Happiness

Understanding subjective well-being (SWB) has historically been a core human endeavor and presently spans fields from management to mental health. Previous meta-analyses have indicated that personality traits are one of the best predictors. Still, these past results indicate only a moderate relationship, weaker than suggested by several lines of reasoning. This may be because of commensurability, where researchers have grouped together substantively disparate measures in their analyses. In this article, the authors review and address this problem directly, focusing on individual measures of personality (e.g., the Neuroticism-Extroversion-Openness Personality Inventory; P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1992) and categories of SWB (e.g., life satisfaction). In addition, the authors take a multivariate approach, assessing how much variance personality traits account for individually as well as together. Results indicate that different personality and SWB scales can be substantively different and that the relationship between the two is typically much larger (e.g., 4 times) than previous meta-analyses have indicated. Total SWB variance accounted for by personality can reach as high as 39% or 63% disattenuated. These results also speak to meta-analyses in general and the need to account for scale differences once a sufficient research base has been generated.

In 25 years' time, when demand is quasi-full, competition is quasi-perfect and population has started declining on the global scale, our businesses would no longer expect high profits which, in the past, functioned as the purpose of motivations (or the "invisible hands") that contributed to the development of our modern society. If we are to face this unprecedented change for centuries, what can be the new form of business and economic data in which management of new society can be effectively conducted? 

四半世紀後、中国やインドも成長を遂げ、全世界的に準需要飽和や準完全競争を迎え更に人口減少を迎える時代には、構造的な問題として超過利益は期待しえない。とすれば、これまで経済―社会開発の「見えざる手」、「動機のインディケーター」として機能していた「利益」の役割は終焉する。「利益」に変わり人々の幸福を増進するビジネス、経済、社会のデータシステムのフォームは何か、世界でも未だに議論為されていないテーマを開発する。

Extract:

"In April last year, The New York Times published an article with the title ‘Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All’ (Leonhardt, 2008). A month later, the Times of London followed suit with, ‘If you’re richer, you’re happier’ (Finkelstein, 2008). As suggested by their titles, these articles reported that more money equals more happiness. The source for this assertion was a recent paper by two economists, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers (2008) who purport to refute the long- standing claim, commonly attributed to Richard Easterlin, that money does not ‘buy’ happiness.

"In this essay I consider the validity of the journalists’ reports by reviewing the findings of Stevenson and Wolfers. If indeed their statements have been too bold, I offer potential explanations for the diminishing effect of national economy on happiness. I expand with a wider framework of well-being by including the economy’s effects on health. This is in light of the fact that both health and happiness are affected by the economic and social environment in similar ways. Thus, an examination of the literature on health and its shared social determinants with happiness may help to settle the dispute."

Sharing good news with others is one way that people can savor those experiences while building personal and interpersonal resources. Although prior research has established the benefits of this process, called capitalization, there has been little research and no experiments to examine the underlying mechanisms. In this article, we report results from 4 experiments and 1 daily diary study conducted to examine 2 mechanisms relevant to capitalization: that sharing good news with others increases the perceived value of those events, especially when others respond enthusiastically, and that enthusiastic responses to shared good news promote the development of trust and a prosocial orientation toward the other. These studies found consistent support for these effects across both interactions with strangers and in everyday close relationships.

Happiness is an important component of subjective well-being and people generally wish to be happy. There are various factors linked to happiness, e.g. health, family relationships, social support, financial situation, work, personal independence, generosity and so on. It is quite possible that old age is associated with many positive and negative factors in the way of experiencing happiness. As there are many benefits of happiness it is important that this area is explored and individuals are supported in their pursuit of finding and maintaining happiness.

