I was blessed to have the opportunity to attend a two-day seminar on “Caring in Education” led by Nel Noddings, professor emeritus from Stanford University. I had known of her work for many years, and was excited to hear her thoughts in person.

To care for young people and to be cared for should not be considered to be mutually exclusive or having permanent labels attached. In student-teacher relationships, we continually change places whether it be a brief encounter, and episode or a chain of experiences. The process of caring is a two-way street.

Attention is a fundamental component for teachers’ caring for their students. This type of receptive attention happens when a teacher understands the cues and things they need to know about a student or fellow teacher. It’s about really listening to others. Attention is accompanied by a feeling. Many teachers have a sense of “motivational displacement,” when the child’s motives become your motives. Noddings provides a fitting example: A teacher watches a young child learn to tie her shoes, and actually imagines tying them for her.

When we help young people learn, we engage several different strategies. Children learn or change behavior through 1) modeling, 2) dialogue, 3) practice and the consequences of that level of practice, and 4) confirmation. When we “confirm” to a student, as Noddings claims, “we help steer a person to his or her better self – and that person says: ‘Here is someone who sees something better in me.’” This is a powerful reinforcer and I believe this is the missing link to effective character education. When we provide students with ways of identifying their strengths and how and when they come alive, we offer them the opportunity to see the best in themselves. To that end, Noddings made an interesting distinction between “natural” caring and “ethical” caring. The ethical model is “what would I do if I was at my caring best.” This provides pause to think about the ethical implications of what a decision to act might be. Natural caring is more about caring as an end in itself – where caring has been developed to the point that is now a habit and you don’t even need to think about it.

Natural caring has it’s greatest chance of appearing when healthy relationships have already been forged. It is more likely that the call to action to care will happen around people you already know. She claims that teachers that are likely to be with students for a longer period of time may have more influence. This provides the environment to say “I want to respond to you in a caring way even when I don’t feel like it.” So good teachers establish conditions where natural caring flourishes.

Noddings says that “institutions can provide the conditions for caring. It is human beings that can provide the care.” Unfortunately, the dark side may appear in “misguided” caring. A principal may say that “I am hard on my teachers, because I care about the students. Last year I conducted a 3-hour “Building Strengths and Positive Emotions” workshop at a local elementary school. It was an enjoyable experience, and I gathered the sense that the teachers were “cared for” during that time. After I went on my way, I was later told that the school principal started off the afternoon session by telling the teachers that they were not doing a very good job in preparing their respective students for the state standardized tests – that, basically, it was their fault. His one-minute tirade effectively negated the previous three hours of “caring.”

At a very early age, young people tend to value what they are taught concerning care for self and others. Through attachment and bonding, people who establish trust, autonomy and initiative at a young age tend to exhibit care for others as they grow older. By nature, people typically entertain a certain sense of fulfillment when doing caring acts. However, crafting caring and compassionate relationships is founded on the premise that true care is that which benefits another, without regard to self – it is an end in itself.

Caring teachers aspire to “live in the skin” of their students. They work to see things through the eyes of those they care, which allows them to educate and treat the whole person. Although they cannot actually live in their shoes, teachers take the opportunity to imagine what their experience of tying the student’s shoes might be like.

On April 16 and 17, 2008, some of the leading authorities on Positive Psychology came together in Singapore to highlight research findings about happiness and well-being at the Simply-Happy conference. Speakers including Martin Seligman, George Vaillant, and Sonja Lyubomirsky spoke to an audience of 250 attendees. Global Leadership Academy (GLA) organized the conference, and below are some highlights of the events as told by GLA CEO Philip Merry.

Senia Maymin: How did the conference go?

Philip Merry: It all went pretty well – we had a full house of 250 people and it seemed to be real well received by everybody. We had a variety of govt psychologists from the police, health, prison and education departments as well as HR and training people from Multi Nationals. Most were from Singapore thought we had attendees from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand

Senia: Who were some of the speakers that people in the audience seemed to really resonate with?

Philip: All speakers were well received and of course Martin Seligman’s session went down well. Participants seemed though to resonate most with the Session by Proff David Chan from Singapore Management University, who really helped us understand the Singapore context of happiness and well-being.

Senia: What was the highlight of the conference for you?

Philip: Along with the conference, I had run a search for Singapore’s happiest person. This seems to have gone down real well with Singaporeans and we had real good press and over 200 applicants. The story reached over 20 countries with headlines like “Stressed Singapore searches for its happiest.” We awarded the prize at the conference and that was the [highlight] for me. The prizes were presented by Teresa Hsu who is 110 years old – and that was pretty special.

Senia: What surprised you the most about the conference?

