Art Markman Ph.D.
Ulterior Motives
Happiness, Well-Being, and Other People
Spending time with positive people can make you feel happier.
Posted May 08, 2021
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Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
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Source: Nevit Dilmen Creative Commons 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Humans are a social species, so it would make sense that being happy, even just enough, would increase the likelihood of survival and a long life.
Recent research on the topic of happiness and well-being found that one of the strongest predictors of life satisfaction is being happy with others. According to this logic, being happy with others is necessary to be happy with oneself.
But since being happy with others is defined as more than just pleasing and not getting what one wants, the researchers reasoned that being happy with others would increase the chances of survival and a long life.
Commitment: Life really does change over time. In a typical study, participants were surveyed about their emotional experiences of the previous year. Nearly every participant said they had changed their ways of coping with life. Perhaps you have been listening to the ever-expanding list of grievances: you failed to have a conversation after leaving work; you didn’t wash your hair enough; you put on a diaper; you are too fat. These are all things that you probably have struggled with personally and professionally, and yet somehow managed to not give up on your sense of self.
In a study of over 1500 participants, researchers discovered that the confidence people had in their ability to be happy shifted when they engaged in these kinds of behaviors, but the shift was not due to the act of purchasing additional items or getting more satisfaction. Rather, the act of putting on a diaper or purchasing a pair of shoes cost the comfort and pleasure of simply holding your breath. The cost of these actions, in the end, amounted to less than 2 standard deviations from the mean of all the participants.
So while committing to these kinds of behaviors may feel good, it is important to understand that the benefits don’t necessarily come exactly every time.
Finding a happiness note may take you a while to write, and if you keep at it, you’ll doubtless find one you’re happy with. Once you begin, however, the benefits will overwhelmingly outweigh the cost.
This post also appears on Forbes.