The psychology of happiness : a good human life / Samuel S. Franklin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. i sb n 978-0-521-19130-2 (hardback)-isbn 978-0-521-13867-3 (pbk.) 1. Happiness. I. Title. bf575.h27f685 2009 150-dc22 2009011757 isbn 978-0-521-19130-2 Hardback isbn 978-0-521-13867-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Both social input and facial feedback appear to be processed differently by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We tested the effects of both of these types of input on laughter in children with ASD. Sensitivity to facial feedback was tested in 43 children with ASD, aged 8-14 years, and 43 typically developing children matched for mental age (6-14), in order to examine whether children with ASD use bodily feedback as an implicit source of information. Specifically, children were asked to view cartoons as they normally would (control condition), and while holding a pencil in their mouth forcing their smiling muscles into activation (feedback condition) while rating their enjoyment of the cartoons. The authors also explored the effects of social input in children with ASD by investigating whether the presence of a caregiver or friend (companion condition), or the presence of a laugh track superimposed upon the cartoon (laugh track condition) increased the children's s...

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is thought to be the neuroanatomical interface between emotion and cognition. Because effective emotion-cognition interactions are essential to optimal decision making, clarifying how the functionality of the ACC changes in older age using functional imaging holds great promise for ultimately understanding what contributes to the psychological changes occurring in late life. However, the interpretation of functional imaging studies is complicated by the fact that aging is associated with changes in grey matter volume and in the cerebral vasculature. In the present study, we obtained high-resolution structural magnetic resonance (MR) imaging data and quantitative blood flow images to examine the association between aging, blood flow, and grey matter volume in the ACC. Twenty-six healthy individuals between 25 and 79 years of age underwent quantitative [ 15 O]water positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. The ACC was traced onto tissue-classified images derived from T1-and T2-weighted MRIs using previously defined methods. The ACC was divided into dorsal, rostral, and subgenual regions. Age was negatively correlated with blood flow in dorsal and rostral ACC regions. Effects were weaker but in a similar direction for the subgenual ACC. While older age and lower blood flow were both associated with smaller rostral ACC grey matter volumes, mediation analysis revealed that grey matter volume only partially mediated the effect of age on blood flow in the rostral ACC. Neural alterations not detectable on MR images may lead to reduced blood flow due to fewer and/or less metabolically active neurons. Alternatively, lower blood flow may be a cause, rather than a consequence, of smaller grey matter volume in the ACC. M., 2002. Changes in regional cerebral blood flow abnormalities in late-life depression following response to electroconvulsive therapy. Psychiatry Clin. Neurosci. 56, 31-40. Baron, R.M., Kenny, D.A., 1986. The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 51, 1173-1182. Bennett, S.A., Tenniswood, M., Chen, J.H., Davidson, C.M., Keyes, M.T., Fortin, T., Pappas, B.A., 1998. Chronic cerebral hypoperfusion elicits neuronal apoptosis and behavioral impairment. NeuroReport 9, 161-166. ., 2001. Hippocampal and anterior cingulate activation deficits in patients with geriatric depression. Am. J. Psychiatry 158, 1321-1323. Denburg, N.L., Recknor, E.C., Bechara, A., Tranel, D., 2006. Psychophysiological anticipation of positive outcomes promotes advantageous decision-making in normal older persons. Int. J. Psychophysiol. 61, 19-25. Devinsky, O., Morrell, M.J., Vogt, B.A., 1995. Contributions of anterior cingulate cortex to behaviour. Brain 118, 279-306.

These two studies extended previous research on the use of verbal instructions and support technology for helping persons with mild or moderate Alzheimer's disease perform daily activities. Study I included seven participants who were to carry out one of two previously targeted activities (i.e., either coffee preparation or table setting). Study II included four participants who were to carry out two new activities (i.e., preparation of a fruit salad and of a vegetable salad). The effects of activity engagement on mood (i.e., indices of happiness) were assessed by recording the participants' behavior during the activity trials and parallel non-activity periods. The participants of Study I reached percentages of correct activity performance, which normally exceeded 85. Five of them also showed higher indices of happiness during the activity trials as opposed to the non-activity periods. Three of the participants of Study II reached high percentages of correct performance on both activities available. One of these participants also showed higher indices of happiness during the activity trials. The findings were discussed in relation to previous research outcomes and in terms of their practical implications for intervention programs.

