor annoyances.

But when we have a serious issue in a relationship, failing to address those issues directly can actually be destructive.”

Dr McCarthy concluded:

“We all know that close relationships can sometimes be difficult.

The key issue, then, is how we choose to deal with it when we feel dissatisfied with a partner.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (McCarthy et al., 2017).

Surveys carried out over 30+ years reveal the age at which people are happiest.

People get happier as they get older, research finds.

Surveys of Americans carried out between 1972 and 2004 show that older people are the nation’s happiest.

Across the different generations, around 50 percent of people over the age of 80 said they were ‘very happy’.

It may be because older, more mature people are likely to be more at ease with themselves and to have higher self-esteem.

Dr Yang Yang, the study’s author, said:

“Understanding happiness is important to understanding quality of life.

The happiness measure is a guide to how well society is meeting people’s needs.”

Happiness by age research

For the series of surveys a representative cross-section of Americans was asked the following question:

“Taken all together, how would you say things are these days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?”

The responses also teased out some interesting wrinkles.

The so-called ‘baby boomer’ generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, were less happy than other equivalent generations.

Dr Yang said:

“This is probably due to the fact that the generation as a group was so large, and their expectations were so great, that not everyone in the group could get what he or she wanted as they aged due to competition for opportunities.

This could lead to disappointment that could undermine happiness.”

What age are people happiest?

The study also found that African Americans are, on average, less happy than whites.

Among 18-year-olds, just 15 percent of black men said they were very happy in comparison to 33 percent of white women.

In fact, women were more happy than men overall, across racial and class divides.

Over the years, needless to say, having a significant other and having your health make you much more happy.

One surprise, to some perhaps, is that having no children increases the chances of being happy over the lifetime.

The study was published in the journal American Sociological Review (Yang, 2008).

Feeling that life is meaningful is crucial for good psychological and physical health.

People who feel that life is more meaningful tend to have more purpose, stronger values, greater efficacy and self-worth.

Psychologists repeatedly find that feeling that life is meaningful is important:

• People who feel life is meaningful are more likely to be in both good psychological and good physical health.
• People who feel life isn’t meaningful are more likely to be depressed, to require therapy and even feel suicidal.

Meaning in life is particularly important to people in their 20s and 60s, although most adults can feel when it is missing.

So, below are 7 psychology studies, some from the members-only section of PsyBlog, that reveal how to increase meaning in life.

(If you are not already, find out how to become a PsyBlog member here.)

1. How To Experience More Meaning In Life
2. These Everyday Interactions Increase Sense Of Purpose In Life
3. The 5 Signs Of Meaningful Work
4. A Sense of Belonging Increases Meaningfulness of Life
5. 20 Movies That Help You Make Sense Of Life
6. An Exercise For Increasingly Meaningfulness
7. The 4 Things That People Say Gives Their Lives Meaning

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For those who find it wasteful, leisure time can be reframed to create more purpose.

Believing that leisure is unproductive and wasteful is linked to higher levels of stress and depression and lower levels of happiness, a study finds.

Many people believe that being productive is the ultimate goal of life and if you’re not serving some greater purpose, then you’re wasting time.

However, people who hold this view are more likely to report poor mental health and enjoy their leisure time the least.

Dr Selin Malkoc, study co-author, said:

“There is plenty of research which suggests that leisure has mental health benefits and that it can make us more productive and less stressed.

But we find that if people start to believe that leisure is wasteful, they may end up being more depressed and more stressed.”

Serving a greater goal

One way for the productive-minded to enjoy leisure more, though, is to see it as part of a greater goal, explained Dr Rebecca Reczek, study co-author:

“If leisure can be framed as having some kind of productive goal, that helps people who think leisure is wasteful get some of the same benefits.”

Dr Malkoc agrees:

“…think about the productive ways that individual leisure activities can serve their long-term goals.

Find ways to make fun activities part of a larger goal in your life.

Think about how it is productive, instrumental and useful.”

The conclusions come from a series of studies, one of which asked people how they celebrated Halloween.

Some activities, such as going to a party, were fun for their own sake while others, like taking children trick-or-treating, served a larger goal.

People subscribing to the popular belief that leisure is wasteful found the party less enjoyable.

However, this was not the case for the trick-or-treating, said Dr Gabriela Tonietto, the study’s first author, said:

“Those who participated in fun activities that fulfilled responsibilities, like trick or treating with your kids, didn’t see such a reduction in how much they enjoyed their Halloween.”

Negative views about leisure are worldwide

It is not just Americans who view leisure time as wasteful — the view is globalised, said Dr Reczek:

“We live in a global society and there are people everywhere that hear the same messages about how important it is to be busy and productive.

And once you believe that, and internalize the message that leisure is a waste, our results suggest you’re going to be more depressed and less happy, no matter where you live.”

Negative views about leisure can be surprisingly damaging, affecting people’s ability to enjoy themselves even in the simplest ways.

In one study, students were invited to do a boring task which had a break in the middle when they watched a funny cat video.

However, people who view leisure as a waste of time couldn’t enjoy the video at all.

Dr Malkoc explained:

“These are students who are coming into the lab to answer surveys, which can be boring.

In the middle of that we give them a funny video to watch, which you would expect would be a nice break – and even then, some participants didn’t enjoy it as much.

They had no way to use the time more productively.

We were giving them a break from other, more boring activities.

And still, those who believe leisure is wasteful didn’t think watching the videos was as fun as others did.”

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (Tonietto et al., 2021).

Will therapy make you much happier. According to this study, it works 32 times better than money.

Money.

You need enough to live, but loads of it doesn’t make you that much happier.

It’s something we’ve all heard — whether it’s from psych studies or rich people — but do we behave as though it’s true?

I sometimes wonder.

To help convince our inner Mr Burns, here’s a nice statistic from a study done by researchers at the Universities of Manchester and Warwick, who compared the happiness gains from money to that from psychological therapy (Boyce & Wood, 2009).

Therapy makes you 32 times happier than money

They found that therapy was 32 times as cost effective as money in making you happier.

They reached this figure by looking at thousands of people who’d started therapy and compared them with others who’d had large increases in their income.

It turned out that to get the same increase in happiness from $1,300 spent on therapy, a person would have to get a mammoth pay rise of $42,000.

Hardly likely, right?

The study’s lead author, Chris Boyce, said:

“Often the importance of money for improving our well-being and bringing greater happiness is vastly over-valued in our societies.

The benefits of having good mental health, on the other hand, are often not fully appreciated and people do not realise the powerful effect that psychological therapy, such as non-directive counselling, can have on improving our well-being.”

Getting richer, but no happier

If this is true, why are many governments so obsessed with economic growth and apparently so little concerned with mental health?

Take the Chinese, for example, who are getting much richer, but no happier. That’s just one of many, many examples.

Although economic growth in many major economies is less dramatic than in China, the effects on happiness are about the same: zilch, or close enough.

Any idiot knows the answer to this one: it’s because money makes the world go round, world go round, world go round…

And yet it makes me think we’re all idiots for nodding our heads sagely that money can’t make you happy, then off we all go to put in another 12 hour day, or whatever it is.

Think how much happier the world would be if, instead of annual pay rises or bonuses, we were all sent off to talk to a sympathetic stranger for a few hours.

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