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.




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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.



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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!

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

Money, Happiness, Time

I really liked this article from Australia's Herald Sun yesterday, about the relationship between money and happiness. As you'd expect from that part of the world, it gets straight to the point; over a certain amount, money doesn't make you happier.

The article suggests that what people who work hard really want is more time, and advises that the way to create more time is to 'outsource' all the jobs that someone else can do for you more cheaply than you can do them yourself. OK, that's logical to me so far. But then it goes on to say that you should use the extra time you've created through outsourcing to "focus all your energy on bringing home the bacon.....After you've hit the economics of enough, money has little use, other than as a tool to allow you the economic advantage of creating the life you want with the limited time you have left".

Hmmm? Run that one by me again?

Surely if time is so precious the last thing you want to be spending it doing is more work? Unless, of course, you're absolutely passionate about your work, and have the kind of job that you'd do even if you weren't paid at all. Which is really my point - wouldn't it be better to find a job that you enjoy doing, where you can use your strengths every day, and which brings out the best in you? It might sound a bit pie-in-the-sky, but it's perfectly possible for the vast majority of people to achieve this with a little coaching support. You just need to know what your strengths are.


Thanks to Viv T for the article

Image source: bogenfreund

The Politics of Happiness

In this article last year I mentioned that the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan pioneered the measurement of well-being with its Gross National Happiness index.

Now Bhutan is in the news again because tomorrow it will hold its first-ever democratic elections. This could be seen as a test of how serious the two main political parties and their supporters are about happiness, or whether, when they have the opportunity, they put economic growth first.

The head of Bhutan's planning commission suggests that happiness and economic growth are not incompatible, but nevertheless, observers are right to acknowledge that economic growth will have consequences, not all of them positive. But perhaps the Bhutanese know enough about well-being to be wise to the negative effects of materialism.

Whatever the result of the elections, it will be interesting to watch how democracy unfolds in Bhutan in the next few weeks and months.




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Money can buy you happiness...

...but not in the way you might think.







Positive Psychologists are often quoted as saying that after a certain point, more money can't make you significantly happier, implying that there's no point in busting a gut to get that next bonus or promotion.

This article however reports the findings of a recent study by the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School, which shows that spending your money on other people makes you happier than spending it on yourself.

Not convinced? Well, I'm happy to be the recipient of your largesse if you want to try it out!


Image: Material Boy

The Cost of Ill-health and Happiness

The cost of ill-health to the British economy is a staggering £103 billion a year according to a recent report from Professor Dame Carol Black, National Director for Health and Work. This article from today's spiked suggests that the government's attempts to get the unemployed back to work by e.g. re-branding "Incapacity Benefit" as "Employment and Support Allowance", is merely tinkering at the edges. I'm inclined to agree. Other carrot-and-stick measures such as tougher health tests for those claiming IB and requiring doctors to intervene sooner are unlikely to be successful and will instead just create more expensive targets and measures to be monitored and circumvented, in the same way that hospital waiting lists have been.

The article quotes one professor of psychiatry, Simon Wessely, as saying that many normal human experiences are being medicalised; for example feeling sadness after a bereavement is now seen as a health "problem" for which there should be a medical cure. People are encouraged to think of negative emotions as something can and should be avoided - take the frequency with which counselling is offered after traumatic events for example, even though there is growing scientific evidence that most people heal better and more quickly without it.

Off hand I don't know how the UK compares to other European countries regarding the true cost of ill-health (if anyone reading this does, let me know!). I agree with Mick Hume that the answer lies not in treating the entire problem as one of ill-health (and certainly not in the ways the government proposes), rather we need to be looking more seriously at the underlying causes. If it is the case that many of those people on IB should really be at work, the question is why they prefer to claim state benefits rather than make a meaningful contribution to society. That is a much deeper issue.

Once again I'm left thinking that those of us with an interest in Positive Psychology and the science behind happiness need to ensure we talk about the benefits of PP in business without it sounding like we inhabit cloud-cuckoo land.



