Psychology Today Blogs - Christopher Peterson, Ph.D.

Leadership Style and Employee Well-Being

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:04:22 -0700

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.--Gandhi

An important literature review was recently published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Jaana Kuoppala, Anne Lamminpää, Juha Liira, and Harri Vaino looked at studies linking workplace leadership to the well-being of those led. They located hundreds of potentially relevant studies, of which 27 were presented in sufficient detail to include in their meta-analysis.

A meta-analysis, by the way, is a relatively new arrival on the social science scene, and provides a quantitative way of summarizing the gist of different studies of the same topic. Meta-analysis is an attempt to solve the problem often encountered in reviewing a research literature that finds some studies supporting one conclusion, other studies supporting the opposite conclusion, and still others being inconclusive. Meta-analyses treat given studies as individual data points and then calculate an overall summary in terms of the robustness of effects, giving more emphasis to studies with larger samples, more rigorous designs, and so on. Meta-analysis requires assumptions that some would deem heroic, not the least of which is whether and how to regard the measures used in different studies as equivalent. Regardless, meta-analyses have become an important analytic tool in getting a handle on what research actually shows.

Back to the literature review by Kuoppala and colleagues. They included studies from different nations, with both males and females, that measured leadership style on the one hand and employee well-being on the other. The dimensions of leadership style on which they focused were consideration and support. A considerate leader is one who treats employees kindly and fairly. A supportive leader is one who treats employees with concern and provides encouragement. It may seem surprising, or at least disappointing, to learn that not all workplace leaders are considerate and supportive, but there was sufficient variation across these dimensions in the studies reviewed to allow their impact to be calculated..

Across the studies reviewed, employee well-being was assessed in various ways, depending on the study: job satisfaction, job well-being (defined as burn-out, exhaustion, anxiety, depression, or stress related to work), amount of sick leave, and early retirement due to disability.

In all cases, positive relationships were found. The robustness of effects--using meta-analysis jargon--ranged from small to moderate. But even small effects, multiplied over thousands or millions of millions of workers, imply that the impact of "good" leadership on employee well-being is potentially staggering.

Among the studies reviewed, there was no relationship between leadership style and work performance. I hasten to add that plenty of other studies do find such a link, but let us just for a minute consider that leadership style might be more related to employee well-being than to employee performance. There is considerable irony in this possibility given that the thriving pop leadership literature is invariably framed in terms of improving productivity. The literature review by Kuoppala and colleagues suggests that leadership style does affect the bottom line but does so indirectly, through its effect on the well-being of employees.

One can of course quibble with this meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is only as useful as the literature it summarizes, and many of the studies included were not ideal. For example, most studies were cross-sectional-all of the data were gathered at the same time, leaving unaddressed chicken-and-egg-issues. But can we afford not to take these findings and their implications seriously?

A theme running through my blog entries is that "other people matter," and the take-home message of this article is that when leaders treat their employees as if they matter, everyone wins.

Reference

Kuoppala, J., Lamminpää, A., Liira, J., & Vaino, H. (2008). Leadership, job well-being, and health effects-A systematic review and a meta-analysis. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 50, 904-915.

Ikigai and Mortality

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:22:56 -0700

"Only the good die young." While this may have been true in the adolescent fantasies of Billy Joel, it does not square with the results of a recently-published study by Toshimasa Sone and colleagues at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine in Sendai, Japan. In a seven-year longitudinal study of 43,000+ Japanese adults, these researchers found that individuals who believed that their life was worth living were less likely to die than were their counterparts without this belief.

On focus in this study was the Japanese notion of ikigai, translated by the researchers as believing that one's life is worth living. In Japan, ikigai is apparently a common term for what English speakers might term subjective well-being, and it includes purpose and meaning, with connotations of joy about being alive. So, one's hobby might provide ikigai, or one's family, or one's work. To my thoroughly monolingual (i.e., American) ear, ikigai sounds like it is created by what positive psychologists call a healthy passion (Vallerand, 2008).

The notion of ikigai is a good reminder to positive psychologists in the United States that our science should not simply be an export business. There are lessons to be learned in all cultures about what makes life worth living, and no language has a monopoly on the vocabulary for describing the good life.

