Happiness Test 2

1. Affective (Emotional) happiness

-Beyond our conscious control -Comes from emotional system -experiences spontaneously, in a moment of an experience or through a memory -affects us in the same way as negative feelings -fed entirely by our emotions -more weight later in life, earlier in life focus on money

2. Cognitive well-being

-Measuring overall life satisfaction -by example of Cantril's ladder -Measures one's overall perception of how happy they are, takes a bird's eye view -comparing, judging, and finding out how we feel -critical examination of feelings through cognition

3. Eudaimonic Well-Being

-true happiness begins at the moment it comes from the fulfillment of our true needs -living a life of virtue -focus on psychological wellbeing - living consistent with your life values and goals in life (pg 106 has 6 aspects of psychological wellbeing)

What are the three faces of happiness?

1. Affective (Emotional) happiness 2. Cognitive well-being 3. Eudaimonic Well-Being

Ed Diener: What are the four ingredients to a happy life?

1. Psychological wealth which is generated through Eudaimonia - through goals, aspirations and values 2. Happiness effects relationships, work, and health, so it is important to focus on these aspects of life 3. Setting realistic expectations and goals for oneself 4. Thinking effects happiness so it is important to have right thoughts to keep yourself happy.

Ed Diener: Is happiness innate?

Diener believed that genes have substantial say in matters concerning our life satisfaction, making happiness partially innate, but he does not believe this means our happiness is set in concrete. Even though our genes play a strong role, life circumstances also play an important part in the development of happiness levels. Two determinants of happiness that Diener believed in were the personality traits of neuroticism and extroversion, which can be believed to be genetically predetermined since personality is substantially predetermined by genes. People with high neuroticism have lower happiness levels and people with high extroversion levels have high happiness levels, showing that these two traits make happiness partially innate. Overall, Diener thinks there is a strong genetic component to subjective wellbeing, but you can make yourself happier by improving your social wellbeing (since social relationships are highly correlated with happiness).

Ed Diener: Can we measure happiness?

Diener believes that we can measure happiness. He states that self-reports of subjective wellbeing are reliable, but we cannot know the happiness of others. He thinks we assume people to be worse off or better off than they actually are, and can never actually know what their life satisfaction is. Overall considering the innate and genetic components of happiness combined with the ability to ask people how happy they are based off their life circumstances makes it possible to measure happiness.

Ed Diener: Are people generally happy?

Diener studied happiness levels in the United States and found that 30% of people are very happy, 10% are very unhappy, and 60% are happy. He found that income is not a primary determinant of happiness, but that happiness is strongly correlated with social relationships and social contact overall. He also learned that external things that happen to us are not that important. Overall, he found that people are generally happy due to their ability to create social relationships.

How did Easterlin use the following to explain the Easterlin paradox: Interdependent preferences

Formally, this model corresponds to a model of interdependent preferences in which each individual's utility or subjective well-being varies directly with his or her own income and inversely with the average income of others. At any point in time average income is given; and happiness varies directly with individual income. Over time, however, a general increase in individual incomes raises the societal average. The increase in happiness that one might have expected based on the growth in individual incomes is offset by a decrease in happiness due to the rise in the average, yielding, on balance, no net growth in well-being.

According to a study done by Clark and Senik (2011), does money buy happiness and does it apply to all three kinds of happiness? In your answer please include the following please include a few sentences on each of the following: -Correlations between three types of happiness. -Income, wealth, level of education.

In Clark and Senik's study they asked six questions about Eudaimonic well being. With the results, they examined whether it made a difference if life satisfaction or eudaimonic well being was measured. The data showed that there is no difference in these aspects of happiness. It also showed that all three aspects of happiness depend significantly on income. It showed that they are characterized by very similar socio-demographic patterns. An example of this is that richer and higher-educated people are both more happy, more satisfied, and have higher eudaimonia scores.

Please show how Relative Adaptation Theory helps to explain the Easterlin Paradox. Please include in your answers a few sentences on each of the following: -Relative Happiness. -Contrast Effect. -Habituation -Internal reference, Van Praag and Frijters (1999). -Please explain how the results of study by Brickman et al (1978) support the relative adaptation theory.

