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Hi all

This blog continues at Workmad.

Please join me there for the latest news and views about positive psychology and organisations.

Bridget

Wealth, Happiness and Life Satisfaction

Here's my latest article on Positive Psychology News Daily on that age-old subject of wealth and happiness. It seems to have caused a bit of a stir with some readers, judging from the number of comments (32 as of today), although maybe not for the right reasons!

Never mind, I'm sure you'll find the recent research interesting. Feel free to write your comments on the Positive Psychology News Daily site itself.




Image: thisduck

Perkfests and the Happiness Police

A couple of years ago I met someone at a networking event whose business card described him as a 'Chief Happiness Officer'. And no he wasn't wearing a red nose, curly wig and big shoes...As a corporate role I couldn't see it catching on (not in the UK anyway) but perhaps I was wrong...


This is an interesting article, especially bearing in mind the economic woes we're experiencing. Personally I doubt whether any of the gestures made by these large organisations will be sufficient to enhance the psychological health of the target group for any longer than the time it takes to guzzle six pints of Ben 'n' Jerry's...but then again, maybe I'm wrong about this too.

If any readers have experience of corporate "Happiness Police", please do get in touch.



Image: TeeJe</span>

Positive Thinking Exercises

Many thanks to Kelly Sonora for sending me this link - 100 positive thinking exercises. My advice would be not to wait until you're having a bad day to put these into action - once you're in a negative frame of mind it will require more effort and self-control to get yourself out of it. Trying practising some of them everyday starting from today - create some new 'positive rituals'. This will make it all the more easier to continue once the going does get tough.



Image: wadem

Full of Life?

This BBC news article reports on a government survey which shows that the vast majority of British people are friends with, or have things in common with, people of different age groups. I wonder what the specific questions were. And do they include family in that? 'Having things in common with' is a very broad concept really. And what do they mean by 'generation'?

Say you're 35 and socialise with people who are 25 or 45 - if asked 'Do you socialise with people of different age groups?', you could say yes, but that doesn't mean you also socialise with people who are 15, 55 or 65+. Likewise if you're 65 - you might have friends who are 55 or 75, but none who are younger than 40...

That's the problem with soundbites. When it comes to statistics you need to see the full detail to be able to make a proper judgement.

Anyway, the article mentions another government website, 'Full of Life' which claims to be "a celebration of the opportunities, achievements, and aspirations of older people and their contribution to our society and economy". Usually I'd say great, this looks like a really positive move. Apart from a couple of 'case studies', however, the website is really only a portal to various other old age-related sites. I agree totally that we should celebrate the contribution that older people make, but first I'd like to see the government do something constructive about the state of old people's homes, and fund treatments for mental illness for people over 65 which, I was shocked to find out, the NHS doesn't have to cover.



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Positive Psychology for Working and Living

I just love this idea!

This post, for Positive Psychology News Daily, looks at two favourite subjects of mine - firstly how people find satisfaction in the jobs they do and secondly, how Positive Psychology can be applied in non-psychology related fields - in this case, Design.

It also links to two other articles I wrote last year, here and here.

The image above is a reproduction of True’s original design, by Chris Glass.

The Dark Side of Positive Psychology

I never thought I'd be posting a link like this about Positive Psychology, but I think you should read this blogpost, which was sent to me on Monday. It refers to a new book, "The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals", in which it is alleged that Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology, was involved in CIA torture. If true, this would of course be completely unethical behaviour, and completely against the principles of Positive Psychology.

After that you should read this blogpost, from one of Seligman's colleagues, Ben Dean, which includes Seligman's response to the allegations (he denies this involvement).

Let's hope the truth will out sooner rather than later.

Happiness and the Hedonic Treadmill

At the 4th European Conference on Positive Psychology in Croatia, Randy Larsen, Psychology Professor at Washington University in St Louis, presented on ‘Overcoming the ‘Hedonic Treadmill’. In fact, the session focussed more on explaining what the Hedonic Treadmill is and how it operates rather than on presenting loads of new ideas on how to beat it…Maybe he ran out of time, a common occurrence during the conference.

So what is the Hedonic Treadmill exactly? In short, it’s the idea that we humans adapt to pleasurable circumstances, events and experiences – which explains why the joy you feel from getting that sought-after pay rise, new contract, dress or car lasts only for a few hours, days or weeks. We simply get used to the positive emotion. The novelty wears off.

What makes the Hedonic Treadmill so interesting is that we adapt to negative circumstances, events and experiences differently; here, there is something called a negativity bias at work, which means that bad events carry more weight than good events; so for example, losing £50 is a more negative experience that finding £50 is a positive one.

