L17 Happiness and Well-being

• The Big Five dimensions of personality: OCEAN

  1. Openness to experience
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Extroversion
  4. Agreeableness
  5. Neuroticism
• • People’s personalities tend to remain stable throughout their lifetime.
  • Subjective wellbeing (SWB): an individual’s evaluation of their own life in terms of how satisfied they are etc. SWB is strongly predicted by personality traits that are largely a function of temperament -  extroversion and neuroticism. Individuals with high extroversion and low neuroticism have high self-esteem, see events in a more positive light and are less responsive to negative feedback.
• High extroversion and conscientiousness predict longer lives, whereas low agreeableness predicts poorer physical health and earlier death. This may be because people who are more outgoing have more extensive networks and support which are associated with better health outcomes. High conscientiousness = more careful about exercise and diet, less likely to smoke etc.
• Do wealthier countries have happier people? Yes, but there is no clear trend, more a separation between the less and more developed countries.

  
• Overall effect: life circumstances can explain only 10% of long-term variation in happiness
• Big Five’s effect

  1. Extraversion= .27
  2. Neuroticism= -.25
  3. Agreeeableness= .19
  4. Conscientiousness= .16
  5. Openness to experience= .06
• Heritability of happiness= .5 (50%)
• Set point theory of happiness: we are predisposed to experience a certain level of happiness. Major life events may temporarily influence our happiness, but we tend to return to our set point. This may be due to psychological adaption
• Intentional activities

   

  • This may explain the remaining 40% of variation in happiness
• Happier people:

  1. Exercise regularly
  2. Spend more time with family and friends
  3. Frequently express gratitude
  4. Readily offer help to others
  5. Savour life’s pleasures and try to live in the moment
  6. Are more mindful
• Effects of gratitude:

  • Cognitive: gratitude makes people interpret situations in a more positive manner
  • Psycho-social: promotes social connections and relationships
• Affective forecasting: 

  • When you make predictions regarding your own emotional reactions to future events.
  • Studies have shown that we are not very accurate at this, and we tend to overestimate the intensity and duration of our future reactions