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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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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors found that higher earnings of neighbors are associated with lower levels of self-reported happiness and that this association is not driven by selection or by changes in the way people define happiness.
Abstract: This paper investigates whether individuals feel worse off when others around them earn more. In other words, do people care about relative position, and does “lagging behind the Joneses” diminish well-being? To answer this question, I match individual-level data containing various indicators of well-being to information about local average earnings. I find that, controlling for an individual’s own income, higher earnings of neighbors are associated with lower levels of self-reported happiness. The data’s panel nature and rich set of measures of well-being and behavior indicate that this association is not driven by selection or by changes in the way people define happiness. There is suggestive evidence that the negative effect of increases in neighbors’ earnings on own well-being is most likely caused by interpersonal preferences, that is, people having utility functions that depend on relative consumption in addition to absolute consumption.

1,409 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the story of teaching resilience, positive emotion, engagement and meaning to an entire school in Australia, and they speculate that positive education will form the basis of a new prosperity, a politics that values both wealth and well-being.
Abstract: Positive education is defined as education for both traditional skills and for happiness. The high prevalence worldwide of depression among young people, the small rise in life satisfaction, and the synergy between learning and positive emotion all argue that the skills for happiness should be taught in school. There is substantial evidence from well controlled studies that skills that increase resilience, positive emotion, engagement and meaning can be taught to schoolchildren. We present the story of teaching these skills to an entire school—Geelong Grammar School—in Australia, and we speculate that positive education will form the basis of a ‘new prosperity’, a politics that values both wealth and well‐being.

1,406 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors distinguish between hedonic and eudaimonic approaches to wellness, with the former focusing on the outcome of happiness or pleasure and the latter focusing not so much on outcomes as on the process of living well.
Abstract: This article distinguishes between hedonic and eudaimonic approaches to wellness, with the former focusing on the outcome of happiness or pleasure and the latter focusing not so much on outcomes as on the process of living well. We present a model of eudaimonia that is based in self-determination theory, arguing that eudaimonic living can be characterized in terms of four motivational concepts: (1) pursuing intrinsic goals and values for their own sake, including personal growth, relationships, community, and health, rather than extrinsic goals and values, such as wealth, fame, image, and power; (2) behaving in autonomous, volitional, or consensual ways, rather than heteronomous or controlled ways; (3) being mindful and acting with a sense of awareness; and (4) behaving in ways that satisfy basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy. In fact, we theorize that the first three of these aspects of eudaimonic living have their positive effects of psychological and physical wellness because they facilitate satisfaction of these basic, universal psychological needs. Studies indicate that people high in eudaimonic living tend to behave in more prosocial ways, thus benefiting the collective as well as themselves, and that conditions both within the family and in society more generally contribute toward strengthening versus diminishing the degree to which people live eudaimonic lives.

1,401 citations

Book
Tim Kasser1
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: In The High Price of Materialism as mentioned in this paper, Kasser investigated how people's materialistic desires relate to their well-being and found that people whose values center on the accumulation of wealth or material possessions face a greater risk of depression, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and problems with intimacy.
Abstract: In The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser offers a scientific explanation of how our contemporary culture of consumerism and materialism affects our everyday happiness and psychological health. Other writers have shown that once we have sufficient food, shelter, and clothing, further material gains do little to improve our well-being. Kasser goes beyond these findings to investigate how people's materialistic desires relate to their well-being. He shows that people whose values center on the accumulation of wealth or material possessions face a greater risk of unhappiness, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and problems with intimacy -- regardless of age, income, or culture. Drawing on a decade's worth of empirical data, Kasser examines what happens when we organize our lives around materialistic pursuits. He looks at the effects on our internal experience and interpersonal relationships, as well as on our communities and the world at large. He shows that materialistic values actually undermine our well-being, as they perpetuate feelings of insecurity, weaken the ties that bind us, and make us feel less free. Kasser not only defines the problem but proposes ways we can change ourselves, our families, and society to become less materialistic.

1,346 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: EI--conceptualized as an ability--is an important variable both conceptually and empirically, and it shows incremental validity for predicting socially relevant outcomes.
Abstract: Some individuals have a greater capacity than others to carry out sophisticated information processing about emotions and emotion-relevant stimuli and to use this information as a guide to thinking and behavior. The authors have termed this set of abilities emotional intelligence (EI). Since the introduction of the concept, however, a schism has developed in which some researchers focus on EI as a distinct group of mental abilities, and other researchers instead study an eclectic mix of positive traits such as happiness, self-esteem, and optimism. Clarifying what EI is and is not can help the field by better distinguishing research that is truly pertinent to EI from research that is not. EI--conceptualized as an ability--is an important variable both conceptually and empirically, and it shows incremental validity for predicting socially relevant outcomes.

1,337 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
20245
20231,873
20224,089
20211,232
20201,463
20191,352