In any event, the study began in late 1994 with a survey of tens of thousands of Japanese adults between the ages of 40 and 79. Among many questions posed to respondents was one about ikigai: "Do you have ikigai in your life?" Possible answers were yes, uncertain and no. The vast majority of respondents were followed for the next seven years. About 7% died during this time, and the cause of death for these individuals was determined by reviewing and coding death certificates.

The researchers took into account such well-known risk factors for mortality as age, gender, education, body mass index, cigarette use, alcohol consumption, exercise, employment, perceived stress, and history of disease. Also controlled was the respondent's self-rated health (bad, fair, good), itself a predictor of subsequent physical well-being (Levy, Slade, Kunkel, & Kasl, 2002).

Almost 60% of the research participants reported a sense of ikigai in 1994, and those who did were more likely to be married, educated, and employed. They reported lower levels of stress and better self-rated health.

Even when likely "confounds" were taken into account, ikigai predicted who was still alive after seven years. Said another way, 95% of respondents who reported a sense of meaning in their lives were alive seven years after the initial survey versus about 83% of those who reported no sense of meaning in their lives. The lack of ikigai was in particular associated with death due to cardiovascular disease (usually stroke), but not death due to cancer. This latter finding is interesting because cancer has long been regarded, at least in the Western world, as a disease of despair (cf. Hippocrates).

The exact mechanisms--biological, psychological, or social--linking ikigai to mortality are at present unknown, but these results are worth taking seriously. Ikigai does not guarantee longevity, and its absence does not preclude it. Nonetheless, the findings reported by Sone and colleagues are not just statistically significant; they are also substantively significant.

This study adds to a growing literature showing that the sorts of psychological states and traits of interest to positive psychology are importantly linked to good physical health and long life (e.g., Peterson & Bossio, 1991). A crucial next step for researchers is to understand why and how.

Meaning and purpose in life are unalloyed goods and would seem to require little justification. But just in case a rationale for the life of meaning is needed, the results of this study provide it.

As of this writing, Billy Joel is almost sixty years old, and I hope he is well. He once proclaimed that his crowd wasn't too pretty and that it wasn't too proud. But I hope he and his crowd have ample ikigai, because only those without it die young (p < .001).

References

Levy, B. R., Slade, M. D., Kunkel, S. R., & Kasl, S. V. (2002). Longevity increased by positive self-perceptions of aging. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 261-270, 2002.

Peterson, C., & Bossio, L. M. (1991). Health and optimism. New York: Free Press.

Sone, T., et al. (2008). Sense of life worth living (ikigai) and mortality in Japan: Ohsaki Study. Psychosomatic Medicine, 70, 709-715.

Vallerand, R. J. (2008). On the psychology of passion: In search of what makes people's lives most worth living. Canadian Psychology, 49, 1-13.

The Happiness of Most Nations is Increasing

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:50:26 -0700

Can happiness be lastingly increased? It is clear that we can momentarily boost someone's sense of well-being (e.g., with backrubs, scoops of chocolate ice cream, or silly love songs), but one of the long-standing beliefs among social scientists is that happiness in the long term is more-or-less fixed, the result of a genetically-determined set-point that places people on a hedonic treadmill. Research has recently challenged this belief. Life events can alter an individual's set-point (Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2006), and we know that deliberate interventions can boost the life satisfaction and happiness of individuals, so long as the behavioral changes encouraged by these interventions become part of the individual's habitual repertoire (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005).

What about the overall happiness of nations? Findings that happiness can change for individuals need not mean that the happiness levels of given societies can change. Perhaps individual-level changes are idiosyncratic, meaning that the relative gains and losses of different individuals within a given nation cancel each other out, resulting in no discernible shifts for a society in the aggregate. Research to date has supported this view--that the average life satisfaction of people in a given nation is fixed--but now this conclusion has been challenged as well.

Drawing on a unique resource--the World Values Survey--Ronald Inglehart, Roberto Foa, Christian Welzel, and I recently published a paper in Perspectives on Psychological Science showing that the happiness and life satisfaction of nations have increased in dozens of nations around the world over the past few decades.

The World Values Survey is an ambitious project that periodically surveys people around the world with respect to their attitudes, beliefs, and values. Questions range from the mundane ("Is throwing away litter ever justified") to the sacred ("How often do you think about the meaning and purpose of life?). It also asks respondents about their life satisfaction and their happiness.