In a study with Brickman et al results showed that happiness is relative. Relative happiness means that happiness is a measure that is considered in relation to others or in relation to past situations for yourself. Brickman was able to discover this through his study of lottery winners. The contrast effect showed that after winning the lottery things that used to be satisfying, like going to the movies, end up being less satisfying because everything is compared to the joy of winning the lottery, and nothing feels better than that. Habituation is the fact that as your standard of living rises, you get used to the newfound money you have and it makes thing that used to be satisfying less satisfying because you adjust to your new standard of living. Contrast effect and habituation push in opposite directions, keeping your happiness levels the same. In the study of Van Praag and Frijter they found that a person's internal reference changes with changes in income. With an increase in income of one euro there is a 60 euro cent rise in a person's internal reference income. That means that a person needs the first 60 cents to satisfy their higher needs of demand, and shows that the effect of an increase in income is always highest at the beginning. Brickman et al's results when studying lottery winners, people in a bad accident, and a group of control people with 7 general questions about eating, talking with friends, and other activities shows that no matter what someone's situation is the average overall happiness levels are similar. In a scale of 0-5 the average was 2.5, lottery winners average was 3.75, and paralyzed average was 1.28 at the time of getting into the accident or at the time of winning the lottery. It showed that people use internal reference points to compare themselves to how they were doing before, so people are all relatively similar in their happiness because they are comparing to either a really horrible moment in life or a really great point in life. This explains the Easterlin paradox because it shows that people's happiness is measured by comparison and remains constant because of this.

How did the Lykken and Tellegen study of Identical Twins differ?

In contrast, Lykken and Tellegen studied identical twins and found that their happiness levels were almost identical, even though they had different life circumstances. They also looked non-identical twins and found that their life satisfaction levels varied more, showing that people with more similar genes have similar levels of life satisfaction. Considering variables like socioeconomic status, marriage status, religious practice, and others did not show more than a 3% difference in their happiness levels. This study shows that life satisfaction could be innate, predetermined by one's genetics, while the other studies show that it depends on life circumstances.

Researchers have questioned the honesty of subjective measures of wellbeing. Please explain the correlations found between measures of life satisfaction in this study: -(Koivumaa-Honkanen et al. 2001)

In this study, 30,000 people were asked how happy they were. Once these people died, they got their death certificates to check the number of suicides and see how it correlated to their rating of happiness. They found out that unhappy people are 25x more likely to commit suicide. This showed that the unhappiness rating is an honest rating.

What were the happiness levels of lottery winners and paraplegics?

In this study, lottery winners feelings of happiness are short in duration, and after this period life satisfaction declines again back to more normal levels, only slightly higher than they were previously. The paraplegics studies have shown that people who were paralyzed were able to regain life satisfaction when they are given enough time to adapt to their life circumstances. This shows that people use an internal reference point and compare how they were doing when the significant event happens to how they are doing afterword, and this is how lottery winners and paraplegics life satisfaction is not that different, because one group is comparing to a really great moment and the other is comparing to a really horrible moment. Brickman et al's study shows that happiness is relative, and not necessarily innate.

What methods did Kahneman use to measure happiness? Why didn't he use a 0-10 scale?

Kahneman thought happiness was too complex of an idea to measure with just a simple 0-10 scale. He instead thought measuring happiness throughout a period of time made a lot more sense. -He used the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM)

Are students who major in business happier? How does this relate to *Intrinsic values/goals* and *Extrinsic values/goals*

Kasser & Ahuvia surveyed business students in Singapore and found that students with more extrinsic values/goals reported lower happiness, had more anxiety, and overall worse physical health. This shows that materialistic values may be so detrimental to wellbeing that even having a supportive community like a college cannot combat the negative affects it brings. Extrinsic values cause people to depend on others and comparison to others, which overall makes them less happy, as extrinsic goals are negatively correlated to happiness. These students had less intrinsic values/goals, which caused them to have less happiness since intrinsic values are positively correlated with happiness. Intrinsic values focus on yourself, and doing things for yourself because only you can do things for yourself to make yourself happy. Intrinsic values are not concerned with what others think of you, while extrinsic values are.