Philip: The number of people who came up to me and said that the sessions had bowled them over and that they were evaluating their life goals and purpose based on what they had heard. I run a pretty successful global leadership consultancy and this was my first conference and my intention was to get Singapore talking about happiness. So to achieve these goals in the way we did was fantastic. In the week of the conference, we had five breakfast TV appearances, numerous press articles, and local radio came to broadcast from the show. I never expected such coverage and it was personally gratifying that what started as an idea in my head 6 months ago was able to manifest so well

Senia: Given this conference, what are the expectations for when and how the next Singapore or other positive psychology conference might be held?

Philip: I am already planning for the 2nd Asian Happiness Conference in 2009 and am in talks to increase the Asian content and speakers. If there is one criticism, it’s that we did not have enough Asian speakers. For example I work with the UN and govt of Bhutan and I plan to have the Speakers next year from Bhutan. There is much great research on happiness but it seems to be based on western cultural values – Positive Psychology needs to really look more at how happiness is seen in different cultures. I don’t mean just seeing how Asians respond to western notions of happiness – but would like to look at whether Asian cultural values change the very definition of happiness.

Forwarding an announcement about a free conference call to the first 90 people who call in next Monday 7-8pm EST.

Details:

VIRTUAL HAPPINESS CLUB
Professor Robert Emmons, Ph.D. author of the wonderful book Thanks! will be our next guest on the Virtual Happiness Club Interview. Dr. Emmons has written a very important book about gratitude, which is a significant part of happiness, in my opinion. Dr. Emmons wrote: “The evidence on gratitude contradicts the widely held view that all people have a “set-point” of happiness that cannot be reset by any known means: in some cases, people have reported that gratitude led to transformative life changes.” Don’t miss this opportunity to listen to and speak with Dr. Emmons.

Date: Monday, May 5, 2008
Time: 7:00 - 8:00 PM, Eastern Standard Time in the USA.
Your Phone number is: (712) 775-7000
Your Access Code is: 122856#.
The Virtual Happiness Club is free, just your normal long distance charges apply. The first 90 callers may participate. The Virtual Happiness Club meets once each month.

For more information, see below.

———————————–
VIRTUAL HAPPINESS CLUB with Dr. Cynthia Barnett. You can listen and talk with a great happiness teacher one day each month. Listen to an MP3 Audio interviews with Dr. Robert & Barbara Muller, Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, Professor Christopher Peterson, Ph.D., Professor Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., Senia Maymin MBA, MAPP, Sarah Shapiro, the daughter of Norman Cousins, David Ambrose, Robert A. Nozik, M.D., Tania Jedian & Marci Shimoff. You can listen to the entire one hour interview now at: http://www.HappinessMinute.com/VirtualHappinessClub.htm

By Dave Shearon

One of the great things about blogging or having a personal web site is that I can look back and find things I wrote years ago and still agree with. (The opposite is also true, though not as frequent for me, but that’s a subject for another post!)

One such post is this one from before I entered the MAPP program: “Do you dare to be an office Pollyanna?” It’s just a brief comment about a story in a Quebec paper I read while travelling, but I was positive about the concept. I still am, but I am also more attuned to the daring aspects of such an effort.

One aspect that makes it daring is the the need to earn respect and trust. I am involved in an engagement facilitating resilience and positive psychology training. The folks in this organization have never worked with me before and didn’t contract directly with me. So, they are forming their judgments as I deliver. I recently finished a second major contact with this group, and, along the way, I’ve been asked, “How do you think it’s going?” Each time, I’ve responded that things are going well, and I’ve followed that up with specific observations about participant engagement, questions, etc. In one recent exchange, however, one of the folks in the conversation asked a question along the lines of “Would you say if it were not going well?” These are really smart folks at a top-notch organization, and I understand a bit of skepticism. Of course, as the party delivering, they are asking me to critique my work, and there should be some skepticism about that. But, I felt this went more to my overall positive and optimisitic tone and response. (Should anyone who knew me in my earlier days when I was practicing law or even thereafter read this and start to choke, call me, it’s true!)

Optimism, a positive emotional base, hope, happiness, a strengths orientation and an appreciative inquiry approach to improvement — these things work. But, they don’t necessarily scream “smart, smart, smart — this guy is smart!” Criticism, negativity, and finding the fly in the ointment may serve that purpose better. At least, that’s what Teresa Amabile’s work suggests. She found that experimental subjects rated the writers of negative book reviews as more expert and competent than the authors of positive book reviews, even though independent experts in the field came to just the opposite conclusions! The belief that happy, optimistic, hopeful individuals (Pollyannas) are air heads who are out of touch with reality is alive and well in most of the working world. So, being such a person has its risks, at least on first impressions. And, being a person who admits to consciously having chosen to think in such ways, even when one can back it up with solid science, likely exacerbates those risks.

