Topic
Happiness
About: Happiness is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 22093 publications have been published within this topic receiving 728411 citations. The topic is also known as: joy & happy.
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TL;DR: Results challenge the view that psychological resilience reaches a critical limit or that the self-regulatory adaptation system loses its efficiency in very advanced age.
Abstract: When individuals reach very old age, accumulating negative conditions represent a serious challenge to their capacity to adapt and are likely to reduce the quality of life. By examining happiness and its determinants in centenarians, this study investigated the proposal that psychological resilience may come to an end in extremely old age. Data from the population-based Heidelberg Centenarian Study indicated high levels of happiness. Basic resources (i.e., job training, cognition, health, social network, extraversion) explained a substantial proportion of variance in happiness, but some resource effects were mediated through self-referent beliefs (e.g., self-efficacy) and attitudes toward life (e.g., optimistic outlook). Results challenge the view that psychological resilience reaches a critical limit or that the self-regulatory adaptation system loses its efficiency in very advanced age.
233 citations
TL;DR: The findings suggest that empathy has multiple input pathways, produces affect-congruent activations, and results in septally mediated prosocial motivation.
Abstract: Previous neuroimaging studies on empathy have not clearly identified neural systems that support the three components of empathy: affective congruence, perspective-taking, and prosocial motivation. These limitations stem from a focus on a single emotion per study, minimal variation in amount of social context provided, and lack of prosocial motivation assessment. In the current investigation, 32 participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging session assessing empathic responses to individuals experiencing painful, anxious, and happy events that varied in valence and amount of social context provided. They also completed a 14-day experience sampling survey that assessed real-world helping behaviors. The results demonstrate that empathy for positive and negative emotions selectively activates regions associated with positive and negative affect, respectively. In addition, the mirror system was more active during empathy for context-independent events (pain), whereas the mentalizing system was more active during empathy for context-dependent events (anxiety, happiness). Finally, the septal area, previously linked to prosocial motivation, was the only region that was commonly activated across empathy for pain, anxiety, and happiness. Septal activity during each of these empathic experiences was predictive of daily helping. These findings suggest that empathy has multiple input pathways, produces affect-congruent activations, and results in septally mediated prosocial motivation.
233 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the relation of perceived social support and coping to positive adaptation to breast cancer in 56 women between the ages of 38 and 58 who had been diagnosed with Stage I or II breast cancer from 1 to 26 months earlier.
Abstract: This study examined the relation of perceived social support and coping to positive adaptation to breast cancer. Participants were 56 women between the ages of 38 and 58 who had been diagnosed with Stage I or II breast cancer from 1 to 26 months earlier. Social support was measured with the Social Provisions Scale (Cutrona, C. and Russell, D. (1987). The provisions of social relationships and adaptation to stress. In: Jones, W.H. and Perlman, D. (Eds.), Advances in Personal Relationships , Vol. 1, pp. 37-67, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT) and coping was measured with the revised Ways of Coping Scales (Folkman, S., Lazarus, R.S., Dunkel-Schetter, C., DeLongis, A. and Gruen, R. (1986). The dynamics of a stressful encounter: cognitive appraisal, coping, and encounter outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 50 , 992-1003). Adjustment was measured with the Scales of Psychological Well-Being (Ryff, C.D. (1989). Happiness is everything, or is it? explorations on the meaning of psychological well bein...
233 citations
TL;DR: The results of this study suggest that people striving for happiness may be more successful if they opt to treat someone else instead, challenging the popular perception that focusing on oneself is an optimal strategy to boost one's mood.
Abstract: When it comes to the pursuit of happiness, popular culture encourages a focus on oneself. By contrast, substantial evidence suggests that what consistently makes people happy is focusing prosocially on others. In the current study, we contrasted the mood- and well-being-boosting effects of prosocial behavior (i.e., doing acts of kindness for others or for the world) and self-oriented behavior (i.e., doing acts of kindness for oneself) in a 6-week longitudinal experiment. Across a diverse sample of participants (N = 473), we found that the 2 types of prosocial behavior led to greater increases in psychological flourishing than did self-focused and neutral behavior. In addition, we provide evidence for mechanisms explaining the relative improvements in flourishing among those prompted to do acts of kindness-namely, increases in positive emotions and decreases in negative emotions. Those assigned to engage in self-focused behavior did not report improved psychological flourishing, positive emotions, or negative emotions relative to controls. The results of this study contribute to a growing literature supporting the benefits of prosocial behavior and challenge the popular perception that focusing on oneself is an optimal strategy to boost one's mood. People striving for happiness may be tempted to treat themselves. Our results, however, suggest that they may be more successful if they opt to treat someone else instead. (PsycINFO Database Record
232 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the relationship between socio-economic conditions and happiness or satisfaction of individuals in 15 countries and found that age, health and marital status are strongly associated with happiness and satisfaction.
Abstract: This paper examines the relationships between socio-economic conditions and happiness or satisfaction of individuals in 15 countries. In agreement with earlier studies, age, health and marital status are strongly associated with happiness and satisfaction. In seeming contrast with other studies, unemployment does not appear to be associated with happiness, although it is clearly associated with satisfaction. Income is also strongly associated with satisfaction, but its association with happiness is weaker. These results point to happiness and satisfaction as two distinct spheres of well-being. While the first would be relatively independent of economic factors, the second would be strongly dependent.
232 citations