World Becomes a Happier Place

Those who use it more often think others are happier: study

(NEWSER) - One quick way to feel better about your life: Delete your Facebook account. Or, at the very least, spend less time on it. A new study suggests that the more you use Facebook, the more likely you are to believe that your friends are happier and lead better lives than you, Miller-McCune reports. Also contributing: the number of Facebook "friends" you don't actually know. The more of them clogging up your news feed, the more likely you are to think others are happier than you. More»

Survey shows a big nookie factor

(NEWSER) - Researchers going over surveys of married couples aged 65 or older couldn't help but notice one potential secret to a happy life in retirement: sex. Scientific American highlights the contrast:

• No sex: Of these married individuals, 40% were very happy with life in general and 60% were very happy with their marriage.
• Sexually active: For those having sex more than once a month, 60% were very happy with life and 80% very happy with their marriage. (The survey didn't examine responses from non-married seniors.)

$75K, assuming you've also got friends

(NEWSER) - How much money is enough money? Exactly $75,000, according to a new study. Economist Angus Deaton and Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman looked at data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, and found that people reported becoming happier as their household income increased—until it hit $75,000. After that, their daily emotional well-being flat-lined. “Your emotional well-being is as good as it's going to get at $75,000,” Deaton tells Gallup's Management Journal . “It’s like you hit some sort of ceiling.” More»

Another study finds that positive feelings are associated with longevity

(NEWSER) - Want to avoid death? Get happy. A new study finds that subjects who reported feeling the most happy were 35% less likely to die than those who reported feeling the least happy, according to USA Today . Interestingly, the researchers didn’t ask participants to recall past feelings of happiness; rather, they asked the 3,853 subjects to rate their feelings at 7am, 7:30am, 7pm, and 7:30pm on one particular day. “In many ways, this is a better approach to understanding how people actually feel than asking them general questions about how happy they are,” says a co-author. More»

Study finds people trade happiness for other benefits

(NEWSER) - Money cannot buy happiness, but most people would choose it anyway, says a new study of more than 2,600 people published in the American Economic Review . For example, if the choice is between a job that pays $80,000 a year and lets you get seven and a half hours of sleep a night, and a job that pays $140,000 a year but allows for just six hours' sleep, most people pick the higher-paying job. Other questions asked about salary versus living close to friends, going home for Thanksgiving versus saving for a vacation, and similar choices. More»