Der vielbeschworene Paradigmenwechsel hat in der Regelschule vor 30 Jahren begonnen, als Pädagogik und Didaktik versuchten, die Schülerperspektive einzunehmen und den Lernprozess aus der Sicht des Schülers zu gestalten. Man fing an, für den Schüler Lernumwelten zu strukturieren, die genug Appellcharakter besaßen, um ihn zu einer aktiven Auseinandersetzung mit Lerngegenständen anzuregen. Das Ziel wies damals eine stark individualistische Komponente auf, denn der Akzent lag auf der Selbstverwirklichung-wenn auch in " sozialer Verantwortung ". Im Zuge der Globalisierung gewinnt die soziale Dimension ein neues Gewicht. Um die Probleme, die auf die globalisierte Menschheit zukommen, anzugehen, brauchen wir alle verfügbaren intellektuellen Ressourcen. Die neuen Lernziele heißen: Fähigkeit zu kommunizieren, Bereitschaft, sein Wissen weiterzugeben, Fähigkeit und Bereitschaft, kollektiv Wissen aufzubauen und dieses Wissen zur Problemlösung einzusetzen. Dank der rasanten Entwicklung im Bereich der neuen Kommunikationsmittel rückt die Verwirklichung dieser Ziele heran. Im Folgenden möchte ich an einem konkreten Beispiel aufzeigen, mit welchen didaktischen Maßnahmen Schüler dazu gebracht werden, sowohl im Klassenzimmer als auch außerhalb des Unterrichts gemeinsam Wissen aufzubauen und zur Lösung auftretender Probleme einzusetzen.

Subjective well-being is known to be related to personality traits. However, to date, nobody has examined whether personality and subjective well-being share a common genetic structure. We used a representative sample of 973 twin pairs to test the hypothesis that heritable differences in subjective well-being are entirely accounted for by the genetic architecture of the Five-Factor Model's personality domains. Results supported this model. Subjective well-being was accounted for by unique genetic influences from Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness, and by a common genetic factor that influenced all five personality domains in the directions of low Neuroticism and high Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. These findings indicate that subjective well-being is linked to personality by common genes and that personality may form an ''affective reserve'' relevant to set-point maintenance and changes in set point over time.

This article explores explore the relationships among socio-demographics, perceived health, and happiness in a patient population of 221 adults recruited from 39 primary care practices in Alabama. We also explored whether the relationship between socio-demographics and happiness is mediated by perceived health. The dependent variable, happiness, was dichotomized as happy versus unhappy. Independent variables or correlates of happiness included race (Black or White), age (< 65 vs. 65 and older), gender (male vs. female), perceived income (sufficient vs. insufficient to meet basic needs), health literacy (adequate vs. inadequate), and self-rated health (excellent/very good/good vs. poor/fair). Data were analyzed using generalized linear latent and mixed models to examine the relationship between happiness and its correlates. Our findings suggest that adequate health literacy and better perceived health are associated with an increase in the likelihood of happiness. In addition, the...

People's beliefs about how memory works can affect their inferences from experienced difficulty of recall. Participants were asked to recall either 4 childhood events (experienced as an easy task) or 12 childhood events (experienced as a difficult task). Subsequently, they were led to believe that either pleasant or unpleasant periods of one's life fade from memory. When the recall task was difficult (12 events), participants who believed that memories from unpleasant periods fade away rated their childhood as less happy than participants who believed that memories from pleasant periods fade away. The opposite pattern was observed when the recall task was easy (4 events). This interplay of recall experiences and memory beliefs suggests that the judgmental impact of subjective experiences is shaped by beliefs about their meaning. It also suggests that the recall difficulty in clinical memory work may lead a person to make negative inferences about his or her childhood, provided the person shares the popular belief that memory represses negative information.

