Did you know that someone who wins the lottery tends to end up being less happy a year later than someone who loses the use of their legs? Sounds crazy, but it’s just one of the many surprising yet true facts about happiness that'll be unveiled in this article. From the reasons happiness and business success don’t mix well, to the true meaning of a smile, there are some facts about happiness you’ll think are lies until you learn the truth.
Winning The Lottery Doesn't Make You Happy
While many people believe happiness is just a few extra zeroes on their bank balance away, that is far from the truth. In the late 70s, researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Massachusetts collaborated on a project exploring exactly how monetary gains affect happiness. They interviewed two groups for their study.
The first were recent winners of the Illinois State Lottery, whose prizes ranged between $50,000 and $1 million. The second group were recent victims of catastrophic accidents that had left them without the use of their legs or in some cases almost completely paralyzed. When asked to rate their levels of everyday happiness, despite the seemingly-devastating changes the accident victims had undergone, the results showed they were happier than the lottery winners.
You may be wondering how those results were possible, considering the circumstances. The answer, research suggests, comes down humans’ unfortunate tendency to lose appreciation for the things that once brought joy, once those things become easily-available. When our quality of life undergoes a significant positive change, we grow accustomed to the nicer things that come with it.
That makes it harder to attain joy from the smaller pleasures we had before the change. In the context of a lottery win, the newly-acquired wealth might mean eating at gourmet restaurants every day, rather than eating 99 cent ramen-noodles every day. With those new standards, cheap ramen just won’t bring the same joy it once did. As the baseline of quality continually raises, standards get harder and harder to match, and eventually, a person just becomes hard to please.
A newly-paralyzed person, on the other hand, is more likely to find joy in small pleasures like eating breakfast or talking with a friend, as their range of possible experiences are more limited. So, next time you’re cursing the fact that your big lottery win hasn’t come through yet, take a second to think. Your life right now may well be the happier option!
Happy Smells
Did you know happiness has a fragrance? It sounds like total nonsense, but it’s actually true. In 2015, research published in the journal Psychological Science revealed that the chemicals produced in human sweat change slightly when we’re experiencing happiness. Strangely, it seems humans can subconsciously detect that change through our noses, and the scent can actually alter the moods of people nearby.
To reach those conclusions, researchers gathered sweat from participants reacting to pleasant, happiness-inducing videos. They then observed how another set of participants reacted to smelling samples of the sweat, and noted unconscious movements in the facial muscles of the sweat-smellers. Those facial movements were the exact same as those seen when people have genuine, positive emotional reactions naturally.
That seemed to suggest the scent of other people’s happiness could be contagious, triggering an automatic happiness response in those who smelled it! Interestingly enough, there’s a similar mechanism for the smell of fear, which also alters our sweat’s chemical composition!Certain types of steroid molecules in our body, similar to those found in the musk certain animals use to communicate, are thought to be responsible for those changes. While research on how exactly the aroma triggers a response in others is in its infancy, those initial findings are nothing to be sniffed at!
Inherited Happiness
If you ever find yourself struggling to be consistently happy, don’t beat yourself up. It turns out, the largest factor determining your general happiness is outside your control! In the 90s, researchers at the University of Minnesota gathered data on the happiness levels of 1,300 sets of identical and fraternal meaning non-identical twins.
They found that identical twins, regardless of whether they were raised together or apart, tended to have very similar levels of happiness throughout their lives. Fraternal twins, meanwhile, generally exhibited a greater variation in their happiness. Seeing as identical twins have 100% of the same DNA, and their recorded happiness levels were remarkably similar, the conclusion was that people’s general happiness is heavily-influenced by genetics.
Further analysis found that, specifically, genetics account for about 50% of overall happiness. As for the rest, 40% was concluded to be a matter of a person’s outlook, while only 10% is actually caused by their circumstances. So, when Abraham Lincoln said, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be”, he was about 40% correct.
But while you can’t always control how much happiness your brain is capable of feeling by default, trying to change your perspective can still make a difference. Just don’t get too upset when you struggle to win the fight against your genetic wiring! That’s like an iPhone getting annoyed that it isn’t an Android.