The World Values Survey stands apart from similar endeavors because of the large number of nations included-dozens of different countries containing 85% of the world's population-and because respondents in each nation are representative samples--i.e., they represent the range of individuals across important contrasts like age, gender, education, occupation, and the like. Most samples studied by social scientists and certainly psychologists are convenience samples, recruited by the researcher from available individuals: students in a college course, surfers on the Internet, children at a local daycare center, and so on. The hope in each case is that the convenience sample somewhat resembles the larger population to which one wishes to generalize results, but this is usually an ideal more than an actuality. Accordingly, findings from the World Values Survey are to be taken very seriously.

According to our findings, during the past two decades, both life satisfaction and happiness have increased in the majority of the 52 nations for which there were substantial data. Life satisfaction rose in 63% of these societies, and happiness increased in 87% of them.

What was responsible for these changes? According to the internal analyses of the data that we conducted, increased perceptions of choice and control foreshadowed increased well-being. Choice and control were in turn foreshadowed by increased economic growth and democratization of a nation.

These are dramatic patterns, and one should ask why so many social scientists for so long believed that the happiness and life satisfaction of nations do not change. Part of the reason is that the most complete data over time--other than the World Values Survey--have come from the United States, and mean scores of US residents have indeed been rather flat for decades. Why that is the case is an interesting question, but in any event, the US appears to be a happiness anomaly.

What are the implications? Is a happier world a better world--more tolerant, more peaceful, more creative, and more healthy? In other words, will national and global changes in happiness someday produce the sorts of outcomes found at the individual level? I do not know, and skeptics will say no way. But to echo Brian Wilson and Tony Asher, wouldn't it be nice?

References

Diener, E., Lucas, R. E. & Scollon, C.N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61, 305-314.

Inglehart, R., Foa, R., Peterson, C., & Weizel, C. (2008). Development, freedom, and rising happiness: A global perspective, 1981-2007. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 264-285.

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.

Book Review: The Geography of Bliss

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:24:52 -0700

"I broke my nose in two places."
"Really? You should stay out of those places."

There must be a positive psychology analogue of this joke, although I could think of none, and my Internet searches for "happy place" jokes revealed only off-color humor. I must be more naïve that I thought because I had no idea that one's "happy place" had so many interesting meanings.

Be that as it may, the staid meaning of "happy place" seems to be an internal location to which one goes to be happy, serene, and untroubled. Happiness can no doubt be found in an internal place, but that has not stopped people from searching for literal happy places, settings--sometimes neighborhoods and cities but usually nations--where everyone is happy.

As you know, nowadays the popular media and many social scientists are fond of ranking different nations with respect to their overall happiness. Exact ranks differ across surveys and across time, but there is some consensus that Northern European countries have happier citizens than do Eastern European and African countries. Nations in South America have citizens who are more happy than one would expect given their relative poverty, whereas nations in East Asia have citizens who are less happy than one would expect given their relative wealth (see my earlier blog entry "Money and Happiness").

If one wants to understand the happiness of nations and their citizens, a more analytic approach is needed. Happiness is often studied in terms of subjective well-being, an amalgamation of positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction-the judgment that one's life has been lived well. Attention to these separate components of happiness results in different rankings of nations. For example, according to one recent study, people from Mexico reported the highest positive affect, whereas those from Canada reported the least negative affect (Kuppens, Ceulemans, Timmerman, Diener, & Kim-Prieto, 2006). Adults in Switzerland reported extremely high life satisfaction but neither particularly high positive affect nor particularly low negative affect.

Another approach that sheds light on the bases of national differences in happiness attempts to relate the average well-being of citizens in a nation to country-level features such as education, affluence and opportunity, mode of government, concern with human rights, and religiousness. In a future blog entry, I will discuss a soon-to-be-published study of this sort in which I had a hand.

Yet another way to understand the literal happy places that may exist on the world is contained in a recent book by Eric Weiner titled The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World. Mr. Weiner is not a social scientist, and he did not undertake his search armed with surveys and number two pencils. Weiner is a former correspondent for National Public Radio, and for a year, he traveled around the world year visiting places reputed to be happy--like Bhutan, Iceland, Denmark, and Qatar--and one place reputed not to be--Moldova--talking to residents, and making observations. His account of his travels has become a best-selling book.