Please explain why many researchers hold that self-reporting measures of life satisfaction are unreliable. In your answers, please include a few sentences on each of the following: -Short Cuts -Schwarz, Strack et al (1987) -Context Effects (Focusing Illusion) -Transition Statement

Looking at different studies there is reason to believe that self-reporting measures of happiness are not accurate because people may be in a different mood on different days and do not consider their overall lives because of this. People like to take short cuts when making the decision and let their mood take over the decision rather than really sitting and thinking about it. One reason to believe that self-reporting is not accurate is because of the focusing illusion, studied by Schwarz and Strack. They did a test with college students where they left a dime on a photocopying machine and students who found it ranked their happiness higher than those who did not. They only did this because they had a good day. The focusing illusion states that contexts affects evaluation of happiness, but the way to eliminate this is to add in a transition statement. A transition statement is used to distract the mind from anything else and really focus on the question at hand. Adding in a transition statement before the question of happiness, by stating a comment like "putting earlier questions aside," removed any correlation between other question's answers and the answer of happiness.

The Experience Sampling Method (ESM)

One of the techniques was The Experience Sampling Method. In this method, at random times throughout the day you would get a text or notification requiring you to rank your happiness at that time, also asking you what you are doing and other standard questions about how you are feeling. This would happen quite a few times a day, over a period of time like two weeks. The problem with this method is that bias would start to happen because people would be very annoyed by the survey interrupting them at various times throughout the day, and this would cause them to rank their happiness lower making the survey less accurate to how they would actually be feeling if they did not have to do the survey.

Please explain the relationship between permanent income and individual happiness. Please include in your answer a few sentences on each of the following; -(Luhmann et al 2011) -Income and the life cycle. -Stable personality traits.

Permanent income has effects because of the ability it provides to invest in assets. It has a stronger affect than periodic income because it has more control over one's life. Economists say that permanent income is calculated for the whole life cycle, and it includes savings and future earnings. Overall, a person with higher income is happier than people with lower ones, and they have a higher permanent income. Income and happiness both come from stable personality traits. People with more stable personalities and good traits like conscientiousness and neuroticism are always people who tend to have higher life satisfaction and also higher income levels. Goals and reference points change and effect your income and happiness when you have different personalities, so a stable one would contribute to more happiness. Luhmann et al showed that stable personality traits and individual values are extremely important to determining one's life satisfaction, because without good personality traits and values it is a lot harder for a person to be happy or to be able to make higher levels of income.

Please explain how the effect that income has on savoring behavior helps to explain the Easterlin Paradox. Please include in your answers a few sentences on each of the following; -Study by Quoidbach et al. -Hedonic Adaption.

Quoidbach et al. performed a study looking at 350 employees working at a university. Half the people had a picture of a stack of money on the top of their survey and the other half did not. People were asked to remember a great time in their life before taking the survey. People without money on their survey were more happy because of savoring. This is because you are able to savor less when your income goes up. Overall this study showed that people with higher incomes display significantly less savoring than people with lower incomes, because money impairs the ability to savor everyday pleasures. Hedonic adaptation to income can be explained by the two sided nature of money. More money allows you to consume more goods and more expensive goods which should make life more satisfying, but it reduces the ability to enjoy the little things of everyday life. Income's effects on savoring shows how the Easterlin paradox works because just because you get more money you do not get happier, your happiness stays the same because of hedonic adaptation and the loss of satisfaction with the little things in life.

Please explain how Rayo and Becker attribute the comparison of one's "relative position" to self & others to genetic factors. Please include in your answers a few sentences on each of the following; -(Rayo & Becker. 2007) -Natural Selection. -Reference Points. -Internal & External Benchmarks.