■ Abstract Personality has consequences. Measures of personality have contemporaneous and predictive relations to a variety of important outcomes. Using the Big Five factors as heuristics for organizing the research literature, numerous consequential relations are identified. Personality dispositions are associated with happiness, physical and psychological health, spirituality, and identity at an individual level; associated with the quality of relationships with peers, family, and romantic others at an interpersonal level; and associated with occupational choice, satisfaction, and performance, as well as community involvement, criminal activity, and political ideology at a social institutional level.

en milieu scolaire pourraient prendre pour cible à la fois des facteurs personnels (par exemple, promouvoir la compétence sociale) et des facteurs sociaux (par exemple, promouvoir le soutien et l'acceptation sociaux). Les interventions devraient aussi prendre pour cible la santé mentale et physique pour aider les adolescents à gérer les défis quotidiens qu'ils rencontrent.

Dog walking is a popular everyday physical activity. Dog owners are generally more active than non-owners, but some rarely walk with their dog. The strength of the dog-owner relationship is known to be correlated with dog walking, and this qualitative study investigates why. Twenty-six interviews were combined with autoethnography of dog walking experiences. Dog walking was constructed as "for the dog", however, owners represented their dog's needs in a way which aligned with their own. Central to the construction of need was perceptions of dog personality and behaviour. Owners reported deriving positive outcomes from dog walking, most notably, feelings of "happiness", but these were "contingent" on the perception that their dogs were enjoying the experience. Owner physical activity and social interaction were secondary bonuses but rarely motivating. Perceptions and beliefs of owners about dog walking were continually negotiated, depending on how the needs of the owner and dog were constructed at that time. Complex social interactions with the "significant other" of a pet can strongly motivate human health behaviour. Potential interventions to promote dog walking need to account for this complexity and the effect of the dog-owner relationship on owner mental wellbeing.

As smartphones become ever more integrated in people’s lives, a burgeoning new area of research has emerged on their well-being effects. We propose that disparate strands of research and apparently contradictory findings can be integrated under three basic hypotheses, positing that smartphones influence well-being by (1) replacing other activities (displacement hypothesis), (2) interfering with concurrent activities (interference hypothesis), and (3) affording access to information and activities that would otherwise be unavailable (complementarity hypothesis). Using this framework, we highlight methodological issues and go beyond net effects to examine how and when phones boost versus hurt well-being. We examine both psychological and contextual mediators and moderators of the effects, thus outlining an agenda for future research.

Objectives. Understanding the factors that promote quality of life in old age has been a staple of social gerontology since its inception and remains a significant theme in aging research. The purpose of this article was to review the state of the science with regard to subjective well-being (SWB) in later life and to identify promising directions for future research. Methods. This article is based on a review of literature on SWB in aging, sociological, and psychological journals. Although the materials reviewed date back to the early 1960s, the emphasis is on publications in the past decade. Results. Research to date paints an effective portrait of the epidemiology of SWB in late life and the factors associated with it. Although the research base is large, causal inferences about the determinants of SWB remain problematic. Two recent contributions to the research base are highlighted as emerging issues: studies of secular trends in SWB and crossnational studies. Discussion. The review ends with discussion of priority issues for future research.