My response? That’s ok. Over time, opportunities come up to show that you can deal with tough situations, recognize times when things aren’t going well or when individuals aren’t performing well in a position. But, when you can still deal with those challenges in a positive, hopeful, optimistic, caring, building way, one not only wins respect for intelligence and competence, but admiration and good feelings as well. Remeber, we like positive people. Most of us would much rather work with such individuals. We want them for co-workers, bosses, employees, friends, and mates.

So, those who would join me in Pollyannahood, be of good cheer! You may not impress folks right off the bat with your devastingly brilliant critique of all the problems. But, your creativity, perseverance, and pathways thinking will wear better over the long haul and, in the end, they may well think you are plenty smart, but they are also more likely to think you are the kind of person they want to work with again. You could start a long-term, collaborative, supportive and satisfying relationship, both professionally and personally. That’s worth a little risk of the Pollyanna perception on the front end, don’t you think?

Keltner and Haidt (2003) characterize awe as an experience of vastness and accommodation. Vastness is not hard to understand. We feel it when we look at the stars, when we see hurricanes and their aftermath, even when we perceive charismatic leaders with human reaches far beyond what we can imagine for ourselves. Accommodation occurs when we are surprised in a way that challenges our comfortable mental structures. The challenge leads to confusion, disorientation, and sometimes enlightenment and rebirth.

Dacher Keltner and Jon Haidt

Elevation is closely related to awe. According to Haidt (2003), “Elevation is elicited by acts of virtue or moral beauty; it causes warm, open feelings in the chest; and it motivates people to behave more virtuously themselves.” Keltner and Haidt claim that elevation requires accommodation but does not involve vastness. I don’t entirely agree. I think part of the experience of elevation is feeling that the other person’s generosity or bravery or self-sacrifice is vast compared to our own. The accommodation creates a sense of new possibility, that perhaps we ourselves are capable of far more than we dreamed before.

For a quick experience of elevation, try watching the 3-minute movie, Simple Truths about Service inspired by Johnny the Bagger. Johnny has Downs syndrome and works as a bagger in a grocery store. Barbara Glanz gave a speech in his store, making the statement, “Every one of you can make a difference and create memories for your customers that will motivate them to come back.” The movie is about the actions that Johnny took, how customers responded, and the effect on other employees. There is a vast discrepancy between what people expect of a grocery store bagger with Downs Syndrome and what Johnny accomplishes. For people with low opinions of their own ability to make a difference, seeing this movie can spark accommodation, “If he can have such an effect, why can’t I?”

Haidt and Silvers (2008) performed a study with 45 nursing mothers. The mothers who watched a morally elevating movie clip leaked more milk into nursing pads, were more likely to nurse their babies and showed more warmth to their babies than those who watched comedy clips. From this, Silver and Haidt hypothesize that morally elevating experiences increase the release of oxytocin, a hormone associated with bonding, trust, and openness. There is also a short description of this study in Haidt (2006).

Why do awe and elevation matter? Experiencing elevation makes us feel lifted up and optimistic about the human family. We become more open to others and perhaps more likely to help them. We can choose experiences that are likely to lead to elevation for ourselves and others around us. Thomas Jefferson understood this when he advised Robert Skipwith to include morally elevating fiction in his personal library:

“When any original act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. … The field of imagination is thus laid open to our use and lessons may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.” Thomas Jefferson letter, August 3, 1771.

Thomas Jefferson’s Library

This brings me back to the the power of stories. What works would you nominate for the positive canon? What stories inspire you when you are feeling dispirited, fill you with optimism, generate awe and elevation, remind you to be resilient, increase your understanding of others? Collect them and remember them when you need them. Many of mine are the children’s books I’ve been collecting all my life. I’ve just started working on a positive canon of children’s books after people started asking me for ideas of books to read to their children. I’d love to hear about books that made a difference to you as you grew up.

References

Glanz, B. & Blanchard, K. (no date). Simple truths about service inspired by Johnny the Bagger. Retrieved May 6 2008 from http://www.stservicemovie.com/

Haidt, J. (2003). Elevation and the positive psychology of morality. In C. Keyes and J. Haidt (eds.), Flourishing: Positive psychology and the life well-lived. Washington, D. C.: American Psychological Association.

