Numerous studies show that happy individuals are successful across multiple life domains, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. The authors suggest a conceptual model to account for these findings, arguing that the happiness-success link exists not only because success makes people happy, but also because positive affect engenders success. Three classes of evidence--crosssectional, longitudinal, and experimental--are documented to test their model. Relevant studies are described and their effect sizes combined meta-analytically. The results reveal that happiness is associated with and precedes numerous successful outcomes, as well as behaviors paralleling success. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that positive affect--the hallmark of well-being--may be the cause of many of the desirable characteristics, resources, and successes correlated with happiness. Limitations, empirical issues, and important future research questions are discussed.

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The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?

This preliminary study compared the associations between objective and subjective socioeconomic status (SES) with psychological and physical variables among 157 healthy White women, 59 of whom subsequently participated in a laboratory stress study. Compared with objective indicators, subjective social status was more consistently and strongly related to psychological functioning and health-related factors (self-rated health, heart rate, sleep latency, body fat distribution, and cortisol habituation to repeated stress). Most associations remained significant even after controlling for objective social status and negative affectivity. Results suggest that, in this sample with a moderately restricted range on SES and health, psychological perceptions of social status may be contributing to the SES-health gradient.

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Relationship of subjective and objective social status with psychological and physiological functioning: preliminary data in healthy white women.

This paper presents a revised version of the Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R), a recently developed and widely used quantitative measure of the five components of illness representations in Leventhal's self-regulatory model. The revised version stemmed from a need to deal with minor psychometric problems with two subscales, and to include additional subscales, assessing cyclical timeline perceptions, illness coherence, and emotional representations. Item selection was determined by principal components analyses which verified the factorial structure of the questionnaire in a sample of 711 patients from 8 different illness groups. Further analysis provided good evidence for both the internal reliability of the subscales and the short (3 week) and longer term (6 month) retest reliability. The IPQ-R also demonstrated sound discriminant, known group and predictive validity. While it is possible that the new subscales will vary in their applicability in different patient groups, the IPQ-R provides a more comprehensive and psychometrically acceptable assessment of the key components of patients' perceptions of illness.

The Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R)

http://curriculumstudies.pbworks.com/f/Burnout+and+work+engagement+-+Hakanen,+J.pdf

Burnout and Work Engagement among Teachers.

This review focuses on the pathway leading from the marital relationship to physical health. Evidence from 64 articles published in the past decade, particularly marital interaction studies, suggests that marital functioning is consequential for health; negative dimensions of marital functioning have indirect influences on health outcomes through depression and health habits, and direct influences on cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, neurosensory, and other physiological mechanisms. Moreover, individual difference variables such as trait hostility augment the impact of marital processes on biological systems. Emerging themes in the past decade include the importance of differentiating positive and negative dimensions of marital functioning, the explanatory power of behavioral data, and gender differences in the pathways from the marital relationship to physiological functioning. Contemporary models of gender that emphasize self-processes, traits, and roles furnish alternative perspectives on the differential costs and benefits of marriage for men's and women's health.

Marriage and health: his and hers.

We examine the growing number of studies of survey respondents' global self-ratings of health as predictors of mortality in longitudinal studies of representative community samples. Twenty-seven studies in U.S. and international journals show impressively consistent findings. Global self-rated health is an independent predictor of mortality in nearly all of the studies, despite the inclusion of numerous specific health status indicators and other relevant covariates known to predict mortality. We summarize and review these studies, consider various interpretations which could account for the association, and suggest several approaches to the next stage of research in this field.

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Self-rated health and mortality : a review of twenty-seven community studies

Illness representations: Theoretical foundations.

The following table amends and updates the summary table of mortality studies published in 1997 (Idler and Benyamini 1997). To locate additional studies, we searched Medline using the terms self-rated health, self-rating/s of health, self-assessment/s of health, self-assessed health, self-evaluated health, perception/s of health, perceived health, self-evaluation/s of health, subjective assessment/s of health, subjective health, selfreported health, and self-reports of health and crossed these terms with mortality, survival, and deaths. Additional studies not reporting these terms in their abstracts were identified through careful monitoring of the literature. Articles identified with this process were eliminated if they were not in English, if the study population was not a representative community sample, or if the estimate of the effect of self-rated health on mortality was not adjusted for a set of health status covariates. With these restrictions, we identified 19 additional studies for the period 1995 to 1998. The studies in Table 1 are presented chronologically. They report secondary analyses of large data sets, use increasingly sophisticated statistical methods, and adjust for comprehensive sets of health status covariates. The association of poor self-ratings of health with higher risk of mortality is consistent; in just 2 of the 19 studies there were no effects of self-rated health for either men or women. In most of its content, the table presented here is like the 1997 table. The data sources are international, 15 of the 19 have elderly samples, and the health status covariates almost always include activities of daily living

Community Studies Reporting Association Between Self-Rated Health and Mortality

Community Studies Reporting Association between Self-Rated Health and Mortality: Additional Studies, 1995 to 1998

Longitudinal data from 851 elderly residents of a retirement community (mean age = 73 years) were used to examine the correlates of self-assessments of health (SAH) and the predictors of changes in SAH over several follow-up periods ranging from 1 to 5 years. The authors hypothesized that indicators of positive health, including feelings of energy and positive mood, social support, and active functioning, are as important in determining current and future SAH as negative indicators such as disease history, disability, medication, and negative mood. Results of cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses showed that functional ability, medication use, and negative affect were salient to people judging their health, but positive indicators of activity and mood had an even stronger, independent effect. These findings show the importance of attending to the full illness-wellness continuum in studying people's perceptions of health.

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Yael Benyamini

Papers

Self-rated health and mortality : a review of twenty-seven community studies

Illness representations: Theoretical foundations.

Community Studies Reporting Association Between Self-Rated Health and Mortality

Community Studies Reporting Association between Self-Rated Health and Mortality: Additional Studies, 1995 to 1998

Positive Affect and Function as Influences on Self-Assessments of Health Expanding Our View Beyond Illness and Disability