happiness
grrlscientist | March 3, 2010tags: neuroscience, happiness, experience, memory, colonoscopy, vacation, well-being, income, Daniel Kahneman, TEDTalks, streaming video
Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give…
razib | December 20, 2009Objective Confirmation of Subjective Measures of Human Well-Being: Evidence from the U.S.A.:
A huge research literature, across the behavioral and social sciences, uses information on individuals' subjective well-being. These are responses to questions--asked by survey interviewers or medical personnel--such as "how happy do you feel on a scale from 1 to 4?" Yet there is little scientific evidence that such data are meaningful. This study examines a 2005-2008 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System random sample of 1.3 million United States citizens. Life-satisfaction in each U.S. state is…
edyong | November 12, 2009How would you fancy a holiday to Greece or Thailand? Would you like to buy an iPhone or a new pair of shoes? Would you be keen to accept that enticing job offer? Our lives are riddled with choices that force us to imagine our future state of mind. The decisions we make hinge upon this act of time travel and a new study suggests that our mental simulations of our future happiness are strongly affected by the chemical dopamine.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that carries signals within the brain. Among its many duties is a crucial role in signalling the feelings of enjoyment we…
grrlscientist | November 3, 2009tags: Glenn Beck, comedy, humor, satire, funny, ONN, Onion News Network, streaming video
As the grieving mother says, it's a tragedy to watch Glenn Beck outlive your child.
Victim In Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck
grrlscientist | October 9, 2009tags: Obama family, miserable Americans, comedy, humor, satire, funny, ONN, Onion News Network, streaming video
This daring news interview with the nations' top thinkers comes right out and says what we've all mumbled under our breath to ourselves in the privacy of the unemployment line: the Obamas are too damned happy! They're so happy that it's downright unAmerican!
grrlscientist | July 24, 2009tags: Dan Gilbert, happiness, TEDTalks, cultural observation, streaming video
Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don't go as planned. I am not convinced -- are you? [22:02]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
grrlscientist | July 21, 2009tags: TEDTalks, Diet Pepsi, Aspartame, artificial sweeteners, diversity, choice, happiness, psychology, Malcolm Gladwell, streaming video
Tipping Point [Amazon: $8.54] author Malcolm Gladwell gets inside the food industry's pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce -- and makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness [18:16]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
grrlscientist | June 23, 2009tags: marshmallow experiment, future-oriented, time, Philip Zimbardo, TEDTalks, streaming video
In this video, psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives. [7:07]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate…
bioephemera | May 30, 2009In the June Atlantic Monthly, Joshua Wolf Shenk has a long, moving article about what may be the longitudinal study of all longitudinal studies - the Harvard Study of Adult Development (Grant Study), begun in 1937. Its creator Arlie Beck planned to track 268 "healthy, well-adjusted" men from their sophomore year at Harvard through careers, marriage, families, retirement and eventually death - and somehow, from this glut of longitudinal data, to glean the secrets of "successful living."
But the portrait Shenk paints is as full of pathos as it is of success.
Delving into the case files, now…
edyong | May 27, 2009When the going gets tough, thousands of people try to boost their failing self-esteem by repeating positive statements to themselves. Encouraged by magazine columnists, self-help books and talk-show hosts, people prepare for challenges by chanting positive mantras like "I am a strong, powerful person," and, "Nothing can stop me from achieving my dreams." This approach has been championed at least as far back as Norman Vincent Peale's infamous book The Power of Positive Thinking, published in 1952.
But a new study suggests that despite its popularity, this particular brand of self-help may…
purepedantry | April 9, 2009A study discussed over at Live Science confirms what I have always suspected:
An eight-year study of 218 couples found 90 percent experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born.
"Couples who do not have children also show diminished marital quality over time," says Scott Stanley, research professor of psychology at University of Denver. "However, having a baby accelerates the deterioration, especially seen during periods of adjustment right after the birth of a child."
An unrelated study in 2006 of 13,000 people found parents are more depressed than non-parents.…
edyong | March 19, 2009Want to know how much you'd enjoy an experience? You're better off asking someone who has been through it, even if they're a complete stranger, than to find out information for yourself. This advice comes from Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University, who espoused it in his superb book Stumbling on Happiness. Now, he has found new support for the idea by studying speed-daters and people receiving feedback from their peers.
In the first study, he found that female students were better able to predict how much they would enjoy a speed-date if they listened to the experiences of strangers than if…
edyong | March 20, 2008
"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy." - Douglas Adams
In this pithy paragraph, the sorely missed Douglas Adams sums up a puzzling paradox of modern life - we often link happiness to money and the spending of it, even though both proverbs and psychological surveys…
grrlscientist | December 6, 2007tags: emotional health, mood, happiness, National Lottery
"Money can't buy happiness" as the old addage goes, and every once in awhile, that's actually true, too. Yesterday, for example, I read an article based on scientific research that suggested that it's the simple things in life that make people truly happy. Having lived a very simple, and yet very stressful, life these past three years, I do -- and do not -- agree with this sentiment.
According to the article, which was based on a study commissioned by the National Lottery, Richard Tunney of the University's School of Psychology found…