This paper investigates the link between disability and subjective wellbeing, using data from the 2009 Disability and Use of Time supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the longest running national panel study in the United States. Disability is construed broadly to include both the presence of any physical, cognitive, or sensory impairment or activity limitation and also the severity of underlying impairments. Subjective wellbeing is measured using two distinct approaches: reports of life satisfaction and of moment-to-moment wellbeingdboth positive and negativedon the previous day. The latter, collected through 24-h time diaries, also offers for the first time the ability to explore the role of participation in particular kinds of activities linking disability to subjective wellbeing. The analytic sample included married persons ages 60 and older and their spouses (n ¼ 751 married individuals) who completed 1498 diaries. Several new findings emerged: no matter what the measure of wellbeing, older married adults with disability report worse subjective wellbeing than those without, and neither different demographic and socioeconomic profiles nor differences in participation fully account for these disparities. Influences of disability on global life satisfaction and episodic reports of happiness were relatively small and of comparable size. However, notably sizeable differences were identified in the cumulative number of pleasant minutes experienced yesterday by disability status-on the order of 71 fewer minutes on average for those with a disability of average severity. Differences appear to be more strongly linked to somatic symptoms of pain and feeling tired than to differential intensity of experiencing happiness, sadness, frustration, or worry. We also found limited support for the notion that participation partially mediates the relationship between disability and global, but not episodic, subjective wellbeing.

Numerous studies suggest a cognitive bias for threat-related material in delusional ideation. However, few studies have examined this bias using a memory task. We investigated the influence of delusion-proneness on identity and expression memory for angry and happy faces. Participants high and low in delusion-proneness were presented with happy and angry faces and were later asked to recognise the same faces displaying a neutral expression. They also had to remember what the initial expressions of the faces had been. Remember/know/guess judgments were asked for both identity and expression memory. Results showed that delusion-prone participants better recognised the identity of angry faces compared to non-delusional participants. Also, this difference between the two groups was mainly due to a greater number of remember responses in delusion-prone participants. These findings extend previous studies by showing that delusions are associated with a memory bias for threat-related stimuli. r

economic security. Furthermore, past satisfaction with life is directly associated with present happiness. This presents implications relative to understanding how perception of resources may enhance quality of life among persons who live exceptionally long lives.

In this class, we will try to examine happiness from a cross-disciplinary perspective that will use a combination of books and movies. We will ask simple questions: To what extent does happiness depend on our inner life and on our outer circumstances? Does extra income increase happiness? Or should we work less and have more leisure? And how are we to measure happiness? To this effect, we shall examine a representative selection of works in related fields such as sociology, economics, political theory, literature, and philosophy. We begin by asking how we live today and explore next how we ought to live and what are the main ingredients of happiness and how can it be promoted in practice.
This year, the class will focus on several major themes: (1) the search for happiness in America today; (2) work, consumerism, and leisure; (3) nature, solitude, and friendship; (4) civilization, politics and happiness; (5) science and happiness; and (6) the economics and politics of happiness.
The texts that we’ll read in this class include selections from a wide array of sources such as David Brooks’s novel Bobos in Paradise, Juliet Schor’s The Overworked American, Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Seneca’s Letters, Emerson’s Essays, Pascal’s Pensées, Montaigne’s Essays, and Huxley’s Brave New World. Students will also be required to watch and comment on a few relevant movies (About Schmidt, Another Woman, Road Scholar) that illuminate some of the topics discussed in class.

The purpose of this study is examining the relation between the emotional intelligence and happiness of the wellness coaches. 390 wellness coaches 282 of whom were women and 108 of whom were men participated voluntarily in the study. The participants were actively working as wellness coaches. The Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) whose Turkish adaptation was realized by Aslan; and the Oxford Happiness Scale, which was developed by Hills and Argyle whose adaptation into Turkish was realized by Dogan and Sapmaz were used as the data collection tools. The descriptive statistical methods, the t-test, One-Way Variance Analysis (ANOVA), regression analysis and Pearson Correlation tests were used for the analysis of the data. At the end of the study it was determined that there was no statistically significant differences between the happiness and emotional intelligence points of Wellness Coaches for Oxford Happiness Scale when these points were compared according to the genders (p>0,05); and significant difference was determined in benefiting from emotions and optimism, which are the sub-dimensions of emotional intelligence scale (p<0,05); no statistically significant differences were found in the sub-dimension of the expression of emotions (p>0,05). It is observed that there is a positive relation at 0,383 level between the Oxford Happiness Scale and the Emotional Intelligence Scale. When the regression analysis results are examined, it is observed that the Emotional Intelligence Sub-dimensions explain the happiness at the medium level. The most explanatory one among the sub-dimensions is the optimism sub-dimension.