Although organized geographically, one chapter per place, the book is less about the ten nations Weiner visited than it is about the people he met in each. This is a tried and true journalistic method, to tell a story by focusing on one particular person, and it is highly effective as Weiner uses it. Some of his people are natives, others American friends or acquaintances who happen to live abroad and thus have special perspectives. Weiner recounts their interactions and conversations, which center on happiness but usually go much further. He mixes in his own reactions and recollections.

I strongly recommend the book. Weiner is a good observer and really skilled with a phrase. I rarely laugh aloud while reading, but I came close when I encountered such observations as "Dutch sounds exactly like English spoken backward" and "Watching Brits shed their inhibitions is like watching elephants mate. You know it happens, it must, but ... is this something I really need to see?"

What about the book from a positive psychology perspective? Weiner knows his psychology. His journey started with an interview of Ruut Veenhoven in the Netherlands, the keeper of the World Database of Happiness (http://www.eur.nl/fsw/research/happiness). Weiner treats positive psychologists as he treats the other characters in the book-with skepticism but also respect, with humor but also affection. He sees the value of science--information from the World Database of Happiness helped provide his itinerary--but he also has an unconvinced attitude that would serve psychologists well, especially as we are tempted to urge our positive psychology interventions on the entire world.

So, Weiner describes the televised attempt to make fifty residents of Slough happy, by throwing at them over a twelve-week period all conceivable positive psychology techniques plus the kitchen sink. It supposedly worked, but Weiner's parting comment was, "Any overlap between TV and reality is purely coincidental ... Did these happiness experts really change the psychological climate of Slough, or did they just tickle fifty of its residents for a while?"

Here are some of other things I liked about the book. First, it showed over and over again, with each new interview, that the meaning of happiness is local, richly so. It is useful to ask people around the world to answer the same sorts of survey questions about life satisfaction, but so too is it useful to understand how residents from given cultures think about happiness in their own words and in their own worlds.

Second, Weiner talked to people in bars and restaurants and hotels, in their homes and on the street. If all one were to know of the human condition came from reading what psychology "studies" have to say, we would probably not know that there are bars and restaurants and hotels or for that matter homes and streets. It is one thing to say, as psychologists do in the abstract, that behavior must be placed in context. It is another thing to see that context in vivid detail, as in Weiner's tales.

Third, Weiner describes himself as a grump, but I think that is literary license. Even he admits that in England he is at best an amateur grump As I read the book and came to know the part of him that came through in the pages, I saw a man who was thoughtful and funny and not at all full of himself. He could-and did-tell a story at his own expense. I liked him, and I liked his book.

My own take on happy places is already familiar to you from my previous blog entries (e.g., "Other People Matter"). The happiest places on earth are not internal ones. They are not geographical ones. They are the places between us, and the closer they are and the more comfortable, the happier they are apt to be. Weiner apparently agrees. He ends his book by observing: "Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's a conjunction."

References

Kuppens, P., Ceulemans, E., Timmerman, M. E., Diener, E., & Kim-Prieto, C. (2006). Universal intracultural and intercultural dimensions of the recalled frequency of emotional experience. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 37, 491-515.

Weiner, E. (2008). The geography of bliss: One grump's search for the happiest places in the world. New York: Twelve.

Tim Russert and the Boston Celtics: What Does Positive Psychology Have To Say?

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:50:42 -0700

I am an occasional participant in a positive psychology listserve, Friends of Positive Psychology, which you can join at http://lists.apa.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A0=FRIENDS-OF-PP. It is an active listserve, usually on topic, and always interesting. For the past few days, a great deal of discussion has ensued about Tim Russert and his untimely death. Why was he so widely admired? And why did he die when he did? Interesting ideas have been advanced, some citing his apparent strengths of character (to explain his popularity) and some citing how hard he seemed to work (to explain his death).

Just this morning, another thread began on this listserve, addressing from a positive psychology point of view why the Boston Celtics beat the LA Lakers to win the 17th championship for the franchise. Again, strengths of character--of individual players and of the team as a whole--have been advanced as explanations. No one has mentioned the Celtic leprechauns (yet), but I assume they too have strengths of character.