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Happiness Lessons in Schools

Here's an interesting article from the Guardian about the argument for and against teaching happiness lessons in schools.

You can see why Anthony Seldon, head of Wellington College (one of the most elite schools in the UK) is so keen that kids get something more than the National Curriculum, since it will hardly prepare them for the adult world in the 21st Century after all. But teaching them Positive Psychology doesn't fill Richard Schoch with confidence, largely because he says you can't measure meaning and engagement, which are the holy grail of happiness. He thinks there is a place for well-being in the classroom, but doesn't really have any suggestions about how to teach it, other than getting kids to read ancient texts.

Hmmmmm.

I'm not sure that's the answer either!

The really interesting question is why we feel that children need to be taught about happiness in the first place. Some people (including Seldon) have argued that kids are more prone to depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses than in the past. So teaching them various life skills will help them survive these issues. If that's the case, shouldn't we be asking ourselves what is causing them to be more prone to depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses in the first place, and try to do something to fix that?

According to Schoch, Positive Psychology is a bit like Marmite, i.e. you either love it or you hate it. The challenge for Positive Psychologists is how to persuade its critics that it's a useful subject which can make a positive difference to how people choose to live their lives. I'm not sure it's succeeding in that aim at the moment. What do you think?


You can read the original debate between Seldon and sociologist Frank Furedi here.

Have you got the Happiness Habit?

In my recent posting on Positive Psychology and Coaching I referred to Sonja Lyubomirsky's new book, "The How of Happiness".

The video clip from 20/20 is a great intro to the science behind the book. The case of the identical twins is fascinating isn't it?

On Tuesday I was fortunate enough to take part in a telephone seminar with Professor Lyubomirsky, in which she outlined the key messages from the book. The things which I found most interesting were:

1) that happiness takes effort - i.e. you need to be prepared to work at it; it may not come naturally

2) according to Lyubomirsky, you need to ensure that you choose the strategies which you're comfortable with. Some may not be your cup of tea. She readily admits to finding the Gratitude exercise difficult. If that's the case try something else.

3) whatever strategies you find work for you need to become habits - things that you do on a regular basis without thinking about it, like cleaning your teeth twice a day. How will you get the happiness habit?

4) some of the strategies which have been empirically validated, like gratitude, savouring and acts of kindness, may sound corny and trivial, but they do work. Plus, you have nothing to lose by trying them for a few weeks.

Let us know how you get on with her 'Person/Activity Fit' diagnostic tool (p73) and the various strategies you choose as a result.


Thanks to Christine Duvivier for the links.

Positive Psychology and Coaching

My MAPP colleagues and I were discussing the number of books on happiness being published at the moment: Lyubomirsky's "The How of Happiness" is the latest. Great book, shame about the sunny yellow cover...

Is it possible, we wondered, to broadcast the important positive psychology research findings, i.e. the ones that might make a difference to the way people live their lives, without it being accused of being merely happiology, or moralistic? For example, research tells us (if our grandmothers haven't already) that earning large amounts of money doesn't make a significant difference to our happiness levels. It also shows that building strong relationships (with friends and family, between generations, in the community and at work) is one of the most important things we can do to improve our well-being. Yet the vast majority of us still act like money is the be all and end all.

It's a difficult call, we concluded, especially when the media the world over insists on calling it happiology, as this recent article from PressTV in Tehran illustrates.


Choosing the right Positive Psychology interventions

We also discussed whether Lyubomirsky's emphasis (Chapter 3) on the importance of choosing activities to fit your lifestyle was useful or not. If, as a coach, you leave it up to the client to choose their own interventions, the chances are they won't go for the ones which look too simple, such as keeping a gratitude diary, yet activities like this can have a profound effect.

Opting for more difficult ones (such as meditation) straight off might need a great deal more perseverance. It's worth discussing these potential difficulties with your client before deciding what approach to take. Experienced coach and trainer, Lucy Ryan, suggests advising clients to try the simple interventions first - they have nothing to lose, and a great deal to gain, after all.