Larsen’s research comparing good and bad events shows that bad ones decay more slowly, i.e. negative emotions take longer to wear off. Said another way, we adapt to positive events more quickly than we do to negative ones. No wonder so many people get addicted to shopping – they’re forever trying to increase the duration of positive emotion, without realising that it will just keep wearing off.

One explanation for this may be that negative emotions last longer for evolutionary reasons. Thousands of years ago we couldn’t have afforded to spend too much of our time caught up in the positive emotions associated with having fun and enjoying ourselves when there might be a sabre-toothed tiger coming round the corner – we needed to be ready to deal with it (‘fight or flight’). For our own survival, it was necessary that negative emotions lasted longer than positive ones.

So, where does this leave us, bearing in mind that millions of Westerners seems to be running round the Hedonic (Shopping) Treadmill every day? Unfortunately Larsen didn’t suggest any concrete answers, other than perhaps Positive Psychologists need to be investigating ways to accelerate the adaptation to negative events and experiences, rather than looking for new interventions to increase positive emotion. I think he has a good point, don’t you?

Happiness and Policy

On Monday evening I heard Ed Diener (aka Smiley Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois) present at the 4th European Conference on Positive Psychology in Croatia on the subject of Well-being on Planet Earth. Leaving aside the fact that Diener works for the Gallup Organisation, he presented some curious findings about the predictors of life satisfaction and positive and negative emotion, and the relevance for policy use.

Life Satisfaction vs Emotion

Diener’s ‘happiness formula’ is one of the most well-known in Positive Psychology:

Subjective Well-being (i.e. happiness) = Satisfaction with life + Positive Emotion – Negative Emotion.

This means that happiness is not a simple measure of how good you feel (emotion) but also includes a cognitive element of what you think about your life (satisfaction with life). Still with me? Great!

This explains why countries like Denmark can feature at the top of some happiness scales, but not others.

For example, when asked “on a scale of 0-10 how satisfied are you with your life?” Denmark comes top of the league table. But when you look at which countries are high in positive emotion, New Zealand, Honduras and Panama come at the top.

But happiness is even more complex than that – the presence of positive emotion is not the same thing as the absence of negative emotion (in the same way that health is not the mere absence of illness).

So countries which are high in positive emotion are not the same as those which are low in negative emotion (e.g. Denmark, Sweden and Australia).

Diener’s research with Gallup has also found that the top two predictors of satisfaction with life and positive emotion are not the same:

Predictors of satisfaction with life:
1. Money (as measured by GDP per capita)
2. Optimism
3. Whether I can count on other people

Predictors of positive emotion:
1. Whether I learned something yesterday
2. Freedom to choose
3. Whether I can count on other people

Relevance for Policy Use

According to the Gallup data, 94% of Danes score more then 8/10 for happiness, whereas 97% of Togolese score less than 3/10. Not surprisingly (because this is where Gallup’s interests lie), Diener used these extraordinary findings to argue that we should pay more attention to country-level well-being, since the way in which individual countries are run must be what makes the difference to these overall happiness scores. His suggestion is that societies would do well to use well-being measures in their creation of country-wide policies, as well as the more traditional economic and social measures.

It’s difficult not to disagree with him when you look at the data*; however, the question then arises as to whether it’s the government’s role to make people happy. My own perspective is the government does have a role to play in creating the right environment, although I think we could do a great deal more to improve people’s lives by spending the resources on treating mental illness effectively.


* Sadly the data Diener presented isn't in the public arena since it belongs to the Gallup Organisation.

Positive Psychology and Politics

A great article from The Guardian yesterday about the plans of Lord Layard, the so-called 'Happiness Tsar', to bring happiness to the UK masses. As an economist, his epiphany was the realisation that above a certain point, money and happiness aren't correlated.

Putting aside the argument about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and depression (which is one definitely worth having), I'm not yet convinced that government intervention to make us all happier is either necessary or effective. I'm all for educating people to make their own decisions but perhaps the government should concentrate its efforts on creating better schools and hospitals first...

But no doubt it would become bogged down in happiness measurements, targets and standards anyway before any real difference was made!

Positive Psychology, Money and Friendship

My June article on Positive Psychology News Daily reviews the recent research into money, happiness and friendship.

In short, North et al's (2008) research (274 married adults across a ten-year period) shows that family social support (as measured by cohesion, expressiveness and absence of conflict) is substantially associated with happiness even after controlling for income, and that change in family social support is positively related to change in happiness, whereas change in family income is not.

