Just like Santa Clause, happiness brings gifts with it too – and you don’t have to be good all year to get them! In the last three articles, I’ve discussed a paper arguing that happiness leads to success, through a better career, better relationships and better health. This works in part through behaviour – positive moods promote positive behaviours – ones that are friendly to success. The evidence suggests six broad categories of behaviour that result from happiness. Here they are:
1) Positive Perceptions of Self and Others
Happy people are optimists, who tend to have higher self-esteem. They think well of themselves and the different areas of their life; family life, romantic life, education, leisure, and so on. This positive attitude spills over onto other people too – happy people tend to like other people more.
So what comes first, happiness or high self-esteem? You’d think it was self-esteem, but in fact it’s a little of both. Self-esteem does bring happiness, but being satisfied with your life also brings self-esteem and confidence.
2) Sociability and Activity
Happy people tend to be more extraverted – more outgoing, active and energetic. Positive emotion is described my some researchers as the ‘glue’ that holds the different aspects of extraversion together. Happiness is associated with more formal and informal social activity, including voluntary activities, time with friends, learning new skills and taking classes, and even being more informed about politics. Happier people seem to be more informed and interested in learning new things.
If people are induced into a positive mood (they usually do this with uplifting videos), they are more likely to start conversations with a ’stranger’ (who was actually a confederate, working undercover for the researchers). So there you go, if you want to be more social, cheer up. It works.
All those new skills and contacts would certainly be useful in trying to become successful, plus people with a larger social network tend to be luckier, too.
3) Likability and Cooperation
Are cheerful, upbeat people fun to be around, or just plain annoying for being so cheerful? The former is actually true – happy people are liked more than unhappy people. They are also perceived more favourable by people – they are seen as more intelligent, competent, friendly, assertive, less selfish and more moral. People in happy moods are also more approachable and inviting to others.
My favourite variation on a classic saying goes like this: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know – and how much they like you.” Success involves other people, being likeable and well thought of can only be beneficial.
4) Prosocial Behaviour
A great deal of research now supports the idea that happy people are more generous and charitable. They just have a greater interest in helping other people. This goes hand-in-hand with the authors’ original idea that happiness indicates conditions of abundance, so to speak (see the first post in this serious, second paragraph down).
Why is prosocial behaviour helpful to success? It makes people more likeable, strengthens social bonds and networks, and brings future profits through the principle of reciprocity (you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours!).
5) Physical Well-Being and Coping
Positive moods are associated with healthy behaviour both long and short-term – happy individuals are less likely to take drugs and eat unhealthy food in the future, and recent positive moods are associated with less cigarette and alcohol use, as well as better quality sleep and more exercise. One study exposed participants to the cold virus, and people who generally have a more positive emotional style were less likely to develop a cold from it.
Another interesting finding, is that happy moods help you resist temptation when you’re trying to quit something (eg, smoking, junk food). If you’ve ‘given in’, then before you continue your indulgence, do something to bring your mood up. Watch an uplifting film, a sitcom you like, count your blessings or do some other self-help technique.
According to researchers, this replenishes the deflated ego, giving you more will power. Just don’t use a pick-me-up that reminds you of the thing you’re trying to abstain from! (eg if you’re quitting junk food and you normally eat in front of the TV, don’t watch TV to boost your mood).
Happiness also seems to have a direct effect on health. Although there is little evidence at present, concepts related to happiness like humour and optimism have been shown to increase immune system efficiency. One study found higher antibody activity on days with more positive moods than negative moods.
A happy disposition also leads to better coping during life’s difficult times, probably through the increased optimism and hope that tends to come with happiness.
6) Creativity and Problem Solving
The studies that exist on happiness and creativity suggest that the two tend to come together in people. There is a need for more research in this area, but is seems that it is moment-to-moment happiness that is beneficial to creativity, rather than happiness as a trait. In other words, if you take a person who is usually in a bad mood and cheer him up, he should be more creative while his mood is good – even though his disposition might be as grumpy as the dwarf of the same name.
Of course, you can always bring up the ‘troubled artist’ stereotype to challenge these findings – and in some studies, people in sad moods are more creative than people in a neutral mood – but it’s the cheerful ones that usually show the most creativity. But it’s a valid challenge to the idea, and the apparent conflict might just be due to different definitions of creativity.
The reason that happiness is good for creativity may be that it broadens your perception and thinking somewhat. This is in opposition to ‘negative’ emotions, which narrow your potential thoughts and actions down as a survival instinct, eg. fear makes you escape or hide, anger makes you retaliate against a transgressor, and so on.
When it comes to complex problem solving, however, the findings are quite mixed. In some mental tasks, negative moods are more effective, in others, positive ones are. The difference seems to be because good moods increase a person’s reliance on heuristics (heuristics = rules of thumb, stereotypes, or mental shortcuts) – rather than slowing down and thinking the task through carefully and analytically. So positive emotions are perhaps better when there is existing knowledge and heuristics that can be applied to a task.