Assessments of other people's emotional state are a split second, stereotypical decision based on external cues such as smiling and laughter. These decisions, whether accurate or not, can lead to treating people in particular ways based on our assessment. This pilot study asks to what extent third party assessments of happiness match self-reports of happiness. Findings indicate that, despite our beliefs that we can tell what others are feeling based on the nonverbal behaviors we may observe, there were no significant relationships between the third-party assessment totals and the self-report totals.

The project itself, as well as key findings of Serbia Population Daily Time Use survey shall be presented in the following text. The author led the project in December, 2008, which was conducted by TNS Medium Gallup and Faculty for Culture and Media, Belgrade. This self-completion diary based survey comprised the sample of 1600 respondents, representing population of Serbia aged 12 and over. An average Serbian citizen spends 32% of his/her daily time sleeping, the survey reveals, 30% performing his/her everyday activities and duties (at work, housework, studying, personal care and meal), 19% is allocated to the media, 9% to leisure time (no media included), and 11% for other activities that cannot be grouped under any other previously mentioned category. Television takes 55% of the total amount of time devoted to the media, radio 24%, internet 11% and the press 9%. The major part of leisure time is allocated to visits by friends and vice versa (39%), 30% is time spent in pubs and clubs and 10% reading books. In addition to this, an average citizen spends 267.8 minutes per day communicating with other persons, directly, face to face or via any other means of modern technology. Direct active communication is 34.5% of the total communication, direct passive 43.7%, indirect active 9.6% and indirect passive 12.2%. This person feels particularly good and happy 178.4 minutes per day, and 44.3 minutes rather bad and unhappy. They fell good mainly thanks to their descendants (children and grandchildren) and female population, and bad due to job related roles and non-family relations.

Abstract
Purpose: Positive thinking and positive orientation towards crises have wide implications in appraisal and recovery from stressful events as well as in one’s reactions to everyday experiences. Positive life orientation, a comparatively newer concept, is defined as a disposition about a positive outlook on various life domains as well as on mental and physical well-being. The present study is an attempt to find out whether positive life orientation moderates the relationship between self-esteem and happiness among young adults.
Approach: The present quantitatively tries to ascertain the moderating effect of positive life orientation on the relationship between self-esteem and happiness. This study was conducted on 745 (400 males and 345 females) young adults (aged 20-24 years) studying in a private university of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
Findings: Results revealed significant gender differences on self-esteem and positive life orientation of the respondents. Young adult females are found to have better feelings of worth and positive orientation towards life than males. Results also indicated that positive life orientation moderated the relationship between self-esteem and happiness for both genders indicating that when positive life orientation is high, the strength of the relationship between self-esteem and happiness is stronger as compared to the strength when positive life orientation is low.
Value: The research brings to fore the need for studying positive life orientation in conjunction with other constructs like experiencing flow at work, flourishing, etc.

Keywords: Positive life orientation, Self-esteem, Happiness, Young adults

Many mining and development experts consider artisanal diamond mining to be a form of gambling. In Sierra Leone’s mining areas, this comparison also recurs occasionally in miners’ discourses. However, the idea that mining is like gambling deserves critical scrutiny as it allows only a limited, stereotypical representation of this work. This article considers mining as a complex combination of material production and imaginaries oriented by a specific ethic. Central to the understanding of this ethic is a repertoire of religious metaphors that inform miners’ working and ritual practices.
By drawing upon my ethnographic experience in Sierra Leone (2007–2011), I examine the vocabulary of contingency which the miners use to make sense of their successes and failures and guide their daily decision-making. Moreover, I show how this vocabulary mirrors the daily efforts  of miners in (re)producing the social reality in and around diamond mines. What I mean to  highlight is the ways in which diamond miners challenge dominant discourses depicting them as immoral, antisocial agents.