Haidt, J. (2006). The happiness hypothesis: Finding modern truth in ancient wisdom. New York: Basic Books. Review: http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/reviews.html

Jefferson, T. (1771, 1905). The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition (New York and London, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5). Vol. 2. Retrieved May 7, 2007 from http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php&title=755&search=%22skipwith%22&layout=html#chapter_86018

Keltner, D. & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe: A moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 297-314. Retrieved May 7 2007 from http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/keltner.approaching-awe.pdf

Silvers, J. & Haidt, J. (2008). Moral elevation can induce nursing. Emotion, 2, 291-295. Abstract retrieved May 7 2008 from http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:18410202

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Ted Hubbard for sharing the link to the Johnny Bagger with fellow MAPP alumni. In his words, “Positive Psychology in action at the workplace. Well worth the 3 minutes.”

Thanks also to Jon Haidt who provided the pointer to Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Robert Skipwith.

Who Do You Run To?^© by David J. Pollay

It was 1976. I was in the fifth grade. The fifty-yard dash record for Lake Bluff Elementary School in Shorewood, Wisconsin was set in the mid 1950s. I had a chance to break it. I walked past my classmates and stepped up to the starting line. I looked at my gym teacher, Mr. (Buddy) Wolf. He blew his whistle and I took off running. I pumped my legs and arms as fast as I could. 6.5 seconds later I leaned into the finish line and I heard the click of Mr. Wolf’s stop watch. I turned around just as fast as I could to hear Mr. Wolf say: “You just broke the school record!” My class burst into applause! I jogged back to everyone. My buddies slapped me on the back and punched me in the arm. I was in fifth grade heaven!

And then my thoughts turned to lunchtime. I wanted to get home to tell Mom, and call Dad at work. One period later the lunch bell rang. I sprinted out of the classroom, down the stairs, out the side door, and ran six blocks to my home. I opened the back door of the house, turned into the kitchen, and saw Mom plating up a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. I kissed Mom, and then I told her all about the race, the record, and my classmates cheering. She asked me to tell the whole story from start to finish, with every detail included. So, I acted out what happened. She clapped. We laughed. She hugged me. And then I called Dad and relived the whole experience. He was thrilled for me! It was one of the best days of my life.

Now, who do you run to in your life? Who helps you celebrate your achievements? And why do you run to these special people? Why are they the first on your list? What about these individuals attracts you to them? UCLA psychology researcher Shelly Gable, University of Rochester psychology researcher Harry Reis, and their colleagues discovered that there are four principle ways people respond to the good news of others, and only one of them makes a positive difference in a relationship.

• Active and Constructively: They’re “enthusiastic,” they’re “almost more happy and excited than I am,” and “they ask lots of questions.”
• Passive and Constructively: They try “not to make a big deal out of it, but are happy for me,” or they “say little, but I know they are happy for me.”
• Active and Destructively: They “often find a problem with it,” or they “point out the potential downsides of the good event.”
• Passive and Destructively: They “seem disinterested,” they don’t care much, or they don’t “pay much attention to me.”

Gable and Reis’s research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, uncovered that only people who respond actively and constructively to your good news have a measurably positive impact on your enthusiasm, joy and happiness in life. They further discovered that people who receive active and constructive feedback in close personal relationships report higher relationship well-being as indicated by measures of intimacy and marital satisfaction.

So, think about the people you love and care about. Do your children run to you with good news? Does your spouse? Do your friends? Do your employees? Think of the opportunities that you have to help bring out the best in the people you care about. Think about the joy you can amplify in their lives when you respond actively and constructively to their good news. And like my Mom and Dad did for me, think about the lasting memories you are helping create for the people you love.

Be there for the people you care about. Let your loved ones run to you.

David J. Pollay, MAPP, is the author of “Beware of Garbage Trucks!™ - The Law of the Garbage Truck™. His book, The Law of the Garbage Truck™, is due out this summer, and you can read his blog each week. Mr. Pollay is a syndicated columnist with North Star Writers Group, creator and host of The Happiness Answer™ DVD and television program, an internationally sought after speaker and seminar leader, and the founder and president of The Momentum Project. He is also the associate executive director of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA). He holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, and an Economics Degree from Yale University. If you would like to reprint Mr. Pollay’s columns, or include them in your blog, please email david@themomentumproject.com. David J. Pollay’s bio. David J. Pollay writes on the 2nd of each month, and his past articles are here.

One of the most exciting aspects of positive psychology is its scope for application – not only is it appropriate in therapy, counselling and coaching, it’s relevant in fields as diverse as architecture, design, art, economics, politics, business, linguistics, religion, education, philosophy …..It seems that the more you look for it, the more you’ll find it.

Individual vs. group application

With such a wide scope for potential application it seems incongruous that the science behind positive psychology has produced only a dozen or so validated interventions so far. This might be why positive psychology seems so much more applicable to (and acceptable in) therapy, coaching and other 1:1 situations, and why so many positive psychology books being published are targeted at the individual (e.g. Lyubomirsky, 2007).

As far as its application to groups, organizations and communities goes, the assumption is that if the individuals are thriving, so shall the wider group. Seligman was recently quoted in the New Zealand Herald as saying that positive psychology (and specifically those same validated interventions which increase individual meaning, engagement and positive emotion) “can quite easily be transferred to corporate life”.

Positive psychology lemmings?

This suggestion seems like common sense, yet there is little readily available empirical evidence to show that the application of the same interventions to groups of people (whether in businesses, schools , communities or other groups) will automatically lead to group flourishing.

In terms of individual vs. group well-being, is the whole always greater than the sum of the parts? A good example is the Losada line – we know that a ratio of positive to negative emotion of between 3:1 and 12:1 is an indication of flourishing, and that too much positive emotion (over 12:1) leads to disintegration. Could it be the case that too much trust or too much optimism (for instance) could be detrimental for an organization? By seeking to maximise the happiness or well-being of everyone in the group or organization, are we in danger of leading them, like lemmings, over the edge of the cliff?

Means vs. ends

In the same New Zealand Herald article, Seligman says that of the several hundred suggestions put forward for what makes a person happier, “Most … are just boosterism. What I try to do is extract the active ingredients and run random-assignment placebo-controlled tests on the different exercises and find which ones work and how long they work for.”

But it’s not just the means that need to be right, in the case of organizational or other group well-being we also need to decide in advance how the group outcome should be measured (e.g. increased productivity, trust, cohesion, profit, membership etc). And we need to be able to measure this outcome, and the increases or decreases in it, effectively.

In the case of the application to business particularly this leads us to a major difficulty - relatively few of the available empirically-validated interventions are inherently appealing to businesses. And once the intervention is modified to make it more acceptable, can one be sure that it retains its effectiveness?

Open Source PP – a more effective approach

One potential solution to finding workable and effective organizational interventions is to adopt the same open source approach that is used for software development. (i.e. the basic principles of an organizational application are freely shared and available to be modified). Lopez and Kerr (2006) argue that we need to use this highly-successful IT model in order develop and disseminate effective strengths-based therapies; this is equally applicable to the development of suitable organizational interventions.

Most businesses are risk-averse; they like to know what has been effective for other businesses before they’re willing to dip their toes in the same water. By sharing our experience of what works in organizations (and what doesn’t), and by collaborating on developments and improvements to group interventions, positive psychologists stand to gain far more, and far more quickly, than by the individual ‘naming and claiming’ approach, which is increasingly common in business.

One of the biggest benefits of open source, according to Lopez and Kerr, is that interventions can be empirically tested much more quickly, and, because they belong to the many rather than the few, will continue to be refined and improved as new insights are gained. An open source approach is also eminently suitable for a discipline like positive psychology which has touch-points with so many other areas – there is nothing to stop positive psychologists collaborating, not only with each other, but with designers, economists, architects and lawyers (or indeed any other profession). In fact, in the interests of both individuals, communities and organizations, there is every reason to do so.

References

Fredrickson, B.L. & Losada, M.F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist, 60(7), 678-686.

Lopez, S. J. & Kerr, B.A (2006). An open source approach to creating positive psychological practice: A comment on Wong’s Strengths-centered Therapy. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 43(2), 147-150.

Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The how of happiness: A practical guide to getting the life you want. Great Britain. Sphere.

Scherer. K - Importance of happiness in the work-place - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=314&objectid=10504853
accessed 04.26.08.

Images: 1) openDemocracy 2) dirk.ipernity.com

by Sherri Fisher

Positive Psychology is not without its critics who wonder why we need to have empirical data that something works if it seems to work fine without knowing about constructs and statistical significance. Others wonder how one could ever really parse the components to effectively extract the “drop” of truth, especially since the effect of interventions can vary widely. That is what researchers set out to do, capture that drop, and for those of us who work in the “applied” part of the field, we must keep a careful eye on what new discoveries say about established ideas. That means reading beyond the general media to the actual studies that are sensationalized in the news.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

Above is the world happiness map which shows by country where in the world the happy people are. A new study from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania seems to refute a widely held intuitive belief as well as one that has been well-researched. Despite what you may have believed, according to the new study, it turns out that money CAN buy happiness. Or maybe it says that money DOES buy happiness. Well, maybe both, but not exactly either, it turns out if you read the actual study and understand its constructs.

Here’s what is being challenged. The seminal study by Dr. Richard Easterlin says this: “Within countries there is a noticeable positive association between income and happiness—in every single survey, those in the highest status group were happier, on the average, than those in the lowest status group.” Was this caused by money? No, according to Easterlin. “People tend to compare their actual situation with a reference standard or norm” so it’s not really the amount of money one has but how close it is to the reference group. (This is called social comparison, and it is responsible in part for not only how happy we are when it comes to perceptions of wealth and status, but also intelligence, success, beauty—nearly anything about a person, including possessions, that has value to others.) In a country which is experiencing economic growth (this study looked at post-WWII Japan, for example), Easterlin showed that happiness increases with income, but only up to a certain point, after which it is tied to one’s genetic set-point and adaptation. This has been widely interpreted as “Money cannot buy you happiness.”

What the new study says is this: Subjective well-being (SWB) is higher on average in wealthier countries. There is not an adaptation effect as previously believed, as SWB continues to increase with growing income. There is a statistical link—a correlation—between income and happiness. In other words, if you enjoy a higher material standard of living, you are more likely to have a higher underlying state of “chronic” happiness. The generalized conclusion is that if you live in a wealthier nation you are more likely to be happier (have higher SWB) than someone in a poorer nation.

This measure of SWB is not the same as moment-to-moment happiness which varies widely, of course. We call that experienced happiness. You might live in one of the “happy” countries, and have a high level of material comfort and not be happy from moment to moment in your life, but when asked about your overall life satisfaction you might rate it as fairly high, especially if you are comparing yourself to someone with a lower standard of living.

The Happiness Gap

So what should you do now that you know that there is a correlation between happiness and income? Should you try to increase your wealth to become happier? No, not yet, because there is another study, and this one out of Princeton looks at experienced happiness, the “real time” or “on-line” emotion that you experience throughout daily activities, averaged over time. (Hear the researcher interviewed!) Keep in mind that one’s experiences over time may seem as if they would be the same as chronic happiness, but they aren’t. This is the “Happiness Gap.”

Remember that happiness is not caused by one thing. Studies show that about 50% of individual differences in happiness are determined by genes, 10% by life circumstances, and 40% by our intentional activities. Those specifics of how you spend your time have a much greater effect on your real-time happiness than how much money you make. What you do with that money does matter. Keep in mind that people overestimate the impact of an increase in income. Even lottery winners return pretty closely to their pre-winner happiness, despite a major increase in wealth. And our favorite in Positive Psychology…Other People Matter (covered earlier in articles including Advice from the Tribesmen… by Lucy Ryan, How do you share positive psychology with strangers? by Sulynn, Honoring Our Relationship with Time by Iris Marie Bloom, and The Happy-Well… by Sherri Fisher). Happier people socialize more with friends and family. They focus less on the objective measures, such as income, and more on what they do in—and with—their lives.

Despite a positive correlation between income and happiness, it is still unknown what economic measures could be used to clearly show what causes higher SWB in wealthier countries, so don’t give up your work–life balance just yet! Is it broad measures of economic development, changes in output such as GDP or productivity that drive individual happiness? Is it the availability of the things money buys like high quality health care or education? Is it the luxury cars, vacations and fine dining? (Advertisers hope so!) The authors of the new Wharton study say this: “Unfortunately, we lack the statistical power to resolve these questions…We should note that our analysis has largely focused on establishing the magnitude of the bivariate relationship between subjective well-being and income, rather than tracing the causal effects of income on happiness. We believe that further research aimed at better understanding the causal pathways will be fruitful.” Stay tuned.

The Truth

So what’s the real truth about money and happiness?

We don’t know exactly why, but it seems that people in wealthier countries are happier than ones in poorer countries; within countries wealthier people are happier than poorer ones; and economic growth in a country is correlated with happiness. If you are living in an affluent nation, be grateful you’re happy, and if you are not happy, remember that you can do something about that today. Here are some ways to get you started:

* set goals
* be more grateful
* use your strengths
* practice real-time resilience
* become more mindful
* identify your pathways and agency
* savor…

Finally, here is a way to find out how satisfied you are with your life by looking at your own chronic happiness. This is the most widely used measure of its kind.

___________________________________________________
The Satisfaction with Life Scale***
By Ed Diener, Ph.D.

DIRECTIONS: Below are five statements with which you may agree or disagree. Using the 1-7 scale below, indicate your agreement with each item by placing the appropriate number in the line preceding that item. Please be open and honest in your responding.

1 = Strongly Disagree
2 = Disagree
3 = Slightly Disagree
4 = Neither Agree or Disagree
5 = Slightly Agree
6 = Agree
7 = Strongly Agree

______1. In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
______2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
______3. I am satisfied with life.
______4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.
______5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.

***Take it here and get your score.

Images: clipart images and map.

I am amongst other things the Secretary of the Howard League in Scotland. John Howard was the 18th century founder of the penal reform movement: between 1775 and 1790 he toured Europe seeking humane forms of penal provision and promoting these in Britain. In 1921, under the guidance of Margery Fry, the Howard Association and the Penal Reform League were merged. There are now branches across the world.

Howard League Scotland holds an annual lecture to honor the enduring influence of a friend and colleague of mine, Drummond Hunter, who died in 2002. Hunter and his wife Peggy had been Prisoners of War in the Far East at the end of which incarceration Drummond, who stood 6’ 4”, weighed less than 50 kgs. Hunter eschewed bitterness about his experience arguing that it would be corrosive internally. Forgiveness lay at the heart of his response. And understanding. (For more about forgiveness, see The Miracle and Irony of Forgiving by Doug Turner).

By background a lawyer, Hunter became an inspirational policy commentator on health, penal policy, and many other matters. He was also a hugely effective health service planner and administrator. With great humanity, Hunter expected a lot of government, and got into trouble sometimes when he would not easily accept government failings. He argued that violence, crime, and penal policy should essentially be a part of public health.

In looking for this year’s Drummond Hunter Lecture, we found Nick Yarris. Nick Yarris spent 23 years in solitary confinement on death row in Pennsylvania. Acquitted, he now lives with his wife and young children in the UK and campaigns world-wide for penal reform (including of course abolition of the death penalty). He has an articulate and passionate ability to reach audiences of all sorts and sizes and has crystallized the lessons from his experience for governments, businesses, and the academic world, to change. And like Drummond, he shows astonishingly little bitterness. Yarris writes on his website (full story here):

On Dec. 20th,1981 I was stopped in the city of Chester, PA. for a traffic citation by patrolman Benjamin Wright… [who] grabb[ed] me by the arm and a scuffle then ensued as he attempted to overpower a terrified 20 year old man that I was at the time. … Just a few days before Christmas 1981 and I wind up being charged with attempted murder and kidnapping of a police officer. Although it would take a Jury less than an hour of deliberation to clear me of all charges, the damage had already been done. …

…I made the mistake of trying to con the authorities into letting me out of solitary and then hopefully out of prison on bail so I could run, I made up a lie and blamed a dead rival for the murder I read about in the news paper I had in the cell with me, hoping the police would believe me. It failed miserably as the dead rival turned up very much alive and with proof of his alibi, the authorities then decided I knew so much that I must be the killer.

Yarris has lectured to the Law Faculty, but never in the Psychology School. Much of what Yarris had to say fitted brilliantly with positive psychology. The damage done by rampant individualism, the erosion of confidence by many aspects of the ‘self-esteem’ craze. What I was struck by most of all is how both these figures (Hunter and Yarris) testify in their lives as in their arguments that at core, humans are more likely to be essentially good rather than bad. And this belief is of course fundamental to Martin Seligman’s argument in Authentic Happiness and other writings, and to George Vaillant’s argument in his soon-to-be-released Spiritual Evolution.

Perhaps, it would be great if future positive psychologists heard directly from Yarris. He would be delighted to travel back to Philadelphia and other places to say hello.

Images: Drummond Hunter, Nick Yarris.

“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A birthday is a special day for many of us. We all make wishes on our birthdays. Yet it seems that this is more of a ritual as most of us often forget our wishes and goals right away. Even if some of us have tried to achieve our goals, we might not have been able to resist the temptation of relinquishing our dreams on the way through. It has been said that fewer than 15 per cent of birthday wishes are realized: most are broken within two weeks. People could not stand the feeling of frustration when they fail to attain their goals or when they find their goals in conflict with reality. We may start wondering why our birthday wishes would make us so miserable. Aren’t they supposed to make us hopeful and anticipative of our future?

Step 1. What are your genuine wishes?

The “most-wanted” wishes for many people are becoming a millionaire, or even a billionaire. However, it is suggested by scholars that this would not bring us happiness. In a recent article in Psychological Science - “Zeroing in on the Dark Side of the American Dream” by Nickerson, Schwarz, Diener and Kahneman (2003) - it is found that people who rate financial success as the most important wish of their lives are generally unhappier than those who do not. This is particularly deleterious to satisfaction with family life. Other scholars even suggested associations between aspirations to financial success and depression, anxiety, and reduced self-esteem. According to humanistic psychologists (e.g., Maslow, 1970; Rogers, 1963), pursuing wishes or goals based on extrinsic rewards, contingent approval by other people, and “having” instead of “being,” distract the individual from the meaningful aspects of life, hinder the individual from achieving his or her inherent potential as a human being, and lead to psychological distress.