Rayo and Becker attribute the comparison of one's relative position to self and other to genetic factors because relative position is required for survival. They saw relative position as the selfish gene, a gene that is passed down from successful people through natural selection. Scientifically "good genes" are pleasurable, the ones that allow us to survive (like eating and procreating) feel good to create an incentive for survival. This causes people who have survival skills to live and be able to pass them down through natural selection. Rayo and Becker found that pleasure accompanies survival skills. They also discovered that traditionally utility was assumed to depend on the level of current consumption, but in reality it depends on reference points. Looking specifically at past and peer levels, studies have shown that personal histories and social environments are key to understanding a person's utility. Happiness directly depends on comparison's to one's reference group. Rayo and Becker also considered the importance of benchmarks. An individual is more concerned with their income and comparing it to the internal benchmark which changes over time, not concerned with their absolute levels of income. They found that happiness is measured by internal and external benchmarks that people are constantly creating for themselves to compare themselves to others. Overall, Rayo and Becker found that happiness is determined by comparison, but an important factor is relative position.

How did Easterlin use the following to explain the Easterlin paradox: International comparisons

Relating international comparisons to this in some countries which are more developed there are a larger range of aspirations because things are more sophisticated, but in less developed areas people have not learned of the social material aspirations because their lives are more modest.

What did the Spinal Cord Injuries in Schulz & Decker study show about happiness?

Similarly, Schulz and Decker found that life satisfaction of middle-aged and elderly people with spinal cord injuries barely differed from those of the same age group without these injuries. Some of the reasons their happiness was still comparable to that of their peers was the high levels of support they received, the number of social contacts they had, and the control they still felt over their life. They also are happy because they believe the accident made them better off, the event made them who they are today, and they became more sensitive to the needs of others, making them more intellectually adept. This study also shows that happiness depends on an internal reference point and the circumstances of one's life. Although these examples show that life satisfaction depends on circumstances, the results cannot fully be agreed with because the endpoints of the scale of satisfaction could change in a person's mind with these life events, and considerations of adaptation are also complicated to fully trust. Because of that, measured adaptations cannot fully prove that a person's life is largely invariable.

How did Easterlin use the following to explain the Easterlin paradox: Social material aspirations

Social material aspirations should also be considered because there is also reason to believe that higher incomes do not create more happiness because you have more material aspirations when you have an increase in societal income.

How is materialism related to subjective wellbeing? In your answer please include a few sentences on how each of the following is related to subjective wellbeing; -Materialism -Intrinsic vs. extrinsic values/goals (Maslow 1954). -Values conflict (Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002). -Power (Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002).

Studies show that people who are very materialistic are less happy, but many studies have been done to show exactly how this relationship plays out. Materialism is one of many personal values, which are developed from ages 17-24, and determine a lot about your life circumstances and how you live your life overall. This specific personal value is understood as the valuation of possession and acquisition of material goods, based on the idea that material goods are important and valuable. Maslow considered materialism by looking at intrinsic and extrinsic goals. Intrinsic goals are goals that you do for yourself, without the worry of what others think, and overall a focus on doing what makes you happy inside. This has a positive correlation with happiness levels. Extrinsic goals are goals relating to relative position, success, obtaining admiration from others, gaining approval from others, and having power over others. People with high extrinsic goals and materialism are extremely unhappy, and extrinsic goals negatively correlate with happiness levels. Burroughs and Rindfleisch introduced values conflict into the study of happiness. In their study they created a survey which looked at all values of a person holds at once, and took into account the interactions between different value systems. The results showed that materialism is not always bad for wellbeing, people only suffer from materialism when they also have strong collective-oriented values (i.e. family, community, or religion). This shows that is it is not materialism that makes you unhappy, but it is the value conflict when you have overall competing values in your value system. In studies looking at power values with college students, it was shown that business students saw that more power equated to more happiness, while psychology students who valued power were less happy overall. This shows that it is not the major that makes you happy or determines your happiness, but it is the personality these students have that relate to whether power makes them happy or not. One thing to consider is that power is an extrinsic goal, so overall for most people it will not make you happier.

Ed Diener: What are the three major components of SWB?

Subjective wellbeing is eudaimonia. Eudaimonia has three major components of living a life consistent with goals, aspirations, and values. Subjective wellbeing is one of the three elements of happiness, the other two being positive affect and negative affect. Positive affect is the emotional, good, and happy feelings. Negative affect includes the painful feelings in life. These three elements come together to determine the happiness of an individual.

