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What’s more contagious: happiness or sadness?
bsp; Happiness. So, ceteris paribus, more friends equals more happiness. Via Brain Candy: Science, Paradoxes, Puzzles, Logic, and Illogic to Nourish Your Neurons: It turns out that happiness is more catching than sadness. Specifically, a happy friend boosts your mood by 9 percent, while an unhappy friend lowers it by 7 percent. As long as you’re not specifically picking unhappy friends, the happiness gamble of extending your social network as widely as possible should pay off. Join 25K+ readers. Get…
1 min read
Does success make us happy or does happiness make us successful?
ppiness makes us successful. Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work: These best and brightest willingly sacrificed happiness for success because, like so many of us, they had been taught that if you work hard you will be successful—and only then, once you are successful, will you be happy. They had been taught that happiness is the reward you get only when you become partner of an investment firm, win…
1 min read
What can you do today that will increase your happiness for the rest of the week?
bsp; Do 5 little nice things for others. Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work: ...individuals told to complete five acts of kindness over the course of a day report feeling much happier than control groups and that the feeling lasts for many subsequent days, far after the exercise is over. To try this yourself, pick one day a week and make a point of committing five acts of kindness.…
1 min read
Can happiness make you more perceptive?
a The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement: Research by Taylor Schmitz of the University of Toronto suggests that when people are in a good mood, they have better peripheral vision. In another experiment a group of doctors was given a small bag of candy and another group was given nothing. Then they were all asked to look at a patient’s history and make a diagnosis. The doctors who got the candy were quicker to detect…
1 min read
Is happiness in what you do or how you do it?
estigious occupations are more likely to be seen as meaningful. Despite this, research shows that seeing any job as having meaning confers many benefits, including increased happiness. Via Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment: Working as a medical doctor, one could argue, lends itself more to meaning than work as a sec ondhand car dealer; similarly, Wrzesniewski's research illustrates that employees who are higher in the organizational hierarchy are more likely to experience their work as…
2 minutes
What size diamond ring provides the most happiness?
e that is bigger than everyone else's. Via The Science of Sin: The Psychology of the Seven Deadlies (and Why They Are So Good For You): When Hsee and his colleagues examined predicted happiness ratings, they found that only relative diamond size mattered. Within each group, the person with the larger diamond was happier. Participants within groups could compare their diamonds with each other and as a result based their happiness on their relative standing within groups. However, there was…
1 min read
How happy is the word “happiness”? How sad is the word “sadness”?
a Harper's: Happiness was found to be the second-happiest word in English and sadness the thirty-first-saddest. Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: 10 things you need to know to be happier 8 ways that money can buy happiness How to make yourself happier in just a few seconds
1 min read
Does seeking happiness lead to loneliness?
e more you value happiness, the more lonely you feel. (Hat tip: Robin Hanson) Few things seem more natural and functional than wanting to be happy. We suggest that, counter to this intuition, valuing happiness may have some surprising negative consequences. Specifically, because striving for personal gains can damage connections with others and because happiness is usually defined in terms of personal positive feelings (a personal gain) in western contexts, striving for happiness might damage people’s connections with others and…
1 min read
