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.

Life events and personal causation: some relationships with satisfaction and distress.

Abstract: The factors that generate happiness or distress in people are not well understood, nor are factors that change such states. This study attempted to show that accounting for people's sense of personal causation could provide a clear understanding of the relationship between live events, personal activity, and measures of psychological well-being. After pretesting, three randomly selected groups of college students were given instructions either to (a) engage in 12 activities from a self-selected list of pleasurable activities, (b) engage in 2 activities from that list, or (c) return after 1 month for retesting only. Covariance analyses revealed that subjects instructed to engage in either 2 or 12 pleasurable activities reported greater pleasantness and a higher quality of life than controls; there were no differences between groups on reports of psychiatric distress. Prior negative life change was treated as a factor in the design and was found to interact with the activity instructions: Subjects reporting many prior negative changes exhibited less psychiatric distress along with greater pleasantness when instructed to engage in 12 activities rather than 2 or none. The results suggested that engaging in pleasant activities increases positive aspects of well-being in general, but may reduce distress only for subjects who are experiencing considerable life stress.

Pornography's Impact on Sexual Satisfaction1

Abstract: Male and female students and nonstudents were exposed to videotapes featuring common, nonviolent pornography or innocuous content. Exposure was in hourly sessions in six consecutive weeks. In the seventh week, subjects participated in an ostensibly unrelated study on societal institutions and personal gratifications. On an especially constructed questionnaire, subjects rated their personal happiness regarding various domains of experience; additionally, they indicated the relative importance of gratifying experiences. Exposure to pornography was without influence on the self-assessment of happiness and satisfaction outside the sexual realm (e.g., satisfaction deriving from professional accomplishments). In contrast, it strongly impacted self-assessment of sexual experience. After consumption of pornography, subjects reported less satisfaction with their intimate partners—specifically, with these partners' affection, physical appearance, sexual curiosity, and sexual performance proper. In addition, subjects assigned increased importance to sex without emotional involvement. These effects were uniform across gender and populations.

In defense of a prototype approach to emotion concepts.

Abstract: Emotion, anger, fear, love, and similar concepts have so far defied classical definition This article summarizes one analysis of emotion concepts from a prototype perspective and answers criticisms directed at such an analysis Specifically addressed are 5 claims made by critics: The superordinate concept of emotion is classically defined; basic-level emotion concepts are classically defined; internal structure does not contradict the classical view; evidence of unclear cases, presented here as the cornerstone of the case against the classical view, does not contradict the classical view; and classical definitions for emotion terms, if they do not exist today, will someday be discovered scientifically Both proponents and opponents of the prototype view may agree on a final assertion: Concepts can be created that are classically defined and that will be useful in the psychology of emotion This assertion may be what the critics really care about Emotion, love, anger, happiness, and anxiety express concepts that influence people's life We interpret each other's actions and temporary states by means of these concepts and guide our behavior accordingly An act seen as committed in the heat of emotion has a different legal status than the same act carried out in a calm manner We wonder, "Is this really love?" and "Do I still love him?" According to Schachter and Singer (1962) and Harre (1987), to have an emotion can depend on how we label ourselves in terms of anger, happiness, and so on Psychologists use these same words in communicating with

Implications of Individual Differences in Subjective Happiness for Perceiving, Interpreting, and Thinking About Life Events

Abstract: Both anecdotal and empirical evidence suggest that characteristically happy and unhappy individuals seem to differ in the ways in which they respond to life events and daily situations. This paper reports two questionnaire studies and a laboratory study testing the hypothesis that happy people perceive, interpret, and think about the same events in more positive ways than do unhappy ones. The results of Study 1 showed that students nominated by their peers as “very happy” reported experiencing similar types of both positive and negative life events, as did peer-nominated “unhappy” students. However, self-rated happy students tended to think about both types of events more favorably and adaptively—e.g., by seeing humor in adversity and emphasizing recent improvement in their lives. This pattern of results was conceptually replicated in Study 2 using hypothetical events. In Study 3, self-rated happy students interacted with a female confederate in the laboratory, then watched a series of videotapes depicting a fellow (but unfamiliar) student in three different situations. Happy individuals liked the person they met, and recalled her in more favorable terms, more than did unhappy ones. The same pattern of results, albeit weaker, was found for liking of the videotaped target. Implications of our findings for the question of how happiness (or unhappiness) is maintained are discussed.