Why would good moods increase your use of heuristics? Perhaps because if things are going well for you, it makes sense to use heuristics you’ve already used, because these are probably what got you the success in the first place.
But don’t start listening to your Radiohead albums before you do your evening Sudoku puzzle, thinking that the intense depression will help you out. If you’re in a positive mood you can still access your analytical side; you just have to do it deliberately.
Conclusion
The point of these four posts was to hopefully give you perspective on happiness that you might not have taken before. In summary:
- It’s an action signal just like other emotions
- The actions it signals are ones that help you move towards goals
- Therefore, good moods are not solely a result of a consequence of success (although they certainly are that), they are part of the cause of success.
Remember – ‘happiness’, in the paper I got this information from, is defined by frequent positive emotions and infrequent (but not absent) negative emotions – a slightly different definition than I’ve used previously.
Even though ‘negative’ emotions are not that pleasant to experience, it’s easy to imagine that they serve a useful purpose, that when you’re scared it’s to keep you safe, to keep you from doing things that your mind associates with danger. If you didn’t have fear, you’d get into a lot of trouble.
Likewise, happiness has a purpose too. It’s not just there so that you can feel good! It’s a signal, information about your circumstances. You’re progressing well towards your goals, you have resources, allies and security. Because of this, happiness nudges your behaviour in a certain direction. Unlike fear, though, the direction is towards goals, not away from them.
Your mind then opens up a few mental resources for you; makes you more interested in goals, more creative, and gives you a positive outlook on any negative things that might be going on, so that they don’t interfere with your advancement.
Happiness is not a guarantee to success, of course, but the point is that it plays a measurable role. It’s one piece of the puzzle. If you’re suitably convinced of this, you’ll probably want to read How to be Happier, to find tested ways of increasing your happiness.
This series was based on the below paper published in Psychological Bulletin by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King and Ed Deiner – three big names in positive psychology. It was a huge effort, they analysed 225 studies with over 275,000 participants in total! All three researchers have books out so if you like the stuff in these articles, stick their names into Amazon and see if there’s something you like!
Apart from the side-splitting humour, all the points in this article came from this reference. If you’re looking for the original studies, get the pdf of the above reference and do a Ctrl+F (or Apple+F) to search for the finding you’re looking for. Then find the study in their reference list.
Recommended Reading:
References:
(1) Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Deiner, E. (2005). The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success? Psychological Bulletin, 131/6, 803–855
Good points. The only thing I’d want to add is that introversion isn’t a negative per se. I like the Myers-Briggs definitions of introversion vs. extroversion: “energized from within” vs. “energized from without.”
Of course some balance is needed. Also, there’s certainly a kind of introversion that isn’t healthy – i.e., high levels of social anxiety or shyness where people become isolated due to fear of interactions with others.
Paul,
Good point; Reading back, I do seem to imply that introversion is undesirable, which wasn’t my intention. It’s interesting that if introverted people suddenly become happier for whatever reason, they’ll tend to become more social – but as you say, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing within the right balance.
Thanks for the comment!
Warren
Interesting read Warren.
Whats your take on the relationship between happiness,self-worth and common negative emotions anxiety-depression & anxiety?
Opps, Being a FFFHB, I meant to type ‘anxiety-depression & anger?’.
Cheers Mohinder!
Yeah that’s a good question. As I recall, positive and negative affectivity is unrelated on a trait level (or at least not very strongly), and ‘in the moment’ you can only be one or the other, they are on a scale.
So at any given time you can be on the positive or negative side of the scale. I remember some counter examples, things like tears of joy, which complicate matters. I suppose that technically the experience of tears of joy would be negative, but the more cognitive/judgement side would be positive (as in, in your experience you feel sad, but on judgement you’re quite happy to feel sad).
Then there’s ‘activation/arousal’ too, which is independent of positive/negative. So imagine a horizontal scale with positive on the right and negative on the left. You’ve also got a vertical one with high arousal/stimulation at the top and low arousal/passivity on the bottom. Angry would be high arousal and negative, somewhere on the top left of the axis. Anxiety would be nearby, depression would be low arousal/negative, somewhere in the bottom left of the axis. Likewise, in the top right you’d have things like excitement, and in the bottom right you’d have things like contentedness or serenity.
Let me see if I can find a pic…Here we go: diagram.
So basically you can have a tendency to be angry and a tendency to be happy, for instance, but at any particular time it’s one or the other, at least experientially. There are probably other models, but this is the one that first came to me.
Self-worth is something I’m not familiar with (studies on it, I mean!). I also don’t know how these negative emotions relate to success. Hope this answers your question though; I must admit I’m not massively up to speed on this.
BTW What’s FFFHB? I tried Googling, but all I came up with was “Funds For Historic Buildings.” I’m pretty sure you’re not an historic building!
