Happiness
Good Sex and Good Friendships Make People Happier With Being Single
If you’re single, you’re certainly not alone. The US is in the middle of an ongoing shift toward one-person households. As I’ve written about before, single people commonly cite a variety of both positive and negative reasons for their singleness. Some of them enjoy the freedom, some have priorities other than relationships, and some just…
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Helping Others Makes Toddlers Happy
A finding that comes up again and again in psychology research is that people feel better when they take prosocial actions, which is why helping others is one of the best ways of helping yourself. The ability to derive happiness from supporting other people seems to show up early in life. A new study published…
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When You See Your Own Emotions in Other People’s Faces
Sometimes our perceptions of others tell us more about ourselves. That can be true in how we interpret other people’s motivations, for example, and a newly published study suggests it can even be true in how we read people’s facial expressions. In the study, researchers in Germany asked 50 participants to interpret pictures of people…
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What a Connection to Nature Means for Kids
It’s a common complaint that kids these days don’t get outside enough. There may be something to that claim, as well, with parents of 8 to 12 year olds saying in one survey that their children spent three times as much time playing on screens as playing outside. Intuitively, you might suspect that children who…
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Happiness Is Possible With a History of Anxiety
Mental health conditions like anxiety can interfere in almost any aspect of people’s lives, with real consequences. And yet, in the long-run, that doesn’t mean happiness is unobtainable. I’m not saying that to provide words of inspiration. I’m saying it because a newly published study suggests it’s true. The study surveyed 2,128 adults in Canada…
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Not Judging Your Own Thoughts as an Element of Happiness
There’s no formula for happiness, but something that apparently helps is not being too judgmental toward your own thoughts and feelings. A recent study from researchers in Spain highlights the role that this kind of acceptance plays in overall happiness. The study surveyed 589 participants, asking about several different personality traits and about their self-rated…
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Why Gun Owners Are Happier (Hint: It’s Probably Not the Guns)
Decades of psychology researchers has converged on the conclusion that the key to happiness is … owning a gun? Not quite. But as the authors of a new study on happiness and gun ownership point out, there has been plenty of speculation in that vein going back to when the Beatles released their song Happiness…
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A Happiness Intervention for Teachers
Teaching is a stressful job. From managing a classroom, to taking work home at night, to trying to adequately explain new concepts and keep pace with a curriculum at the same time, teachers have a lot of demands to juggle. That’s a problem not just for teachers, but for the education system as a whole.…
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Quality and Quantity of Social Interactions Both Matter for Happiness
It seems obvious that having fulfilling social interactions with other people makes a difference in how happy we are. Less obvious is what makes for fulfilling social interactions, and how that varies from one person to the next. When psychologists study people’s social interactions and relationships, there’s always a question of whether quantity or quality…
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Helping Others Is a Link Between Self-Control and Life Satisfaction
Last week, I wrote about the health and mental health benefits of volunteering. Today brings us another study on the theme of helping others being a good way to help yourself. If all this talk about the benefits of helping others is starting to sound a little preachy, don’t blame the messenger! It just happens…
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