New Scientist Breaking News - Happiness helps people stay healthy

New Scientist Breaking News - Happiness helps people stay healthy

People who are happier in their daily lives have healthier levels of key body chemicals than those who muster few positive feelings, a new study suggests. This means happier people may have healthier hearts and cardiovascular systems, possibly cutting their risk of diseases like diabetes.

Previous studies have shown that depression is associated with health problems compared to average emotional states. But few studies have looked at the effects of positive moods on health. Now, researchers at University College London, UK, have linked everyday happiness with healthier levels of important body chemicals, such as the stress hormone cortisol.

“This study showed that whether people are happy or less happy in their everyday lives appears to have important effects on the markers of biological function known to be associated with disease,” says clinical psychologist Jane Wardle, one of the research team. “Perhaps laughter is the best medicine,” she adds.

“This is the best data to date that associates positive emotional feelings with good effects on your health,” says Carol Shively, at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US. “We usually concentrate on things that are either bad or wrong, rather than good or right.” . . .

coping - Martin Seligman

coping - Martin Seligman: "coping - Martin Seligman
'How you handle adversity in the workplace tends to have much more impact on your career than how you handle the good stuff.' "

from FastCopmpany, December, 1998

. . . While studying the performance of players and managers in Major League Baseball, and of players and coaches in the National Basketball Association, Seligman found a remarkable correlation: Optimistic teams -- as measured by how they talk about their performance in the sports press -- play better under pressure than do pessimistic teams. For Seligman, the finding marked a new way to think about competition, work, and life. "For my whole life, the field of psychology has concentrated on correcting what's wrong," says Seligman. "But rather than trying to minimize what's worst in life, we should maximize what's best."

Seligman developed the concept of "learned optimism" -- and applied it directly to workplace productivity. "When pessimistic people run into obstacles in the workplace, in relationships, or in sports, they give up," he says. "When optimistic people encounter obstacles, they try harder. They go the extra mile."

What is Seligman's advice on learning to be optimistic? . . .

National Post

National Post

Surprised by happiness
Why are the middle-aged happier than the young?

Robert Fulford
National Post

Saturday, April 23, 2005

. . . Myers and Diener left the impression that everyone cares about this subject except psychologists. "Books, books and more books have analyzed human misery," they wrote. "During its first century, psychology focused far more on negative emotions, such as depression and anxiety, than on positive emotions, such as happiness and satisfaction." Couldn't psychology discover something about happiness?

Since then, researchers have been trying to explain the state of happiness in various countries and age groups. Why are the Dutch quantifiably much happier than the Portuguese? Why are the middle-aged happier than the young? Something called "positive psychology" has produced several popular books aimed at increasing human happiness.

But who in the world would have expected to come upon a serious and widely praised novel focused on this subject and linked to contemporary geopolitics? Not me. Novelists normally write as if happiness were immoral, as well as unlikely. Still, this season's most discussed novel, Saturday (Knopf), by Ian McEwan, concerns happiness --where it's found, who has it, what it feels like.

There's much else in Saturday, but no one will miss that theme. McEwan even has his main character's thoughts echo the Myers-Diener essay:

"For the professors in the academy, for the humanities generally, misery is more amenable to analysis: happiness is a harder nut to crack." . . .

FT October 2002: The Public Square

FT October 2002: The Public Square

The Public Square

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Richard John Neuhaus

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Copyright (c) 2002 First Things 126 (October 2002): 83-108.

Seeking a Better Way
Political Blasphemy
A History of Their Own
Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.
Meat-and-Potato Catholics
*While We’re At It


*. . . As you might imagine, thousands of books come through this shop, and relatively few can be considered for serious treatment, or any treatment at all. Birdwatching in Vermont, for example, didn’t stand a chance, and when the postman spotted Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Shamanism and wanted to borrow it, nobody objected. We come up with little games in making necessarily quick judgments about books. There is, for instance, the best “focus-group title.” That’s when in every part, and taken as a whole, the title reflects keen market testing. The winner this season is Martin E. P. Seligman’s Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Bingo. “Happiness” is, of course, the original happy word. The qualifying “authentic” signifies that the author is aware of phony happinesses on offer. “Using” appeals to the pragmatic assumption of what ideas are for. “New” resonates with a neophiliac culture. “Positive,” of course. Who wants anything negative? “Psychology” may have only a niche appeal, but accompanied by such an armory of qualifiers, it is hoped that any skepticism will be overwhelmed. “Realize” and “Potential” may seem redundant, except that the latter is needed for the inclusion of the crucial “Your,” assuring the reader that Seligman is not going to impose anything. He only wants to help you be the wonderful person you are. “Lasting” is an implied guarantee that you will never have to buy another book like this again. As for “Fulfillment,” see above on “happiness.” Seligman and Free Press have come up with the generic title for the entire genre of self-help books, meaning books that pander to the delusion that the simply marvelous “real me” is just waiting to be released from the me of life so far. And now I expect I will hear from a reader or two who will say their lives were turned around by the book. To which I can only say, Congratulations. But you might want to give the “Lasting” a bit more time. . . .