Positive perception (for me) has always been the biggest ally when feeling good about yourself. When I’m confident in my actions, then it seems like I naturally seek out other similar minded people. I wouldn’t say it’s a “law of attraction” deal, but rather I don’t want to be bothered with anyone bringing me down. I’m happy, and so naturally that’s the company I want to surround myself with.
I agree with these behaviors. Speaking from experience i had these come into my life and become more present.
great post
[...] presents Six Success-Enhancing Behaviours that Good Moods Bring You posted at GenerallyThinking.com, saying, “You might have thought of happiness as being a [...]
Travis,
Yeah, and meanwhile people in bad moods are avoiding you too, and looking for other people in bad moods.
Josten,
Good to hear the theories match up with your personal experience!
Thanks for the comments,
Warren
[...] about emotion, let’s silly walk on over to Generally Thinking where we find a post entitled Six Success-Enhancing Behaviours that Good Moods Bring You, which discusses research that teases out six quite pragmatic results of maintaining a sunny [...]
‘FFFHB’ : My mentor at Uni use to say to students who would give themselves too much of a hard time, whenever they screwed up, “We are all Forever Fallible Fricking Human Beings.. don’t beat yourself up over it!’ He said he never did.. he wasnt “THAT stupid!” When the person was having a real whinge he would replace Fricking with the F-word, just to drive the point home.
Anyway, this brings up a interesting point about self-worth.Isn’t the flip side of ‘positive-psychology’ all related to how people feel about themselves? Take away depression, anxiety and anger, which are all an expression of so-called low self-worth, then most people would be happy?
Perhaps your thinking those are all quite extreme examples of negative emotions. People interested in the subject of happiness arn’t that neurotic? Perhaps not, but I’m sure you have asked why are so many people interested in mostly materialistic pursuits such as success to make them happy? Do they perhaps think if they don’t live up to some so called standard they are less worthwhile? I would argue most people on the planet do!
So the subject of so-called self-worth is VERY relevant to alot of what you write about and I think, if your serious about helping people be happy, its a subject I would highly recommend you investigate! (Particularly the link between self-worth/self-esteem and happiness)
(btw.. I say ’so-called’ because I believe everyone has the same intinsic value as a person regardless of what they achieve. So they don’t need to get into a rage or a panic or feel suicidal when things don’t go the way they thought and give themselves a good mental kicking. As many people do everyday!)
[...] be a cause of things too. Here’s a quick review of how it works. Warren Davies presents Six Success-Enhancing Behaviours that Good Moods Bring You posted at [...]
Mohinder,
I like that: FFFHB. I’ll remember that one. Maybe it’s comparing ourselves to other people that makes us look for happiness in success and material things – so your self-worth is tied up in your external circumstances, compared to the next person. I’ve often wondered why it’s hard to ignore all that and believe everyone has the same intrinsic value. I guess we just naturally compare ourselves to other people.
Thanks, I will investigate this further!
Warren wrote : “Maybe it’s comparing ourselves to other people that makes us look for happiness in success and material things – so your self-worth is tied up in your external circumstances”
I would agree with what you describe but perhaps it more accurate to say its because, conscioulsy and subconsciously, it boils down to the fact that we seek other peoples approval. The extent to which we do this is probably inversely proportinal to our own feeling of ’self-worth.’ If we genuinely didn’t give a damn what people thought of us we would just be more concerned about keeping our selfs relatively comfortable and working towards that goal.
Consequently ,and perhaps paradoxically to some of the points you have described in this article, I would hazard a guess and say so people who don’t worry about measuring up are actually much happier than those who do (though these later people probably don’t realise thats usually at the root of trying to be ’succesfull’ hence back to ’self-worth’. )I think theres therfore a circular connection with all this.
OK that’s an interesting thought. So there you have two predictions – first, people who don’t worry about “measuring up” are happier, and second, that they have a higher feeling of self-worth. But if you go to the extreme of not caring what people think, you might end up with people that can’t fit into society properly, or that piss a lot of people off, so it might not be such a straightforward relationship if there is one.
We’re just speculating, if I get chance this weekend I’ll see if there is any research in this area. I should get chance.
I could not find many studies linking the need for approval with happiness, but from what I found it seems like people who have a higher need for approval are less happy on average, but only when they’re being disapproved of. I’m still looking for more.
I found some other interesting findings, like:
People with higher need for approval are more likely to show prosocial behaviours when there’s CCTV around
Male school bullies have a higher need from approval from the other boys
Schoolgirls who don’t behave also have a higher need for approval from boys.
Schoolgirls with a higher need for approval are more likely to ascribe to the ‘thin ideal’ and are more dissatisfied with their body image
One study also said need for approval generally lacks an association with positive interpersonal traits
So it’s just a bad thing all around, really. But, I can’t seem to find any studies where they’ve figured out how to reduce the need for approval, or measured what happens when you do.