From Sciencenewsforkids.com
It feels good to be happy. Laughing is fun. And most
people like to have a good time.
"If
you ask people what they want for their children, most
say, 'I want them to be happy,'" says psychologist and
happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky of the
University
of
California,
Riverside.
Not
that long ago,
however, joy wasn't considered serious enough for
psychologists to study. These scientists traditionally
helped people with depression or other
mental illnesses.
"When
I started doing research on this 18 years ago,"
Lyubomirsky says, happiness "was not considered a
scientific topic."
But
today, happiness is a hot subject of research. As part of
a growing field called positive psychology, more and more
researchers are looking for ways to help people become
happier, even if they don't feel depressed to begin with.
And there are plenty of reasons why happiness is a worthy
goal.
Recent
studies suggest that, among other benefits, happy people
are healthier , have more friends, and make more money
than their sadder
peers, Lyubomirsky says. And here's the really good
news: Research now suggests that there are easy things
people can do to make themselves happier.
How
happy are you?
The
field of positive psychology has had to overcome
significant obstacles. For one thing, it's difficult to
scientifically measure happiness. It's also hard to
compare one person's sense of well-being with another's.
For
example, if your best friend says she feels great, but
she's crying a lot and acting more depressed than usual,
would you rate her as happy or sad for the purposes of a
scientific study? Likewise, on a scale of 1 to 10, how can
we be sure that my "8" is happier than your "6?"
"No
one can tell you how happy you are," Lyubomirsky says.
"Who's to say who's right?"
In
recent years, however, researchers have developed what
they consider to be accurate measurements of happiness.
One technique involves looking at how often people
genuinely smile in their daily lives.
It's
easy to tell real smiles from the fake smiles people
plaster on for photographs. Genuine smiles engage the
corners of the eyes and
involve
muscles around the mouth that fake smilers can't control.
|
You can tell if a person's smile is real or fake by
looking at his or her eyes. |
Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez/Wikipedia |
In
their studies, scientists also tell people to describe how
happy they feel. They ask subjects how satisfied they are
with their lives. And they get people to describe
everything they did over a course of a day and how they
felt about each activity.
Scientists also sometimes look at images of the brain for
clues: An area called the left frontal cortex tends to
work harder in people who are happier. This area "lights
up," showing more activity in brain scans.
Get
happy
Scientists now know that people are born with a general
tendency toward a certain level of happiness, and they
tend to maintain
that mood in their
day-to-day lives. For example, you probably know
kids who are bubbly and cheerful most of the time as well
as kids who are generally more quiet and serious.
About
half of a person's "happiness quotient" comes from the
personality he or she is born with. Extreme events, such
as winning a lottery or being injured in an accident, can
cause temporary bursts of happiness or sadness. But
eventually, people return to about the same emotional
state they're normally at.
So,
what about the other half of the happiness quotient? About
10 percent of that quotient depends on external
circumstances, such as how much money people make or how
healthy they are. The
remaining
40 percent, says Lyubomirsky, is
entirely up
to you. What's more, her work suggests a few strategies
for making yourself happier, no matter how happy or sad
you are to begin with.
In one
recent study, she and colleagues assigned more than 300
college students to complete one of three activities. For
15 minutes a week over 8 weeks, one group of these
students wrote about what their lives would be like in the
future if all their hopes and dreams came true.
A
second group spent the same amount of time writing letters
to people who had done things in the past that the letter
writers were
grateful for. A third group of students simply
listed everything they had done over the past 7 days.
The
objective of this experiment was to find out whether
expressing optimism about the future or gratitude about
the past could make a person happier. (The third group
allowed the researchers to compare whether writing alone
made a difference.)
Results backed previous research, which had shown that
expressing optimism and gratitude lead to an improved
sense of well-being. But the improvement came about,
Lyubomirsky adds, only for the students that were most
motivated to do the activity.
In
other words, only people who really wanted to be happier
were able to make that happen. The simple process of
writing had no effect on wellbeing.
Lyubomirsky found that motivated students maintained their
improved sense of happiness for at least 9 months after
the study ended. (After 9 months, she stopped checking.)
"That
is actually amazing," she says. "It is possible they might
have changed their attitudes toward life" just by writing
thank-you notes and having
optimistic
thoughts.
A
happier you
It's
not always easy to be a kid. Between 15 and 20 percent of
middle schoolers in the United States experience moderate
to severe
symptoms of depression, says Bruce Cuthbert, a
psychologist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
And research shows that, without help, stress and anxiety
tend to get worse over time.
If you
don't feel happy today, that doesn't mean there's anything
wrong with you, Cuthbert says. But if you want to feel
better, there are lots of things you can do to improve
your mood.
Studies have shown that the happiest people are those who
frequently do kind things for both friends and strangers.
Other research-backed happiness
boosters
include keeping a diary of your future dreams, setting and
pursuing goals, making friends and family members a big
part of your life, and exercising regularly.
"Those
are things anyone can do," Lyubomirsky says, "no matter
how young you are."