I posted the following comment:

"I have been a sports fan a lot longer than I have been a psychologist, and if truth be told, I probably know more about sports than I do about psychology. That said, I have thought a lot about the ability of psychology to explain singular events (like the outcome of a specific game ... or for that matter, the untimely death of a specific person--e.g., Tim Russert). I think we can offer up more versus less plausible accounts, but ultimately we do not and cannot know. And maybe this is why talking about sports is so much fun.

In most games, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. That's the nature of the game, not the psychology of the participants. Do the Celtics have certain (contextualized) strengths of character? Of course. Their coach cited ‘mental toughness' as the deciding factor. But sometimes the shots fall, and sometimes they do not, regardless of character strengths (think of the outcome of the last Super Bowl, which hinged on one play).

As a sports fan, I was not surprised* by the Boston victory, only its magnitude. I think the Celtics were the better team, as shown by their regular season record at home and away. And someone could challenge this statement by noting that the "best" team during the NBA regular season does not typically win a championship. My counter is that in general, seedings predict quite well who will win a series."

*To several of my sports buddies yesterday, I actually predicted that Boston would win handily, a thoroughly lucky guess for which I will take huge credit when I see them later today.

The more general question is the degree to which positive psychology (or psychology per se) can speak to any singular event that will never be repeated. The best discussion of this issue that I have ever read is the 1981 article by Mac Runyan titled "Why Did van Gogh Cut Off His Ear?" (It's also the best title I've ever seen for a scientific paper.) Runyan's conclusion is that psychology can explain such events, the same way psychology explains anything: by considering the evidence for and against the explanation and by considering seriously alternative explanations. The best psychology can do is to narrow the range of possible explanations to the more plausible ones (those consistent with the evidence), and that is the best any study can do, whether it is an experiment, a survey, or a case study. Explanations should be tentative, and psychologists should be willing to be wrong in a way that sports fans need not be.

I love this game.

Runyan, W. M. (1981). Why did van Gogh cut off his ear? The problem of alternative explanations in psychobiography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40, 1070-1077.

Other People Matter: Two Examples

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:45:34 -0700

"Other people matter." I say that in every positive psychology lecture I give and every positive psychology workshop I conduct. It sounds like a bumper sticker slogan, but it is actually a good summary of what positive psychology research has shown about the good life broadly construed. It is in the company of others that we often experience pleasure and certainly how we best savor its aftermath. It is through character strengths that connect us to others--like gratitude--that many of us find satisfaction and meaning in life. It is with other people that we work, love, and play. Good relationships with other people may be a necessary condition for our own happiness, even in markedly individualist cultures like the contemporary United States.

Let me go beyond these generalizations and provide two examples that illustrate that other people matter. Both were called to my attention by my friend and colleague Nansook Park. (Other people matter.)

I am reluctant to call these positive psychology case studies, as I did without hesitation in my previous blog entry about Randy Pausch ("The Last Lecture: A Positive Psychology Case Study"), because I do not know the rest of the stories. I only know what I was able to glean from some brief Internet accounts. So regard them as examples. But they're good examples and will probably stay with you as they have stayed with me.

Nancy Makin weighed 700 pounds, the result of a despair-driven spiral. The more she ate, the worse felt, and the worse she felt, the more she ate. For years, she was essentially housebound and allowed only her immediate family to see her. Then her sister gave her a computer as a gift. With Internet access and an interest in politics, Nancy Makin surfed through chat rooms and began to make friends, who of course did not judge her by her appearance.

She began to value herself and to look forward to each new day. According to her, "I was being loved and nurtured by faceless strangers ... Friends accepted who I was based on my mind and soul." And she began to lose weight. No diet. No pills. No surgery. No special exercise program. She simply stopped eating to excess, and over the next three years, her weight went away, 530 pounds at the time her story appeared. "I've heard so many times, I said it myself, if I could only lose 40 or 50 pounds, I'd be so much happier. I've found on this journey that the opposite is true." For her, feeling happier about herself started the weight loss, and feeling happier about herself was the result of her new friends.

Luke Pittard worked for McDonalds in Cardiff. When he won £1.3 million in the National Lottery, he followed a typical lottery winner script: He quit his job, bought a new house, had a lavish wedding, and went on a dream vacation. After eighteen months of his new lifestyle, he went back to work. Why? He missed his fellow workers, who welcomed him back. Said one, "Luke was always a great member of our team and when he won the lottery we were all so pleased for him ... I'm glad he has had the time to enjoy his winnings but love having him [back] here ... It's as if he never went away."

Luke Pittard acknowledges that some may think him mad for returning to a job where he makes less than the interest on what remains from his lottery winnings. But he explained that "a bit of hard work never did anyone any harm" and further that his job gave him something to look forward to every day.

These are hardly typical stories, which is precisely why I have written about them. Surfing the Internet is not a guaranteed way to lose weight, and returning to a job that pays £5.85 an hour is not a guaranteed way of avoiding the problems that can plague lottery winners. But for Nancy Makin and Luke Pittard, the good life they discovered or rediscovered was entwined with other people, who provided them with hope and meaning.

As the rest of us search for the good life, we would be well served by keeping in mind these examples and the lesson they teach. Other people matter. And we would also be well served by keeping in mind the cyberfriends of Nancy Makin and the workmates of Luke Pittard. We are all the other people who can matter so much.

Does Happiness Have A Cost? Part Two

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:32:59 -0700

In my previous blog entry ("Does Happiness Have a Cost?"), I discussed some studies showing that experimentally-induced happiness can have a cost. I cautioned that state research is not the same as trait research. That is, experimentally-induced emotions (like happiness) may not have the same consequences as habitual dispositions associated with these emotions (like life satisfaction).

But sometimes state research and trait research point to the same conclusion. An important paper by Shigehiro Oishi, Ed Diener, and Richard Lucas, published in 2007 in Perspectives on Psychological Science, showed that dispositional happiness (rendered as life satisfaction) can have costs. These costs are not across-the-board; they depend on the specific outcome on focus.

These researchers looked at cross-sectional and longitudinal data from several large samples in which adult respondents had completed a life satisfaction measure and for whom other information about "success" in a variety of domains was available. The researchers were interested in how success varied as a function of life satisfaction.

Important finding one: Happy (satisfied) people were more successful than unhappy (dissatisfied) people regardless of outcome.

Important finding two: When the comparison was between the most satisfied and the merely satisfied, the outcome mattered. For success at close relationships, the extremely happy did better than the somewhat less happy. But for success at school, work, and political participation, the happiest people did not do as well as those who reported slightly less satisfaction. (But please remember important finding one.)

The researchers concluded "Once people are moderately happy, the most effective level of happiness appears to depend on the specific outcomes used to define success, as well as the resources that are available."

Okay. There are apparently circumstances in which one can be too happy. These findings admit to different interpretations. In some cases, the data were all obtained at the same time from respondents, leaving unanswered legitimate questions about what comes first, the reported satisfaction or the success. In other cases, though, these patterns held across time, strengthening the conclusion that satisfaction actually results in given outcomes. In these cases, perhaps the moderately happy among us are hungrier than the fully satisfied--more motivated--and thus put more effort into achievement domains.

Or perhaps considerable happiness more readily translates itself into good relationships than into good grades or a high income, if only because happiness is contagious and thus attractive to others.

Or it could simply be that there are but 24 hours in a day, resulting in necessary tradeoffs in what anyone can achieve. As Ed Diener reminded me when I spoke to him about this possibility: "Newton got so much physics done because he did not like social interaction."

We all make choices, or they are made for us. As a college student, I worked like a dog and had nothing that resembled a social life. My good grades opened doors for me not otherwise ajar. I walked through them, if not happily then at least purposefully. But thirty years later, as a tenured professor at a top university, I now have all the dog biscuits I could possibly want. And I also have wonderful friends. Maybe we can have it all--just not at the same time. Bow wow.

Does Happiness Have A Cost?

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:20:25 -0700

Do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky (1872), The Possessed

Positive psychology theory and research have helped dispel the long-standing "happy and stupid" stereotype. From Fredrickson's broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions to the important literature review by Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener linking life satisfaction to positive outcomes in many important domains of life, we now have solid grounds for concluding that feeling good has desirable consequences.

A paper by Simone Schnall, Vikram Jaswal, and Christina Rowe, published in 2008 in Developmental Science, therefore deserves attention because it is at odds with this conclusion. Two experiments with children were reported.

In the first, 10-11 year-olds listened to looped segments of music, either a piece known to induce a happy mood or a piece known to induce a sad mood. (A manipulation check verified the intended effects). Then all the children were given an embedded figures task, performance on which reflects attention to detail. Children in a happy mood performed worse than children in a sad mood.

In the second, 6-7 year-olds were shown brief video clips that induced happy, neutral, or sad moods. (Again, a manipulation check verified the intended effects). As in the first study, all were tested on an embedded figures task. Children in a happy mood performed worse than those in the other conditions, who did not differ from one another.

Before the media gets hold of these results and reports them under a misleading headline (e.g., "Why Grief Is Good" - Newsweek, 2008), let us put the research--which I hasten to say is well-done, interesting, and important--in context.

First, these studies do not show that happy children are bad students. We already know that they are not. Furthermore, we also know that happiness is associated with more creative thinking, which Schnall and colleagues acknowledged. Attention to detail is an important skill, but it does not exhaust the skills that lead to good academic performance or success at life.

Second, these studies do not show that sad children are good students. No way.

Third, more generally, these studies do not necessarily speak to happiness or sadness as traits. The research is about what psychologists call states, temporarily induced moods.

The results show that a happy mood can have costs in certain circumstances, specifically those in which attention to detail is required.

Why am I going on and on? I want to head off rampant generalization of these findings, especially by those in the media who get an apparent kick out of sadness, depression, and pessimism, and studies showing that they can have benefits in certain circumstances (just as happiness, zest, and optimism can have benefits in other circumstances).

Positive psychology is sometimes criticized for urging relentless cheerfulness and happiness on people. I do not think any responsible positive psychologist does this, but regardless, let's not over-react in the other direction by using studies like this one to justify sadness or glorify depression.

My even-handed recommendation is that people be encouraged to take charge of their moods and adjust them according to the demands they face. Don't proof-read your dissertation or check your 1040 calculations when you are giddy. And don't try to plan profound changes in your life or brainstorm new projects when you are sad.

References

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.

Lyubomirsky, S., King, L. A., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803-855.

The Last Lecture: A Positive Psychology Case Study

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:02:55 -0700

My colleague Ben Dean and I recently conducted an Internet survey of 1464 adults interested in positive psychology that asked what they would most like to know about this new field. A large number wanted compelling case examples of actual people who lived life well, who embodied the strengths of character that we have been studying with quantitative methods. The world's greatest teachers, from Socrates and Jesus to the present, have always used parables to instruct and inspire others, and in the disciplines of business and law, the detailed examination of particular cases is the preferred method of teaching. Psychologists have also relied on cases, but these have been psychiatric histories that centered on people's problems. With exceptions, such as Howard Gardner's psychobiographies of exceptionally talented historical figures and Anne Colby and William Damon's multiple case studies of contemporary people of striking moral commitment, positive psychologists have made insufficient use of cases to understand what makes life most worth living.

Here is another exception, a marvelous example of what it means to live well: Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor Randy Pausch, whose "last lecture" is all over the Internet (e.g.. www.randypausch.com). Lots of universities, including my own, feature an annual "last lecture" in which award-winning teachers are asked to imagine that they are near death and to convey their final thoughts to students. I hope we all have the decency to retire the title, because now there is but one last lecture, the one by Professor Pausch.

In case you have been living under a rock, at the time of the lecture and at the time of my writing, he is dying, the victim of an aggressive pancreatic cancer. His last lecture was not maudlin, not saccharine, not filled with false bravado. It was simply wonderful. Five minutes into my watching, I forgot that he was dying. What captivated me was how he was living.

I watched his last lecture wearing many hats. As a teacher, I was inspired. As a lecturer, I was filled with admiration. As a human being, I was proud.

Watch it yourself. No summary I could offer would do it justice.

I do want to make a few observations. Positive psychologists, including me, intone that there are multiple routes to happiness and fulfillment: through pleasure, through engagement, and through meaning. If so, then Randy Pausch has scored the hat trick of happiness. He is wickedly funny; he loves his work; and he contributes mightily to the larger world.

Other people matter to him, and he to them. When he received tenure at his university, he took his entire research team to Disney World to express his gratitude. One of his colleagues later asked him, "How could you do that?" His response: "How could I not?"

All of us who are instructors should teach the "case" of Professor Pausch. The best known cases in psychology should not be Little Hans and Little Albert.

It has been said, by Elizabeth Edwards and by others, that living is what you do until you die. Randy Pausch shows us that that living well is the right way to do it. Yes, we encounter brick walls, sometimes frequently. But as Professor Pausch reminds us, brick walls are there to remind us how badly we want something.

Money and Happiness

Christopher Peterson, Ph.D. — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:53:48 -0700

One of the popular conclusions supposedly stemming from research in positive psychology is that money cannot buy happiness. The problem with this conclusion is that it is wrong. Research shows that income has a positive relationship with happiness (life satisfaction), although it is not a straight line. As income increases, its added contribution to life satisfaction becomes smaller. The impact of additional income is greatest among those who have little money, but it does not stop mattering, even after someone is able to meet basic needs. The very least we can do as positive psychologists is to take our own data seriously.

Income may not be the most important contributor to how happy most people are, and there are good reasons-psychological and moral-to decry rampant materialism. But money matters, if only a bit. As Mae West once said, "I've been rich, and I've been poor; believe me, rich is better."

Here is another finding about money and happiness. When we compare the average life satisfaction of people who live in different nations, the wealth (GNP) of the nation is a strong predictor of the happiness of its citizens. With exceptions, the least happy nations are the poorest, and the most happy nations are the richest.

There are some data implying that as nations become richer, the happiness of their citizens does not rise. This finding is termed a paradox, but it may be based on an incomplete sampling of nations, as I will discuss in a future blog entry.

As my own salary has increased over the years, my life has certainly become more comfortable, and here may be some insight into the relationship between money and happiness. Positive psychologists distinguish between pleasures and comforts. Pleasures by definition are short-lived-we adapt to them. In contrast, comforts are not front-and-center in our consciousness, until they are absent. I call this the Big Yellow Taxi Effect, after Joni Mitchell's song about not knowing what we have until it's gone.

I can remember when my family was first able to purchase an air conditioner, and when the family was first able to purchase a color television. For a while, life was very pleasurable ... very cool and vivid (puns intended). Now we take these for granted, except when they break. Then life is miserable. Maybe for those of us who are fortunate enough to have extra income, the value of that income vis-à-vis happiness is to afford comforts. Is comfort good? I think so. Regardless, I would never tell someone who is uncomfortable that it does not matter.

Here are some additional findings about money and happiness.

A recent study by Hilke Plassmann, John O'Doherty, Baba Shiv, and Antonio Rangel, published in 2008 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measured brain activity while research participants were drinking wine. Regions of the brain responsible for the registering of pleasure were more active when the wine was identified as expensive as opposed to inexpensive. The punch-line: It was the same wine in both cases! Perhaps wealthy people are happier because they spend more money on things. In any event, I wish the researchers had included a third condition in which participants were told they were drinking really expensive wine purchased at a really deep discount. That might have short-circuited the fMRI apparatus.

Another recent article by Elizabeth W. Dunn, Lara B. Aknin, and Michael I. Norton, published in 2008 in Science, concluded that money can buy happiness, so long as the money is spent on someone else. They described three studies. The first was a survey of Americans and found that the am0ount of money people spent in gifts to others or gave to charity was positively associated with general happiness, even when overall income was controlled. (By the way, they also found that overall income predicted happiness.). In their second study, they surveyed employees at a company who had received profit-sharing bonuses. The amount of the bonus spent on others predicted happiness six to eight weeks later, whereas the amount of the bonus spent on themselves did not. Their third study was a true experiment: Research participants were given either $5 or $20 and instructed to spend the money either on themselves or on others. Then their happiness was ascertained, Those who spent the money on others were happier, and the amount of money did not matter. One more finding was reported: Additional participants were asked to predict what would make people happier, and they mistakenly said that the most happiness would result from spending $20 on themselves.

Putting these findings from all of these studies together, might the most happiness be derived from expensive gifts to others? Admittedly, this is not what Dunn and colleagues found in their experiment (remember $5 versus $20 made no difference), but as we are fond of saying in the science business, further research is needed. The most telling study would ask people to give away a substantial amount of their own money, not simply a relatively small amount of extra money provided to them by researchers.

Perhaps the Native American potlatch ceremony, marked by the ritualized giving away of one's most valued possessions, deserves attention from the perspective of positive psychology. Maybe we should devise and carry out our own versions of the potlatch ceremony ... so long as they do not involve color televisions or air conditioners.