Hapiness Gym "Postcard" (front) 

Stanford Marshmallow Study

Stanford Marshmallow Study

Stanford University psychology researcher Michael Mischel demonstrated how important self-discipline (the ability to delay immediate gratifiction in exchange for long term goal achievement) is to lifelong success. In a longitudinal study which began in the 1960s, he offered hungry 4-year-olds a marshmallow, but told them that if they could wait for the experimenter to return after running an errand, they could have two marshmallows.

Those who could wait the fifteen or twenty minutes for the experimenter to return would be demonstrating the ability to delay gratification and control impulse.
About one-third of of the children grabbed the single marshmallow right away while some waited a little longer, and about one-third were able to wait 15 or 20 minutes for the researcher to return.

Years later when the children graduated from high school, the differences between the two groups were dramatic: . . .

Happy People Make for Healthy People

Happy People Make for Healthy People

A happy camper is a healthy camper, say British researchers who have unearthed evidence of a biological connection between a positive sense of well-being and reduced risk for disease among middle-aged men and women.

In this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors report that simply being happy -- at work and at play -- is directly related with specific bodily functions that protect against cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune deficiencies and stress-related illnesses. . . .

When Money Does Buy Happiness

When Money Does Buy Happiness



. . . Invoke the old cliché as you wish, but for disabled people, money seems to buy a measure of happiness. For others, well, the price hasn't changed.

A survey of 478 Americans over nine years, before and after they became disabled, found that wealth generally allowed "substantially better well-being, and less sadness and loneliness," researchers reported Wednesday.

The advantage eased after a few years of disability.

"Happiness and well-being may not depend on a person's financial state in times of health, but when that health fails, as it will eventually for most of us, money matters," said lead researcher Peter Ubel, a professor of internal medicine and psychology at the University of Michigan.

The results will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. . . .

FT March 2005: Articles

FT March 2005: Articles: "Psychology in Recovery

Psychology in Recovery
Paul C. Vitz
Copyright (c) 2005 First Things 151 (March 2005): 17-22.

. . . In order to understand positive psychology, we must first provide a short description of its opposite—negative psychology. For Seligman, and now many others, negative psychology refers to the psychology of the last hundred years, begun by Freud. Such psychology focused on traumas and pathologies. It is natural enough, according to Seligman, that psychology would first focus on illness. Seligman himself, in his early career, made a contribution to this negative psychology: he is famous for identifying learned helplessness in animals and in humans as an important source of depression. But it has become clear to him and others that after a hundred years of trying to understand human problems it is time to study human strengths or positive characteristics. In addition, for many psychologists it is clear that in the relatively standard therapeutic session there is not much more to learn. . . .

The New York Times > Fashion & Style > Thursday Styles > Who Pays $600 for Jeans?

The New York Times > Fashion & Style > Thursday Styles > Who Pays $600 for Jeans?

. . . Both the surfeit and the numbing sameness of goods on the market have conspired to produce a nascent cult of connoisseurship, experts like Mr. Brown say. In this new marketing sphere, even ordinary objects can be told apart by consumers whose extreme discernment becomes a subtle way of signaling status. Like Luis Buñuel's Tristana, Mr. Brown's new niche consumer can see three peas on a plate and know instantly which is the best.

"Every consumer decision now carries with it class and status implications in a way it didn't used to," said Barry Schwartz, the author of "The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less" (Ecco Books, 2005). "As you add dimensions to goods, you add ways in which people can distinguish themselves." Thus is created a perpetual chase after status and cool.

"You can never relax," Mr. Schwartz said.

So it makes a perverse sense that a no-nonsense form of cotton work trousers should unexpectedly be transformed into an insider emblem of high style. Designed in 1873 by the Levi Strauss company as "hard-wearing work wear" for California miners, and available universally and cheaply for the next century, jeans in their latest "premium" incarnation are like the punch line to some elaborate Veblenesque joke. . . .

Researchers said to find out how happiness relates to health

Researchers said to find out how happiness relates to health

Happiness may be related to the functioning of the body in key processes, such as those of the cardiovascular system and those controlling hormone levels, researchers have found.

Previous studies have shown that depressed people often have more health problems, while happier people tend to live longer. Yet the mechanism of these effects has been unclear.

To look more closely at this psychobiological connection, Andrew Steptoe of University College London, U.K., and colleagues studied emotions and health of more than 200 middle-aged Londoners in their daily lives.

The researchers found that those who reported more everyday happiness had healthier biological functions in a few key systems. For one, the happier subjects had lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone related to conditions such as type II diabetes and hypertension.

