Happiness Revisited

Psychologists, social-scientists and researchers have been studying how certain aspects of life or individual traits would predict happiness, such as money, genetic programming, friendship, education, marital status, youth or religious faith. We will summarize the main ideas of two articles that explain what is really related with happiness and what is not. The first article was written by David G. Myers, The Funds, Friends and Faith of Happy People, published in American Psychologist Journal (Jan. 2000), and the second article, The New Science of Happiness, was published on Time magazine by Claudia Wallis et alli.

At first view, it is noticed that both authors agree about the relevance of friendship to be happier. People who are attached to friends and partners are able to share intimate thought are happier than others that are not. Myers explains it demonstrating that a person who has five close friends or more can live better. But, if the social ties were broken increasing rates of disease and death would occur.

The result of Dienen and Saligman’s research (Times, 2007) - scientists from University of Illinois - demonstrate students with highest level of happiness and few signs of depression had strong ties to friends and family. That observation confirms that commitment to spend more time with family and friends can effectively improve people’s well-being. Myers adds that another kind of close relationship which might also improve people’s well-being is the marital status, since three in four Americans see their spouse as their best friend.

On the other hand, people still believe that money can buy happiness (Times, 2007), but studies have been shown that it is not as true as we have thought. Meyers (2000) points out that people who go to their work by bus on average have the same level of well-being as rich men that go there driving imported and expensive cars. This fact seems to demonstrate that relationship between wealth and well-being is not so relevant. Equally, according to Time (2007) social-science and psychological research has shown there is no strong relationship between how much money is earned and how good people feel about their lives.

Both authors made studies on lottery winners, and the result of different researches were the same, since it was demonstrated that the emotional impact of the event dissipated as soon as the euphoria was gone and that those people did not feel themselves significantly happier. Time’s article shows an interesting example, describing how happiness is the strongest emotion of paraplegic people eight weeks after the accident, highlighting the incredible human capacity of adaptation. Moreover, Myers affirms that the wealthiest people from the Forbes list are only slightly happier. Similarly, Time’s article demonstrates that rich people usually feel jealousy about others who are wealthier. Probably, this happens in part because a phenomenon is described by psychologists as anxiety, meaning that once the human basics needs are satisfied, for instance, if we have an additional income, it will not raise the sense of satisfaction with life.

Therefore, it is possible to see in both authors their concordance about one important point. They both indicate that happiness depends less on wealth than is most commonly supposed by Americans. However, Myers reminds his readers that in poor countries as India where people have extremely low income money can predict greater well-being, whereas the same event does not happen in countries where better distribution of wealth exists such as Canada, US or European nations.

Lastly, another important aspect of life which contributes to happiness is religious faith. Time’s article just mentions briefly that faith seems to lift the spirit but it does not explain if it is because of faith itself or the influence of living in religious-community. In addition, they usually do not make use of alcohol or cigarettes and tend to be healthier and tend to live longer. Myers concludes that active religious North Americans are less likely to become delinquent, divorce or commit suicide.

In conclusion, it can be said that, even though those studies have been written for different audiences, both authors agree in one essential viewpoint: happiness is more related with close relationships and spiritual development than with personal income.