Joys Of A Lifetime
Another of the biggest influences on happiness is age; but it’s far from a consistent path from cradle to grave. A 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discovered some fascinating things about how different ages experience emotions. The study found that, generally, happiness levels tend to steadily increase until the age of 18, after which they start decreasing. Peak unhappiness tends to occur in the early 50s, but returns to another peak in a person’s early-70s.
Countless other studies have also found evidence that people in their golden years tend to be happier, and some psychologists suggest the answer may lie in how people manage emotions. Older people tend to focus on positive things and memories more than negative ones, and are more selective in participating in activities that will lift their moods. They also tend to be better at regulating their emotions, especially in dealing with loss and getting over disappointment over unachieved goals.
That may explain why older people are so much happier than people in their early-50s, as those entering their 5th decade are just beginning to realize that some of their life ambitions were never fulfilled. But, after that difficult midpoint passes by, it’s an upward climb back to peak happiness until bodily deterioration in old age takes you down the unhappiness slope one final time. But, generally, if you want advice on how to be happy, it looks like the old folk’s home might be the place to go!
Happiness Hacks
There are millions of people who will tell you their so-called “guaranteed to work” method for attaining happiness. But the truth is, the process is pretty unique to each individual. That said, there are some things that have been scientifically proven to help cultivating happiness, some of which are downright surprising.
For starters, everyone knows how enjoyable a good meal can be. But few people realize that eating certain specific items can make a significant difference to your mood. Foods like nuts, chicken, and milk all contain high levels of an amino acid called tryptophan. That amino acid can trigger the production of serotonin in the body, a hormone that helps to induce feelings of calm, happiness, and wellbeing. So, basically, that KFC makes you feel so good because of science!But you can counteract the calories in your joyful KFC with another rapid-happiness hack: exercise.
In 2001, researchers from the American Psychological Association found that as little as 10 minutes of exercise is enough to significantly elevate your mood, reduce stress, and generally enhance wellbeing. But only up to a point! Researchers found no additional emotional benefit from exercising any longer than 30 minutes. So, if your exercise regime is more for the feels than the gains, don’t waste your time more than you need to!
Another simple way to boost your overall happiness is by keeping a journal of your emotional wins as well as your losses each day, or each week. Keeping a record helps you recall the positive stuff that you’d normally just forget about, allowing you to reflect more positively on the day overall than you otherwise might.While it might seem counter-intuitive, recording the losses and mistakes helps too, as it can help you to analyze them and prevent them happening again. It all contributes toward helping you be grateful for the good stuff, while also having more of a sense of control over the bad stuff!But one of the best emotional medicines of all is laughter. That weird, wonderful reaction does great things for your body. It increases your intake of oxygen, stimulates your lungs, heart, and muscles, and decreases your blood pressure. By stimulating your circulation, it can also relax you, helping alleviate stress, while also releasing endorphins that can serve as a natural pain-killer!
On top of all that, laughter can also trigger the release of the happiness-regulating hormone serotonin when you need it the most. That fact makes comedy movies and funny videos a great way to lift your spirits when you’re feeling a little glum. Because, as the science proves sometimes it really is best just to laugh it off.
International Smiles
Many people assume a smile is a universal sign of friendliness and contentment. But, surprisingly, a smile can have very different meanings and interpretations depending on where in the world you are. In countries often ranked among the most corrupt on global corruption rankings, excessive smiling is far from a good thing. For example, smiling too much in places like Russia or India is considered to be a sign of deception.
That is thought to be because people in those countries associate excessive smiling with dishonest hustlers’ attempts to gain trust in order to scam people. In Russia in particular, unwarranted smiling is also viewed as a sign of stupidity. There’s even an old Russian saying to back that up, which translates to "a smile for no reason is a foolish thing".