The Day Reconstruction Method (DRM): Peak-End-Rule & Net Effects

The Day Reconstruction Method. This was a method where participants would have to summarize their day and rank how they felt during each activity they were doing and how long they were doing it for or for how long they were happy. When taking this survey with a group of women some of the highest rated activities included lunch with friends and sexual intimacy. Some of the lowest rated activities were work and taking care of children. One problem with this is the inaccuracy of memory. Because of the Peak-End-Rule making you have intense moments throughout your day which can be extremely satisfying or extremely dissatisfying, you are going to remember these moments the most and they will take over your answers weighing out other things that happen throughout the day. This causes issues with the data because people only remember the peaks (whether positive or negative) or the final moments of an experience, referred to as the end. The Net Effects are the overall effects from a day that people put together in their recounting of their day. You take the net effects from each event and can combine all of this information together to try to measure the happiness of a person.

Researchers have questioned the honesty of subjective measures of wellbeing. Please explain the correlations found between measures of life satisfaction in this study: -(Duchenne Smile. Harker and Keltner 2001)

The Duchenne smile is the muscle under your eyes that you can't fake a smile from, and it is a way to correlate to people's happiness. A study was done looking at pictures of college students in their senior year. The people with this smile in their picture tended to be more likely to be married by 27 years old, and also are more likely to still be married 30 years later. This shows the attractiveness of a happy person.

The Easterlin Paradox

The Easterlin Paradox shows the relationship between income and happiness. It states that as income goes up, happiness should go up, but it does not. At higher income levels people are happier, but looking at the same group of people growth in income does not lead to an increase in happiness, because as GDP rises everyone is getting more and things are also getting more expensive, so comparatively you are not better off than anyone else.

Why is the Weber-Fechner Law so important in the study of subjective wellbeing? Please include in your answers a include a few sentences explaining each of the following: a.) We feel logarithmically b.) Income & Happiness

The Weber-Fechner Law explains the relationship between intensity of a stimulus and the sensation it creates. It shows that the response to an increase in stimulus is logarithmic, and increases by a constant percentage. This means that in order to produce an increase in sensation, a stimulus has to increase more and more. Relating this to happiness studies, people are often using their gut feeling or heart to decide what number to rate their happiness, not just their reason. This shows that they are focusing on feeling, which is a sensation that can be tracked logarithmically. The relationship between income and happiness is very steep at the beginning and then levels off, which is a perfect expression of the Weber-Fechner Law. Because life satisfaction is measured on a scale, in order to increase the scale as the score approaches the maximum a dramatic change would need to happen to be able to approach the maximum even more closely. This shows that the Weber-Fechner law is a perfect example of how an increase in happiness can happen using the logarithmic scale, and how this relates to income as well.

Please discuss how the natural consequences of "Relative Adaptation" to income can affect the behavior of employers. Please include in your answers a few sentences on each of the following; -Diminishing Job Satisfaction Grund & Sliwka (2007). -Automatic & predictable annual pay increases. -Status Effect.

The natural consequences of relative adaptation to income affects employers by forcing them to find a way to keep their employees happy. There is diminishing job satisfaction as you stay at a company for a longer period of time because pay increases are what keep people satisfied, but employers cannot continue to raise salaries for a long period of time unless they want to run out of money. Automatic and predictable pay increases also do not increase life satisfaction because this can affect a person's internal reference income so the increase in money does not make someone as happier because they already expect it. It also does not increase life satisfaction because everyone is getting the same thing no matter what work they are doing, which takes away the satisfaction of a pay raise as well. One thing that employers can do to keep their employees happy is change their titles. This is because of status effect. An increase in status has a positive long-term effect on life satisfaction. Rather than employers having to try to find the money to give their employees raises, they can just change their title to make an employee feel important and better than their peers, which leads to satisfaction.

Please explain how the relative position of individuals in a society helps to explain the Easterlin Paradox. Please include in your answers a few sentences on each of the following: -Position Competition. -Reference Comparisons, Clark & Oswald (1996). -Internal Reference Income.