Which careers provide the least job satisfaction?

In response to Yang-May's question about which jobs were at the bottom of the happiness and satisfaction league tables, here's the information according to the American General Social Surveys* (GSS) carried out between 1998 and 2006:






The question asked was 'On the whole, how satisfied are you with the work you do - would you say you are very satisfied, moderately satisfied, a little dissatisfied, or very satisfied?'

The mean score ranges from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 4 (very satisfied).


The same survey also asked about general happiness:






The question asked was 'Taken all together, how would you say things are these days -would you say you are very happy, pretty happy or not too happy?'

The mean score ranges from 1 (not too happy) to 3 (very happy).


The survey results reveal that the least happy and least satisfied are those people doing unskilled manual or service jobs, including customer service assistants and people who handle complaints.

Research suggests that job satisfaction and well-being are less to do with salary or status of a job, and more to do with how much control you have over the job you do. Even though the amount of stress you experience tends to increase as you rise through the ranks, so too does your autonomy, and is it this, or the lack of it, which affects your sense of well-being and satisfaction.

What's interesting is that even the lowest scores aren't really that bad....

If you have any further thoughts or comments on these survey results, we'd love to hear them.

Which careers provide the most job satisfaction?

According to the American General Social Surveys* (GSS) carried out between 1998 and 2006, the top 10 careers which provide the most job satisfaction are as follows:











The question asked was 'On the whole, how satisfied are you with the work you do - would you say you are very satisfied, moderately satisfied, a little dissatisfied, or very satisfied?'

The mean score ranges from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 4 (very satisfied).


The same surveys also asked about general happiness:











The question asked was 'Taken all together, how would you say things are these days -would you say you are very happy, pretty happy or not too happy?'

The mean score ranges from 1 (not too happy) to 3 (very happy).


This reveals that the most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching, and protecting others as well as the creative pursuits. Since people's feelings about their work usually have a significant impact on their general happiness, it's not surprising that some of the same professions appear in the Top 10 for general happiness too.

It's interesting that the clergy appear top of both tables, suggesting that finding meaning in your work is a crucial part of both job satisfaction and happiness. Psychologists Judge, Thoresen, Bono and Patton (2001) have shown that job satisfaction and performance are correlated. According to Wrzesniewski (2003), if jobs which give people meaning (for example because they make a contribution to the wider world) are linked to high job satisfaction, and job satisfaction is linked to work performance, people who find meaning in their work are more likely to perform better than those who don't. So it's in the interests of all organisations to help employees create meaning in their work.

Incidentally, the bottom occupation for job satisfaction in this survey was roofing, which unfortunately was 2nd bottom for general happiness too- only 25% of roofers said they were very satisfied with their jobs and only 14% were very happy...


*The General Social Survey which has been conducted since 1972, collects basic information from across the United States in order to monitor social trends. The GSS is based on interviews of randomly selected people who represent a scientifically accurate cross section of Americans. A total of 27,587 people were interviewed for the job satisfaction and happiness section of the survey.




My thanks to Rochelle Melander for this information.

The Politics of Happiness

Can Gross National Happiness ever be an accepted substitute for GDP?




The Kingdom of Bhutan, a predominantly Buddhist country of approximately 750,000 inhabitants in the Eastern Himalayas, has been measuring Gross National Happiness since the late '80s. The King, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, was concerned about the sorts of issues affecting countries which focussed only on increasing economic prosperity, and as a result, he declared that GNH (Gross National Happiness) not GDP, was the priority for his people. "The ultimate purpose of government", he said, "is to promote the happiness of its people". This, of course, was more than a decade before Martin Seligman launched the Positive Psychology movement.

