Do happier people live longer?

Yes. People who reported the best moods throughout the day lived longer.

From USA Today:

…new research says happy lives are longer — by 35%.

The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that those who reported feeling happiest had a 35% reduced risk of dying compared with those who reported feeling least happy.

And:

“The fact that positive emotions in one day predicted survival is pretty amazing,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.

“We do know that happiness is associated with an extended life span,” she says. If we can get people to be happier, would that extend the lifespan? We don’t know that yet. Future research can definitely try to show that.”

And:

This study asked participants to rate how happy, excited and content they felt at four points during a single day — 7 a.m., 7 p.m. and a half-hour after each. They used a rating scale from 1 (“not at all”) to 4 (“extremely”).

“Generally, they were less happy when they woke up and most happy at 7 p.m.,” Steptoe says.

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