In Japan, meanwhile, smiling is reportedly used as a way to show respect, or to politely hide your true feelings. However, according to behavioral scientists at Hokkaido University in Japan, in Japanese culture, people tend to look to the eyes more than the mouth for nonverbal, emotional cues.That means Japanese people tend to be pretty good at telling when a smile is sincere or not. That focus on the eyes more than the mouth has also translated into the usage of text-based emoticons in Japan, which tend to use eyes to express emotion. The types of emoticons that are more popular in America, meanwhile, focus more on expressing emotion through the mouth. It’s no coincidence that, in English-speaking countries where those mouth-focused emoticons see more usage, a real-life smile tends to be most commonly viewed as a positive thing.In English-speaking places ranging from Australia to Canada, a smile tends to show happiness and gratitude, but is also sometimes used when someone’s a little nervous. Of course, there’s the less-positive malicious or evil smile, but assuming you’re around good people, that one shouldn’t appear too often.But of all places, America is arguably the most well-known for its smiley-ness and there’s an intriguing reason as to why. In the early days of the USA, which was constructed and populated by immigrants of various nationalities, speaking a range of languages nonverbal communication cues were essential. After all, with so many different cultural backgrounds and languages, communicating a simple, friendly greeting wasn’t initially possible through words alone.
So, some historians have theorized the common, friendly smile arose to fill that gap, bridging the communication differences between neighbors of varying backgrounds. So, next time you flash someone your pearly whites, remember a smile can hold a lot more meaning than you might think, so smile wisely!
Rules Of Attraction
In 1938, Harvard launched a study that ultimately lasted almost 80 years, investigating what factors most impacted health and happiness in the long term for 268 of its students. The results, when analyzed in 2017, revealed the biggest factor in ensuring a happy and healthy life was maintaining good relationships.
It makes sense. After all, life’s considerably better when you have people who care to listen to your stories and share experiences with. Humans are social animals, and while the odd person here and there can do just fine living a solitary life, for most of us, socialization is almost as important as food!Many people like to make sure they’ll never be too lonely by getting married and having children. But the type of person you choose to marry can have a huge impact on how happy you are in the long-run, and the specifics as may seem somewhat controversial. Research conducted in 2017 at Florida State University investigated 223 newly-married spouses to see how their relationship evolved over time, and how happiness factored in.
They also factored in measures of each individual’s attractiveness, as compared to a set of generalized male and female beauty standards. The results were interesting. According to their findings, the longest, happiest marriages occurred when the women were more attractive than the men. The reason for this was that, in cases where the man was less conventionally-attractive than the woman, he was more likely to compensate with acts of kindness.Those ranged from gifts, to extra housework and other favors, which were thought to be ways to make up for the difference in looks. When the roles were reversed, women who were with men rated as more attractive than them reported feeling more pressure to diet and exercise to make up for the perceived imbalance in attractiveness.
In both variations, it seemed the less-attractive partner was concerned about their other half being poached by other, more attractive people, and would compensate in certain ways to minimize that risk. The results showed the less-attractive women’s most common approach of trying to improve their physical appearance ultimately made them more unhappy.
But the less-attractive men, with their approach of remaining mostly the same physically but going to more effort with gestures, made both spouses happier. That was because their more-attractive partners reported feeling more emotionally fulfilled thanks to that extra effort, which in turn led to a happier, more peaceful marriage for both individuals. So, it seems the conclusion is, average-looking men: assemble!
Happy Negatives
It’s impossible to stay happy all the time, but that’s not such a bad thing. After all, you need a few tough times to better appreciate the good ones. And, as it happens, allowing yourself to experience negative emotions rather than suppressing them can actually make you happier in the long-run. That was one of the conclusions of a 2004 study that explored how people with panic disorders could best deal with their emotions to prevent panic-attacks.
Different groups were tasked with either accepting or attempting to suppress their feelings of anxiety. Those told to accept the feelings were able to move on from them much quicker than the other group. The experiment seemed to suggest that, if a negative feeling’s kicking around in your brain, pretending it’s not there or trying to brute-force it out of sight won’t make it go away.Similarly, various studies have found that talking about your unhappiness can actually boost general happiness. That is because hearing others’ perspectives tends to reduce feelings of loneliness, especially when someone realizes they’re not alone in the way they’re feeling. On top of that, new perspectives also have a positive impact on how people respond to their negative feelings, and can prove instrumental in helping people out of emotional slumps.