Purpose: Little is known of Motion-Controlled Video Games (MCVGs) as an intervention for people with chronic pain. The aim of this study was to explore the experience women with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) had, using commercially available MCVGs; and to investigate indicators of symptom severity and performance of activities of daily living (ADL). Method: Of 15 female participants diagnosed with FMS, 7 completed a program of five sessions with Nintendo Wii (Wii), five sessions with PlayStation 3 Move (PS3 Move) and five sessions with Microsoft Xbox Kinect (Xbox Kinect). Interviews were conducted at baseline and postintervention and were supported by data from observation and self-reported assessment. Results: Participants experienced play with MCVGs as a way to get distraction from pain symptoms while doing fun and manageable exercise. They enjoyed the slow pace and familiarity of Wii, while some considered PS3 Move to be too fast paced. Xbox Kinect was reported as the best console for exercise. There were no indication of general improvement in symptom severity or performance of ADL. Conclusion: This study demonstrated MCVG as an effective healthcare intervention for the women with FMS who completed the program, with regards to temporary pain relief and enjoyable low impact exercise.

It is probably fair to say that most people want to be happy. Indeed, the 1776 US Declaration of Independence refers to happiness as an ‘unalienable right’. However, given the rising prevalence of mental illness, and given the amount of general unrest, conflict, and suffering in society, it’s also fair to say that, on the whole, human beings aren’t very good at cultivating happiness. In today’s post, we draw upon insights from the classical and research literature, and from our own practice and study of wellbeing, to examine the subject of how to nurture lasting happiness.

Introduction. There are many ways to enhance happiness for people. Recently, mindfulness, gratitude and grit contribute to several psychological areas such as wellbeing and success. In addition, Korean high school students suffer from hard work like university entrance examination. Therefore, it is important to study the new ways to increase happiness using recently emerging psychological variables.

The purpose of the study aimed to determine whether grit moderates the mediating effect of mindfulness in the association between gratitude and happiness targeting high school students in Korea.

Study participants and methods. The participants were 435 high school students purposively selected from four high schools at Seosan city, Chungnam province in Korea. There was 50.6% for males and 49.4% for females, and men and women were evenly distributed. In this case, the 3rd grade was 71.3%, more than 28.7% of 2nd grade, and 1st grade was not included in the survey. Data were analyzed using SPSS PC+ Win. Ver. 25.0 and SPSS PROCESS macro Ver. 3.5. The statistical techniques applied were frequency analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis and a moderated mediation effect analysis.

Results. First, as a result of correlation analysis, happiness was significantly positively correlated with gratitude (r=.494, p<.001), grit (r=.299, p<.001) and mindfulness (r=.452, p<.001), and the correlation between happiness and gratitude showed the highest coefficient. Second, as a result of the moderated mediation effect analysis, the grit moderated the mediating effect of mindfulness in the link between gratitude and happiness (.6118, .0311~.1806).

Practical significance. Based on these findings, this study discussed methods for improving the happiness of high school students through the gratitude, grit and mindfulness. Therefore, this results will be useful to policy making and program development for happiness.

The effect of age on happiness, as defined by positive and negative affect, was examined in a survey of 2,727 persons of a broad age range (25-74) conducted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development. The age-affect association was examined, controlling for a host of sociodemographic, personality, and contextual influences. Among women, age was related to positive affect nonlineariy but was unrelated to negative affect. Among men, age interacted with 2 key variables in predicting affect: extraversion and marital status. These findings lend support to recent life span theories of emotion and indicate that personality, contextual, and sociodemographic variables, as well as their interactions, are all needed to fully understand the age-affect relationship. , which held that some sociodemographically defined groups (e.g., married people, those with higher incomes, younger people) were happier than others because of differential availability of psychological, physical, and material resources. In essence, individual differences in well-being were thought to be by-products of these group differences.

