Happy Folk are Winners!
More from the direction of causation annals. From the Independent:
Researchers from the universities of California, Missouri and Illinois examined connections between desirable characteristics, life success and well-being in more than 275,000 people.
They found that happy individuals were predisposed to seek out new goals in life, leading to success, which also reinforced their already positive emotions.
The psychologists addressed questions such as whether happy people were more successful than unhappy people, and whether happiness came before or after a perceived success.
Writing in Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association, they concluded that “chronically happy people” were generally more successful in many areas of life than less happy people.
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I really like what you are doing with this site but (darn; there is always a but)… isn’t the conclusion of this study self-evident? Happy positive people find that the things they do and/or accomplish make them happy and positive about life? It’s nice that “research” confirmed all that, but really, I think I sort of undersood this since puberty. Does that mean I’m some kind of a smart ass? I don’t think so (but it’s certainly open to debate). I give credit to having been raised by happy hard-working positive parents in a broad family environment of similar thinking people - no complainers; positive but realistic attitude - always.
And to be fair, maybe for many raised differently, it’s perhaps not so self-evident.
It’s not self-evident to me that happiness, broadly, is quite the same thing as possessing a “positive attitude.” The fact that many people DO seem to equate the two makes me somewhat skeptical of what these sorts of surveys are tracking, exactly. For my part — and it does reflect my family and upbringing as strongly as PD’s positivity reflects his — my outlook is generally cynical, my personality is often described as “prickly,” and I do quite a bit of complaining (or, as I’d call it, kvetching.)
Were I to be asked two questions, 1. Do you think of yourself as a positive (or optimistic) person? and 2. Are you happy?, the answer to the first would, unquestionably, be an emphatic No. But to the second, it would absolutely be Yes. I’m certainly not “cheerful” in any way, but I consider myself happy, nonetheless. In point of fact, one of the things that makes me most happy is the ability to share gripes with others.
So where would I fit into this puzzle? I guess I’d have to look more closely at the specific questions. Slight differences in how a question was worded might prompt me to place myself into widely divergent camps.
Of course, the other thing I have to wonder when a report purports to track how intertemporal reports of personal happiness compare with success is whether the data set is not actually self-selecting in two directions. It’s not simply conflating cause and effect, where people who have experienced success are natually more likely to be happy. It also appears to be selecting on the front end — to remain in the category of “chronically happy,” you would expect the individual did not go on to face failure or massive disappointment. Had he done so, he might not remain so happy.
Wouldn’t the real control be to examine how the chronically happy rebound from failure, and contrast it with the rebounds of the less happy? One could imagine, at least anecdotally, situations where the dashing of unrealistically high expectations might present a more significant challenge to the chronically happy than it would to the chronically morose.
R.J. Lehmann’s comment made me think; and your suggestion on the study seems to have merit. Without going on and on, I’ll introduce a new word that possibly describes my level of contentment better than “positive” or “happy.” It’s gratitude. I wake up every day grateful to be alive, for friends, family, health, etc. And I felt this way when I was young, poor, and stupid. Again, possibly influenced by my upbringing. Yes, I can be testy (My blog is called “Cave of the Curmudgeon”) and I enjoy bitching about the injustices of the world as I see them. I’m grateful to be able to do that. It makes me happy.