For the full article,including references, click here

Image: Shelly S

Positive Psychology - Strengths

At college today our MAPP class completed a SWOT Analysis for Positive Psychology. Here's a summary of what we thought are its greatest Strengths (not necessarily in priority order) :

• Evidence-based
• Universal - applies to all cultures and all life-stages
• Captures the public imagination
• Provides a common language
• Deals with real-life issues
• Brings together diverse fields, such as economics, politics, design and philosophy
• Goes beyond the "medical model" of traditional psychology
• Underpins sustainable development
• Bridges academia and real world
• Acknowledges the negative in human experience
• Gives us resources
  

I'll post some further info on the SWOT over the next few days.

Thanks to:

Lucy, Francesca, Claire, Paul, Emily, Charlotte, Elena, Melody, Sam, Valerie, Eleni, Cassie & Ilona for their input, and to Dr Carol Craig & Nic Marks for suggesting the exercise.

Image: Editor B

Unhappy workers take more sick leave

Gallup-Healthways has recently issued details of their Well-being Index - a survey of over 100,000 Americans which shows that employees who are unhappy at work take, on average, an extra 15 days sick leave a year. Yes, that's right, an extra 15 days a year.

The survey assesses well-being at work by asking employees about

i) job satisfaction,
ii) whether their boss is authoritative or collaborative,
iii) whether there is openness and trust in the workplace and
iv) whether their individual strengths are recognised.

Just over a fifth of full-time employees apparently reported working in a negative environment. Even if only a half of those surveyed are full-time, this still equates to an enormous amount of lost productivity.

Clearly this has significant cost implications for business and for the economy in general; so any organisation, profit-making or otherwise, which doesn't take employee well-being seriously should probably think again.

Iceland - the Happiest Country?

As with any happiness or life satisfaction league table, who comes top depends on exactly what's being measured and how. In this article by The Observer journalist John Carlin, Iceland is referred to as the happiest country in the world. How can this be? We all know that it's Denmark!


Carlin's conclusion is based on Iceland's ranking in the Human Development Index (HDI), one of the four United Nations assessments of human potential - it measures three basic dimensions - a long and healthy life, education and a decent standard of living.

1. Health is measured by life expectancy at birth,
2. Education is measured by a combination of the adult literacy rate and the combined gross enrolment ratio in primary, secondary, and tertiary education,
3. Standard of living is measured by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP US$).

So the HDI isn't actually quantifying either happiness or life satisfaction, and it's questionable (in Positive Psychology terms) whether health, wealth and education significantly contribute to happiness anyway.

In fact there are some elements of Icelandic society which would contradict the conclusion that it's one of the best countries in the world to live in, for example, the highest divorce rate in Europe. However, this doesn't mean they have unhappy families - in fact writes Carlin', "The kids will be just fine, because the family will rally round them, and likely as not, the parents will continue to have a civilised relationship, based on the usually automatic understanding that custody of the children will be shared".

The article provides further insights into those character traits which might explain why Icelanders are generally happy people (if not the happiest), for example, optimism, resilience, self-confidence and a can-do attitude. That said, if we follow Lyubomirsky's "Happiness Pie" model, after genes (50%), what we chose to do with our time is the largest contributor (40%) to our happiness - do we have any readers who could comment on how the average happy Icelander spends his/her time?


Whether or not it's the happiest country, Iceland takes first place in the 2007/08 HDI, followed by Norway, Australia, Canada and Ireland. The USA is in 12th position, Denmark 14th and the UK 16th. At the bottom , not surprisingly are the West African countries of Guinea (175th), Burkina Faso (176th) and Sierra Leone (177th). For the full list, see here.


Image: Gúnna

Positive Psychology, Music and Song

In this month's Positive Psychology News Daily article we explore the links between Positive Psychology, making music and singing in unison.

Not only are they both good for your physical health, scientists like Professor Stephen Clift of the Sidney de Haan Centre for Arts and Health are now investigating the benefits for psychological well-being, including increased happiness,self-esteem and self-efficacy, and reduced depression.

Read the rest of the article here.


Image: Tallalex85

Positive Psychology down on the farm

This is the most off the wall application of positive psychology in business I've come across yet - who would have thought that performing Tai Chi in front of cows would improve the quality and quantity of their milk?

Devon farmer, Robert Taverner, says that not only does performing Tai Chi together bond his workforce, the fact that it makes them more relaxed and happy has a positive knock-one effect on his 250 dairy cows, which results in them producing higher quality milk. You can watch a video of various members of the farm's team performing a different Tai Chi ritual for every day of the week on Robert's website.