The relative position of individuals explains the Easterlin Paradox because it shows that people are only as happy as they compare themselves to be to other people, and as people all become wealthier at the same time no one is better off than anyone else, which makes people stay at the same level of happiness even though they are getting wealthier. Clark and Oswald assumed that people compared themselves against a reference group of people who are similar to them in regard to age, education, location, and other variables. Their studies showed that a person's relative position to their reference group has a strong influence on their life satisfaction. Reference comparisons are these comparisons to your reference group that affect your life satisfaction. Position competition is the internal competition people make for themselves to try to be in a better position compared to others. Considering who people are comparing themselves to is very important. Whether someone is poor and compares themselves to other poor people or if they compare themselves to people who are well off affects their perceptions and affects their life satisfaction levels. Internal Reference Income is the comparison you make to yourself with your current income compared to your past income. A person's own past income also serves as a reference value, as well as expectations of future income. If a person's income increases, this reference value also increases, which leaves the raise in income as only a temporary effect because people's internal benchmark is raised.

According to Sirgy et al 2013, please explain how subjective wellbeing differs according to the type of materialist a person is. How do *Affective-based expectations* versus *Ability-based expectations* affect this.

There are two different types of materialist. The first is affective based expectations, also known as ideal based expectations, which focuses on what your ideals are overall in determining your materialism and expectations. People with these expectations orient themselves to an ideal view of a higher standard of living and what they feel they deserve, even though this is very often not achievable, even though it could be. The second is ability based expectations, which focuses on the abilities you have when choosing your goals and expectations. This is an overall non-materialist hold, focusing expectations on how achievements relate to the past and how well off someone is materially given their circumstances including education and socioeconomic status. Overall, subjective wellbeing is negatively correlated to affective based expectations because living this lifestyle of materialism makes your ideals too unrealistic, and with too high of expectations one will be unhappy. Diener showed that one of the ingredients to happiness is setting realistic expectations, and affective based expectations do not do that. Ability based expectations are a lot more achievable because they are based on the abilities of a person not on their ideals, and because of this non-materialist who live their lives this way see positive correlations between ability based expectations and happiness levels. Overall, these two different sets of expectations make non-materialist happier than materialist.

Researchers have questioned the honesty of subjective measures of wellbeing. Please explain the correlations found between measures of life satisfaction in this study: -(Danner, Snowdon, and Friesen 2001)

This study looked at pictures of nuns when they were 21-25 years old. At 80-90 years old they looked again, and found out the happier ones, the ones with a Duchenne smile, were more likely to be healthy and tended to live 10 years longer than the unhappy ones, the ones without the Duchenne smile. This shows that health is an objective measure of happiness.

Is Happiness Innate? In answering this question please include a few sentences on each of the following significant events:

When considering if happiness is innate, it is important to realize that it is more of a matter of understanding how much our life satisfaction is determined by our genes and how much it depends on your life circumstances. Life satisfaction is very likely to change when significant things happen in one's life, and this is why Brickman et al decided to study life satisfaction of people in very different situations, all drastic in different ways. Studies have shown that people have very strong abilities to adapt to the circumstances in their life, as reflected in Brickman et al's example of lottery winners and paraplegics.

Ed Diener

a psychologist from the University of Illinois who has made significant contributions to the study of happiness or subjective wellbeing (SWB).

Please list and explain in a sentence or two each of the Big Five Personality Traits? Which two are related to SWB?

· *Neuroticism*: someone who is very anxious and sensitive. It considers emotional stability and reactivity. Someone who scores high on the scale of neuroticism is likely to have negative emotions and experience anxiety, insecurity, sorrow, or embarrassment. Neuroticism is one of the two related to SWB, and it is negatively correlated with it. This means if you are more neurotic you are less happy. · *Extraversion*: related to SWB, and it is positively correlated meaning that a more extroverted person is happier. Extroversion is studied as a scale from introverted to extroverted, and you are born with this trait. People who are extroverted and score high on the scale are sociable, cheerful, and optimistic. · *Openness to experience*: This measures a person's willingness to try new things and explains how imaginative a person is. · *Agreeableness*: This looks at how we interact with other people. People who score high on this scale are cooperative rather than competitive, and seemingly are altruist rather than egoist. · *Conscientiousness*: This relates to having a strong sense of locus of control. This explains a person who is neat, deliberate, and organized.