This study examines the factorial structure of a new instrument to measure engagement, the hypothesized 'opposite' of burnout in a sample of university students (N = 314) and employees (N = 619). In addition, the factorial structure of the Maslach-Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS) is assessed and the relationship between engagement and burnout is examined. Simultaneous confirmatory factor analyses in both samples confirmed the original three-factor structure of the MBI-GS (exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy) as well as the hypothesized three-factor structure of engagement (vigor, dedication, and absorption). Contrary to expectations, a model with two higher-order factors-'burnout' and 'engagement'did not show a superior fit to the data. Instead, our analyses revealed an alternative model with two latent factors including: (1) exhaustion and cynicism ('core of burnout'); (2) all three engagement scales plus efficacy. Both latent factors are negatively related and share between 22% and 38% of their variances in both samples. Despite the fact that slightly different versions of the MBI-GS and the engagement questionnaire had to be used in both samples the results were remarkably similar across samples, which illustrates the robustness of our findings.

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Numerous studies document that societal happiness is correlated with individualism, but the nature of this phenomenon remains understudied. In the current paper, we address this gap and test the reasoning that individualism correlates with societal happiness because the most common measure of societal happiness (i.e., country-level aggregates of personal life satisfaction) is individualism-themed. With the data collected from 13,009 participants across fifty countries, we compare associations of four types of happiness (out of which three are more collectivism-themed than personal life satisfaction) with two different measures of individualism. We replicated previous findings by demonstrating that societal happiness measured as country-level aggregate of personal life satisfaction is correlated with individualism. Importantly though, we also found that the country-level aggregates of the collectivism-themed measures of happiness do not tend to be significantly correlated with indivi...

Today happiness is often understood as improving the condition of our body - the case where new technologies can help to achieve the aim. In this context, the author writes about human hybridization and chimerism, which are part of the human enhancement and presents a selection of historical and contemporary scientific experiments and bioart projects. She also expresses an opinion that it is necessary to create a new ethics that goes beyond species limitations due to the inevitability of biotechnological enhancement.

The education, income, wealth and satisfaction with life of australians aged 25–54 are examined in relation to the circumstances of their childhood, paying particular attention to variation by number of siblings when growing up. The data are from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survery. Educational attainment, income earned and household wealth tend to be greater for people who grew up in relatively small families. The effect of the number of siblings on educational attainment is greater for females than for males. However the advantages of growing up in a smaller family do not translate into higher levels of satisfaction with life. The implications of the findings for the public debate on fertility and child-related benefits in Australia are discussed, as are the implications of a child-quality-child-quantity trade-off for the explanation of fertility levels in more developed countries.

A recent qualitative review by Wood, Froh, and Geraghty (2010) cast doubt on the efficacy of gratitude interventions, suggesting the need to carefully attend to the quality of comparison groups. Accordingly, in a series of meta-analyses, we evaluate the efficacy of gratitude interventions (ks = 4-18; Ns = 395-1,755) relative to a measurement-only control or an alternative-activity condition across 3 outcomes (i.e., gratitude, anxiety, psychological well-being). Gratitude interventions outperformed a measurement-only control on measures of psychological well-being (d = .31, 95% confidence interval [CI = .04, .58]; k = 5) but not gratitude (d = .20; 95% CI [-.04, .44]; k = 4). Gratitude interventions outperformed an alternative-activity condition on measures of gratitude (d = .46, 95% CI [.27, .64]; k = 15) and psychological well-being (d = .17, 95% CI [.09, .24]; k = 20) but not anxiety (d = .11, 95% CI [-.08, .31]; k = 5). More-detailed subdivision was possible on studies with outco...

This chapter presents several of the dominant ideas and intellectual debates about human beauty from archaic Greece to early Christianity. At issue are ideals of character, ethical ideals of who one should be and how one should live. What constitutes beauty and why beauty matters change alongside conceptions of body and soul, virtue and happiness, and the relationship between human beings and the divine.