But happiness itself can have a few negative impacts, too. One study carried out at the University of North Texas found that being happy might actually make you less creative. The study determined that creative success levels depend on someone’s willingness to experience certain negative emotions and stress.Allowing yourself to experience the ups and downs of the creative process of critique, experimentation, and failure tends to make for a better end-product than when being solely focused on happiness. That said, very intense emotional pressure good or bad can cause dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in creativity. So, it’s all about finding a balance, but not relying solely on happiness to guide you to success.
As a matter of fact, being overly-happy has been found to be a hindrance in other ways too. Research suggests overly-happy people make more mistakes when compared with depressed people, who tend to have a more accurate view of the world around them and their place within it.In one research project, participants were asked to press a button, which either would or wouldn’t turn on a green light, at a rate determined by the researchers. When asked to rate the level of control they felt they had over the light, the nondepressed participants overestimated how much control they had, while the depressed participants were much more accurate.
That over-optimism on the part of the happy people, in business or education contexts or otherwise, could easily lead to more mistakes, unrealistic expectations, and misplaced confidence in someone’s own abilities. Other studies have taken that further, concluding that overly-happy people tend to fail to anticipate risks associated with their actions, as they tend only to anticipate the positive outcomes.Those unforeseen mistakes and unrealistic expectations often result in more profound unhappiness down the line. That is especially true in business negotiations, where being overly-trusting and generous as a result of excessive happiness can leave you with a worse deal.That conclusion came from a University of Amsterdam study, which found that participants who went into negotiations angry were more likely to end up winning concessions from the person they were bartering with. So, while happiness may feel good, if you want to be a real winner, practice a little healthy glumness when it counts!
Money And Happiness
They say money can’t buy you happiness. But just how true is that? It seems that happiness does come with money but only up to a certain figure. According to extensive analysis by researchers from Princeton University, increasing your household income anywhere up to $75,000 tends to elicit a notable increase in people’s general happiness.
But, intriguingly, any increase above $75,000 a year brings no improvement to sadness or stress, and no increase to happiness or enjoyment. While that was calculated on averages, and not 100% reflective of everyone’s experience, the pattern in the data was impossible to ignore. That monetary cap on happiness appears to be due to the fact that any earning beyond $75,000 brings very few further changes to people’s ability to do the things that most affect emotional wellbeing.
Those are things like spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure, most of which can usually be fulfilled to satisfying levels with a $75,000 income. Plus, like we learned with the lottery winners versus paraplegics study as mentioned earlier, large increases in wealth beyond that point contribute to a decline in people’s abilities to appreciate smaller pleasures. Massively-increasing wealth doesn’t always equate to a happier life.And neither does a big house, if it comes with having to take a long commute to work. Behavioral economists have noted that humans quickly get used to a big, new house and it loses some of its joy-bringing effects. But we never lose the frustrations associated with a commute, especially a long one, as things like delays and traffic vary by the day.
The IZA Institute for the Study of Labor drew some shocking conclusions when they investigated just how negatively long commutes affect workers’ sense of wellbeing. They found that the general happiness of someone with a short commute, but a tiny home, actually outweighs the happiness of someone with a much larger house but a longer commute!But even more important than the commute-length is the type of work people do, and who for. For example, people who work for themselves tend to be so much happier in general, they’d have to earn 2.5 times as much money to be equally happy working for someone else!
As for the type of work that lends itself to happiness, the University of Chicago carried out research that determined those in jobs that involve caring for, teaching, and protecting others tended to be the most satisfied. Jobs like clergyman, firefighter, and special-education teacher topped the list of their findings, alongside jobs that heavily involved creativity.
And as for how to get paid to guarantee happiness, one study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggested wage-work was actually better than being paid a salary! Of the people surveyed, those found to be paid by the hour reported feeling generally happier. The researchers suggested that may be because hourly-rate employees tend to be more aware of just how long it takes to earn their money, allowing them a better sense of the value of their time than their salaried peers.But overall, it seems doing a job you feel well-compensated for, and that feels important or helpful is the key to a happy career. But if those things aren’t available, you can always boost your serotonin levels with some fried chicken. Whatever makes you happy!