Now, says writer, analyst and UN Editor Rasna Warah, GNH vs GDP has become an issue in the upcoming Kenyan elections (December 27th). In this article on the All Africa Global Media website, Warah explores the background to GNH, and why it matters. It's the case that back in 2006 presidential candidate Dr Raila Odinga, cast doubt on the accuracy of Kenyan economic growth figures being quoted by other candidates, and proposed that a GNH survey be carried out instead. In an interview with Nation Magazine, Odinga is quoted as saying: “People are happy when they put food on the table, feed and educate their children.” However I haven't been able to find any mention of Gross National Happiness on Odinga's election website. Could it be the case that when the chips are down (and when votes are needed) what people really want to see is good old-fashioned economic growth?




Image: New Scientist

Regret, Well-being and Maturity

Regrets, I've had a few: How finding the silver lining contributes to happiness and maturity

This article on yesterday's Positive Psychology News Daily looks at research into regret which suggests that it's about more than learning from experience, it's beneficial for the process of psychological maturity itself, and that the accommodation of regret has profound implications for human development, and ultimate happiness.




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Economics of Happiness - More or Less

This Radio 4 programme today is a great introduction to the pros and cons of measuring happiness, and whether it's possible, desirable or indeed useful to do so, with Professor of Economics, Paul Omerod, one of the principals of Volterra Consulting, Lord Richard Layard, Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and Professor Paul Dolan, Chair in Economics at the Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London.

I think this is a great starting point if you're unfamiliar with the finer points of happiness research and measurement.

Whose perspective do you agree with?


Source: D.G. Myers, Happiness, 2004

The Happiness Workout

Here's an interesting article from the Guardian which includes 5 simple steps to improve your happiness. These are all supported by empirical research, so you can have confidence that they'll actually have an effect, unlike some of the techniques you find in many self-help manuals.

What is particularly important about this article is Stanford University Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky's comment that in order to be happy you have to work at it. Although some people do seem to be born with a smile on their faces, others really do have to work harder at being happy.

We often assume that happiness can be ours simply for the price of a bigger house, larger car or another promotion but there is evidence to the contrary. And the more I study Positive Psychology the more I believe that happiness is something you do, not something you have. The American Declaration of Independence talks about 'the pursuit of Happiness' after all, not the acquisition of it. So why not try out some (or all) of the five steps in the article everyday for a week and let us know how you get on?



Thanks to MAPP colleague Viv Thackray for the link

Why you should be bad at something

Over the past couple of months I've written many times about the benefits of focussing on your strengths (e.g. here and here); most Positive Psychology literature (unsurprisingly) concentrates on what's good about using a strengths-based approach and mentions very little in the way of the downsides. I've come across the phrase "overusing strengths", but that's about it. You need to look quite hard at the VIA-IS, StrengthsFinder and Strengthscope websites to find anything suggesting there might also be disadvantages.

Carol Dweck's* research on fixed and growth mindsets made me wonder whether developing an inflexible view even of one's good points (e.g. strengths) might actually be a bad thing, and that's how I came to write my recent posting on Positive Psychology News Daily.

Anyhow, today I was sent a link to a post on the Berkun Blog, called "Why you should be bad at something". It's not just that being bad at something is OK, according to Scott Berkun it's an absolute necessity if you're going to learn something. How right he is. In order to learn you need to have a growth mindset, to try, and to keep trying over again when you fail. As a child you had a growth mindset - you'd never have learnt to speak, walk, read and write if you'd waited until you were good at it first.

What I like about Berkun's post is it links the themes of comfort zones (which we have also discussed before here), learning, ageing, mindsets and happiness.

Berkun says "This sounds idiotic but I think being good, as in proficient, isn’t good all the time... as I get older I realize how important it is for my soul to be bad or awful in at least one thing I do, and to take pleasure in it anyway. There is a way to take pleasure in things independent of my ability at them and I’m convinced that cultivating it will make me a happier person".

I dare you to be really bad at something!



* Carol Dweck (2006) Mindset: The new psychology of success


Thanks to Neil for the link to Scott Berkun's blog.