If aspiring to financial success does not make us happy, what kinds of wishes would do? According to Sheldon and his colleagues (2001), psychological needs are the key to enhance personal thriving. Topping the list of psychological needs that appear to bring happiness are autonomy (feeling that your activities are self-chosen and self-endorsed), competence (feeling that you are effective in your activities), relatedness (feeling a sense of closeness with others) and self-esteem. Thus we should pursue wishes that are related to development of self or relationships with others, and should be inherently meaningful to ourselves.

This is not to refute the importance of financial success. Yet more important is what lies beneath this aspiration to financial success - the pursuit of competence, autonomy, or merely a game with numbers? When we make wishes, have we considered our relationships with our families or friends? This determines whether your wishes are content and fulfilling.

< ![endif]–>Step 2. Well, I know my wish, what’s next?

Some people have their genuine aspirations identified, and yet feel gloomy and want to give up their aspirations. This might be because they do not set goals to get themselves closer to their wishes. Wishes and goals are not identical though they both orient us to our future. Goals are the steps we take in order to realize our wishes. They should be closely intertwined with one and other in order for us to be happy. We can’t set any concrete goals without wishes, and we can’t make our wishes come true without goals and plans.

If we have only beautiful goals and timetables but no wishes, we would easily fall into the trap of focusing so much on the steps and lose sight of our destination. We would have the risk of forgetting the reason to pursue the goals in the first place. The motivating power of goals comes from their connections to a bigger inspiring wish.

If we have only wishes without any goals to support them, we could easily feel overwhelmed by the enormity of our wishes and dreams. We need goals, both short-term and long-term. Short-term goals provide achievable intermediate targets that direct us toward our wishes. And, as Charles Noble said, “You must have long range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short range failures’’.

But some may ask, “I have set myself some goals, but why am I still a failure?”

Step 3. How to set a SMART goal then?

We cannot set our goals arbitrarily. For instance, we may refer to the concept of setting SMART goals in Industrial Organizational psychology and management. For goals to be SMART they should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Specific - Setting “exact” goals

Measurable - Using goals that can be measured

Attainable - Can you actually get there?

Realistic - Are you being honest with yourself?

Timely - Seeking to set time frames for the various stages of your goal

With these SMART goals, it is more likely for us to take actions and proceed towards our wishes. (For more information about goal setting theory or SMART goal, please refer to the suggested reading below)

Step 4. Why bother the process?

People suggest that while achieving our goals, we might be thinking most about whether we got what we expected to get. Yet I do not fully agree with this. Like David Watson has suggested, the process of goal pursuit, rather than the outcome, is the key to happiness and positive emotions. When we learn to enjoy the progression of attaining goals, every result we get could increment our feeling of joy, even if the progress is minimal. The pleasant sensation brought about by attaining a goal is momentary, whereas the process of attaining a goal allows us to realize the meaning of life. My argument is that only if we learn to appreciate the processes we went through in attaining goals, would we be able to achieve a flourishing life.

Life is like sailing in a gigantic ocean. Each ship has its distinct destination (wishes) and a distinct route (goals) it takes to reach the destination. We, with different personalities and abilities, are like different types of ships. We have to come up with our destinations (different wishes in different stages), and the specific routes (specific goals) to reach our destinations, which we have set up ourselves. It is not possible for us to sail without destinations; nor to reach our destinations without planned routes. Besides, it is impossible for us to get to our destinations directly, and we would have many chances to stop by different places in the journey (process). The journey to our destinations might be long and hard, and it might be frustrating if we always purely worry whether we will reach our destination. When we learn to appreciate the views of different places along the journey, we will find our life enjoyable and flourishing as well as be willing to move on when we may stagnate.

On my birthday today, I have reflected on my destination, planned the route, equipped my ship, and am ready to enjoy my journey. How about your ship? Don’t wait until your birthday - think about it now!

Suggested Reading:
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1990). A theory of goal setting and task performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Reference:

Maslow, A.H. (1970). Motivation and personality (2nd ed.). New York: Harper &

Row.

Nickerson, C., Schwarz, N., Diener, E., & Kahneman, D. (2003). Zeroing in on the

dark side of the American dream. Psychological Science, 14, 531-536.

Rogers, C.R. (1963). The actualizing tendency in relation to “motives” and to

consciousness. In M.R. Jones (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation (Vol.

11, pp. 1–24). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Sheldon, K. M., Elliot, A. J., Kim, Y., & Kasser, T. (2001). What is satisfying about

satisfying events? Testing 10 candidate psychological needs. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 325-339.

Image: birthday cake.