For a quick (3 minute) insight into Tai Chi for cows, listen to Robert on BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live programme yesterday morning (10 May 2008)- it starts at about 6 mins 45 seconds into the programme.


Image: WukieGrl

Are You Friendly and Sociable?

'Why, of course!', you reply, slightly indignant that we've even asked the question. And no doubt at work or down the pub or gym, you are. But what about with your neighbours? Do you know the other people who live in your street? And would you leave them a set of keys to your house?

These were questions asked by recent BBC research into neighbourliness. In response:

• 36% of us wouldn't trust anyone on our street with a set of keys.
• surprisingly, in the younger age group (25-34 year olds), this is a whopping 48%!
• 22% of us believe our neighbourhoods have become less friendly in the last five years.

A lot of this has been attributed to the loss of local institutions (like schools, small shops, and Post Office closures), and the fact that people work further and further away from home. There are fewer and fewer reasons for people who live near each other to get together.

It's interesting (and concerning) that British people are far less trusting than other Europeans - when measured by the World Values Survey, which asked 'Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?'. Britain is one of the few countries (along with the US) in which the levels of trust have been falling.

In 1981, 42.5% of British people said "yes most people can be trusted". By 1998 this had fallen to 30.4% The levels of trust in other European countries has actually been rising over this same period of time - take Denmark for example, where the number who said "yes" rose from 45.9% to 64.1% between 1981 and 1999. Apparently Britain is the only European country in which levels of trust have been falling. Hmmmmm, makes you think doesn't it?

But back to the more immediate question of you and your neighbours...if you think your neighbourhood is unfriendly, you can bet that they feel the same way. So, be bold! Invite a few round for a cup of coffee, or a drink one evening. And now that summer is on its way, you could even bring out the BBQ. Go on, take the first step - you'll be pleasantly surprised how human your neighbours turn out to be.

Monitoring Well-being in Schools

According to the BBC News today, there are plans afoot to make UK schools monitor children's well-being, as well as their exam results.

On closer inspection of the source report in the Guardian, 18 new social targets are being proposed, among them:

* bullying
* teenage pregnancy rates
* pupil's drug problems
* criminal records
* obesity levels.

Apparently the move is part of a government attempt to reduce drug use, and the teenage pregnancy rate (ours is the highest in Europe). How setting new targets for schools is going to achieve this I'm not entirely sure. 'What gets measured gets managed' say some business people. OK, but that's a long way away from 'what gets measured gets managed well'.

Incidentally, the above 5 measures are not well-being measures, strictly speaking. The assumption being made by the government (wrongly) is that if you reduce what is negative (ill-being) you automatically increase what is positive (well-being). Personally, I think we'd have far more of a positive effect if we actually focussed on what makes children flourish in the first place.

If you have any views on this, I'd love to hear them.

The Happy List

Did you see the Independent on Sunday's 'Happy List' today? It's a good antidote to the Sunday Times' Rich List, a refreshing change from focussing on how many billions Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal is worth this year*.



The criteria for appearing in the IOS Happy List are:

1) you have to make the lives of strangers happier,

2) making strangers happier is the prime motive in doing what you do (as opposed to a side-effect of it), and

3) the example you set deserves celebrating.

I think the results are a bit of a mixed bag to be honest; I'm not sure all of those on the list actually match these criteria....

One person who should be at the top of the list in my opinion is Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder and director of Kids Company, a London charity which looks after vulnerable inner city kids and young people. The aim of Kids Company is to return children to their childhood. Now that really is worth celebrating.

If the IOS repeats the Happy List in 2009, I wonder if any Positive Psychologists will be making an appearance...!

I'd be interested in hearing whether you can think of other people who should be on the list - if so why not let the IOS know? Perhaps they can be included next year.



* [It's £27.7 billion - he's the world's fourth richest man. To put his fortune in perspective, he's richer than the Sultan of Brunei and only ~£1bn behind Bill Gates].

Image: Joe Schlabotnik

Positive Psychology in Business

This month my Positive Psychology News Daily article focuses on the problem of applying Positive Psychology in business.

At the moment there are only about a dozen or so validated interventions (i.e. exercises which are scientifically 'proven' to increase your well-being); all of them are common sense/what your grandmother knew; none of them are rocket-science. They're all suitable for use in 1:1 therapy and coaching situations, but are they suitable in business? There are very few interventions being tested in businesses, and anyway, application is more of an art than a science.


I think we need to build up a knowledge base of case studies of how PP is being applied in organisational contexts, and what the effects are, in order for businesses to be persuaded that Positive Psychology has many tangible benefits worth considering.