Happier individuals also showed lower responses to stress in plasma fibrinogen levels, a protein that in high concentrations often signals future problems with coronary heart disease.

Finally, happy men had lower heart rates over the day and evening, which suggests good cardiovascular health. These results were independent of psychological distress, the authors say, which implies that positive well-being is directly related to the biological processes relevant to health.

The finding is to be published in an upcoming issue of the research journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion: Flowers by Jeannette Haviland-Jones, Holly Hale Rosario, Patricia Wilson and Terry R. McGuire

An Environmental Approach to Positive Emotion: Flowers by Jeannette Haviland-Jones, Holly Hale Rosario, Patricia Wilson and Terry R. McGuire

Abstract: For more than 5000 years, people have cultivated flowers although there is no known reward for this costly behavior. In three different studies we show that flowers are a powerful positive emotion "inducer". In Study 1, flowers, upon presentation to women, always elicited the Duchenne or true smile. Women who received flowers reported more positive moods 3 days later. In Study 2, a flower given to men or women in an elevator elicited more positive social behavior than other stimuli. In Study 3, flowers presented to elderly participants (55+ age) elicited positive mood reports and improved episodic memory. Flowers have immediate and long-term effects on emotional reactions, mood, social behaviors and even memory for both males and females. There is little existing theory in any discipline that explains these findings. We suggest that cultivated flowers are rewarding because they have evolved to rapidly induce positive emotion in humans, just as other plants have evolved to induce varying behavioral responses in a wide variety of species leading to the dispersal or propagation of the plants.

Telegraph | News | Smiles that destroy the myth of female intuition

Telegraph | News | Smiles that destroy the myth of female intuition

. . . Psychologists who tested the abilities of more than 15,000 people to identify the sincerity or otherwise of different smiles have concluded that female intuition is a myth. . . .

North Jersey Media Group providing local news, sports & classifieds for Northern New Jersey!

North Jersey Media Group providing local news, sports & classifieds for Northern New Jersey!

. . . Rosalind Thompson, executive vice president of human resources for Jo-Ann Stores, made the book required reading for the company's regional vice presidents.

"We're definitely attuned to the notion that focusing on someone's strengths and giving recognition for performance is critical to our success," Thompson said.

Underlying the full-bucket philosophy is the principle of encouraging and developing employees' strengths, where they have the most potential for greatness, rather than pushing for improvement in areas of weakness. . . .

Kane County Chronicle - Online

Kane County Chronicle - Online

Psychologist Pete Cohen developed a formula that he says can estimate how happy you are on a scale of 1 to 100.

Without going into details of the formula, the questions he asks are interesting: 1. Are you outgoing, energetic, flexible and open to change? 2. Do you have a positive outlook, bounce back quickly from setbacks and feel that you are in control of your life? 3. Are your basic life needs met, in relation to personal health, finance, safety, freedom of choice and sense of community? 4. Can you call on the support of people close to you, immerse yourself in what you are doing, meet your expectations and engage in activities that give you a sense of purpose? . . .

When Money Does Buy Happiness

When Money Does Buy Happiness

. . . A survey of 478 Americans over nine years, before and after they became disabled, found that wealth generally allowed "substantially better well-being, and less sadness and loneliness," researchers reported Wednesday.

The advantage eased after a few years of disability.

"Happiness and well-being may not depend on a person's financial state in times of health, but when that health fails, as it will eventually for most of us, money matters," said lead researcher Peter Ubel, a professor of internal medicine and psychology at the University of Michigan. . .

Recipe for Happiness in Marriage

Recipe for Happiness in Marriage

. . . When a husband or wife notches up their own happiness level, the positive impact on their spouse is big, says Powdthavee. How big? Here's how he puts it:

"It is significantly greater than the effect of owning a house outright; it can completely offset the non-[financial] cost of unemployment; it is equal to not having to spend around two months in the hospital last year," says Powdthavee.

That's based on a 30% increase in happiness in the spouse not facing those problems. In other words, happiness can be contagious -- in a good way -- in marriage, even for a partner facing burdens.

"This paper has shown that married people have become more satisfied with their life over the years merely because their spouses have become happier with theirs," says Powdthavee. . .

BBC - h2g2 - Spells and Customs for Achieving Happiness

BBC - h2g2 - Spells and Customs for Achieving Happiness

Over the years, people have explored many different ways of making themselves happy. At least, they've tried to make themselves happy. For some, it's money and status. For others, it's the pursuit of enjoyable pastimes - like Dwarf Throwing. However, one of the more peculiar ways of attempting to achieve happiness is by using spells and charms, or by the practise of long-forgotten folk customs. This kind of thing was common in the Middle Ages when people would pop down to the local priest's for blessings. Some of the more interesting spells and customs are as follows: