This paper investigates whether the level of happiness and integrated process of changes in happiness are the same. Using the daily data of two waves of four and six months each, we found that the level of happiness is stationary, whereas the integrated process of changes is non-stationary with a rising trend, implying that they are different series. An examination of the causes of the differen...

An examination of emotions reported on 12 million personal blogs along with a series of surveys and laboratory experiments show that the meaning of happiness is not fixed; instead, it systematically shifts over the course of one’s lifetime. Whereas younger people are more likely to associate happiness with excitement, as they get older, they become more likely to associate happiness with peacef...

Participation in decision-making has the potential to contribute to greater happiness. To explore this connection, we examine three areas: the family, the workplace and politics. In each of these areas, happiness research suggests that greater participation should increase happiness, most directly via the channels of personal relationships and helping others. There is some empirical research su...

The most obvious explanations come from three standard findings of the new psychology of happiness. First, a person’s happiness is negatively affected by the incomes of others (a negative externality). Second, a person’s happiness adapts quite rapidly to higher levels of income (a phenomenon of addiction). And third, our tastes are not given – the happiness we get from what we have is largely c...

Although research suggests that people derive more happiness from buying life experiences than material objects, almost no studies have examined how people actually feel while consuming real-world experiential and material purchases. In the present research, we provided the first examination of people’s momentary happiness while consuming these purchases. Participants were randomly assigned to ...

Many governments around the world are considering measures of happiness or subjective wellbeing as alternatives to gross domestic product (GDP) for the purpose of guiding economic policymaking. Compared to GDP, happiness measures promise to better capture the quality of life of a nation’s citizens and lead to policies that are more effective and equitable. However, there are a number of problem...

Psychologists, self-help gurus, and parents all work to make their clients, friends, and children happier. Recent research indicates that happiness is functional and generally leads to success. However, most people are already above neutral in happiness, which raises the question of whether higher levels of happiness facilitate more effective functioning than do lower levels. Our analyses of la...

This paper briefly and informally surveys different theoretical models of relative concerns and their relation to inequality. Models of inequity aversion in common use in experimental economics imply a negative relation between inequality and happiness. In contrast, empirical studies on happiness typically employ models of relative concerns that assume that increases in others’ income always ha...

Does thinking about time, rather than money, influence how effectively individuals pursue personal happiness? Laboratory and field experiments revealed that implicitly activating the construct of time motivates individuals to spend more time with friends and family and less time working-behaviors that are associated with greater happiness. In contrast, implicitly activating money motivates indi...

The main objective of this study is to examine the role which social intelligence has in happiness. Two hundred and forty nine university students (130 females/119 males) participated in the study. The Turkish Version of the Tromsø Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS-TR) and The Turkish Version of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire Short-Form (OHQ-SF) have been used as data acquisition tools. Pears...