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2010-10-05 10:33:56
Stephanie Pappas
LiveScience Senior Writer
livescience.com Mon Oct 4, 4:50 pm ET
"Don't worry, be happy" may be more than just a wishful mantra. A new study
finds that people's happiness levels can change substantially over their
lifetimes, suggesting that happiness isn't predetermined by genes or
personality.
Psychologists have long argued that people have a "set point" for happiness.
Regardless of what life brings, the set-point theory goes, happiness levels
tend to be stable. A big life event could create a boost of joy or a crush of
sorrow, but within a few years, people return to a predetermined level of life
satisfaction, according to the theory.
The new study, which used a nationally representative sample of almost 150,000
German adults, finds the opposite. People's long-term life satisfaction can
change, the researchers report today (Oct. 4) in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences. In fact, a substantial number of people followed
over 25 years saw their happiness levels shift by one-third or more.
The study also echoed previous happiness research in finding that money doesn't
buy happiness.
"People with a lot of money are more satisfied with their lives... but mainly
due to the more interesting and challenging jobs they have," study author Gert
Wagner, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in
Germany, told LiveScience. "Money is simply a byproduct of good and satisfying
jobs. If you want to be satisfied with your life, you must spend time with your
friends and your family."
Wagner said that previous work suggests findings on happiness from one
developed country, like Germany, should also hold true for another, such as the
United States. In fact, a study in May found that in the United States,
happiness tends to increase with age.
I'm happier than you
The researchers used data from a study of German adults spanning from 1984 to
2008. Each year, the participants answered questions on their life
satisfaction, life goals and other measures like how much they exercise and
socialize.
By averaging life-satisfaction responses to even out any short-term effects,
the researchers plotted out the respondents' happiness by percentiles. Someone
in the 99th percentile, for example, would be happier than 99 percent of the
study participants.
People shifted in the rankings - and thus in their levels of happiness - quite
a bit. Just over 38 percent changed their position in the distribution by 25
percentiles or more during the study period. About 25 percent changed by 33.3
percentiles or more, and 11.8 percent changed by 50 percentiles.
Feel-good factors
So what contributed to long-term happiness? The researchers found several
correlations between life choices and life satisfaction:
Neuroticism, or a tendency toward anxiety, emotional instability and
depression, was most influential. People who married or partnered with neurotic
people were less likely to be happy than people who married non-neurotic types.
and family goals compared with career goals were happier. Women were also
happier when their male partners ranked family goals high.
study can't determine whether the happiness is related to religious views or to
the social circle religious organizations offer.
they felt their work hours matched their desired work hours. In other words,
people who worked more or fewer hours than they preferred were less happy.
Working less or being unemployed was worse than working too much, presumably
because underemployment is a financial blow, the researchers wrote.
associated with happiness. Working out made people happier regardless of body
weight. The only correlation between body weight and happiness was that
underweight men and obese women were more likely to be unhappy.
Mysteries of happiness
"In its extreme form, set-point theory was never credible," Daniel Kahneman, an
emeritus professor of psychology at Princeton University and the winner of the
2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, told LiveScience. "If it was taken to
mean that the only factor that determines happiness or life satisfaction is
genetic, so that people always come back to exactly to the same point, this was
utterly incredible."
The current study is a "useful" demonstration that life changes can influence
people's life satisfaction, said Kahneman, who was not involved in the
research. However, the correlations between certain goals and traits and
happiness doesn't necessarily answer the nature-versus-nurture question.
"They're suggesting that the goals are chosen. But the goals may be part of
personality," and thus partially genetic, he said. "The fact that goals matter,
like altruism and materialism, that really doesn't help us distinguish between
personality and circumstances."
More studies are needed that track large populations of people after
influential changes, like the enactment of new laws, said Andrew Oswald, a
professor of behavioral science at the University of Warwick who studies
happiness but was not involved in the current study. By comparing people who
lived under, say, a new state tax law that affected income to those who lived
in a nearby state without the law, researchers could begin to look at happiness
in a more experimental way, he said.
"The key thing is that life events good and bad do shape happiness over long
periods," Oswald said. "We are, in part, the product of our experiences. It's
not all born into us."