In this article we will discuss about:- 1. The Nature of Emotions- Some Contrasting Views 2. The Biological Basis of Emotions 3. The External Expression of Emotion- Outward Signs of Inner Feelings 4. Emotion and Cognition- How Feelings Shape Thought and Thought Shapes Feelings 5. Culture and Emotion 6. Subjective Well-Being- Some Thoughts on Personal Happiness.
Contents:
- The Nature of Emotions- Some Contrasting Views
- The Biological Basis of Emotions
- The External Expression of Emotion- Outward Signs of Inner Feelings
- Emotion and Cognition- How Feelings Shape Thought and Thought Shapes Feelings
- Culture and Emotion
- Subjective Well-Being- Some Thoughts on Personal Happiness
1. The Nature of Emotions- Some Contrasting Views:
The Cannon-Bard and James-Lange Theories: Which Comes First, Action or Feeling?
Let’s begin with the Cannon-Bard theory, because it is consistent with our own commonsense beliefs about emotions. This theory suggests that various emotion-provoking events induce simultaneously the subjective experiences we label as emotions and the physiological reactions that accompany them.
In the situation just described, the sight of the audience and of your professor, pen poised to evaluate your performance, causes you to experience a racing heart, a dry mouth, and other signs of physiological arousal and, at the same time, to experience subjective feelings you label as fear.
In other words, this situation stimulates various portions of your nervous system so that both arousal, mediated by your autonomic nervous system and subjective feelings, mediated by your cerebral cortex and other portions of the brain, are produced.
In contrast, the James Lange theory offers a more surprising view of emotion. It suggests that subjective emotional experiences are actually the result of physiological changes within our bodies. In other words, you feel frightened when making your speech because you notice that your heart is racing, your mouth is dry, and so on. As William James himself put it: “We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, and afraid because we tremble.”
Until recently, most evidence seemed to favor the Cannon-Bard approach- Emotion-provoking events produce both physiological arousal and the subjective experiences we label as emotions. Now, however, the pendulum of scientific opinion has moved toward greater acceptance of the James-Lange approach—the view that we experience emotions because of our awareness of physiological reactions to various stimuli or situations.
Several lines of evidence point to this conclusion. First, studies conducted with modern equipment indicate that different emotions are indeed associated with different patterns of physiological activity. Not only do various emotions feel different, it appears; they also result in somewhat different patterns of bodily changes, including contrasting patterns of brain and muscle activity.
Second, support for the James-Lange theory is also provided by research on the facial feedback hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that changes in our facial expressions sometimes produce shifts in our emotional experiences rather than merely reflecting them. In addition, other research suggests that changing our bodily postures or even the tone of our voices may influence emotional experiences.
In view of such findings, the facial feedback hypothesis has been renamed the peripheral feedback effect, to indicate that emotions can be influenced by more than simply facial expressions. While there are many complexities in examining this hypothesis, the results of several studies offer support for its accuracy.
These findings suggest that there may be a substantial grain of truth in the James-Lange theory. While subjective emotional experiences are often produced by specific external stimuli, as the Cannon-Bard view suggests, emotional reactions can also be generated by changes in and awareness of our own bodily states, as the James-Lange theory contends.
Schachter and Singer’s Two-Factor Theory:
Strong emotions are a common part of daily life, but how do we tell them apart? How do we know that we are angry rather than frightened, sad rather than surprised? One potential answer is provided by a third theory of emotion. According to this view, known as the Schachter-Singer theory or, sometimes, as the two-factor theory, emotion-provoking events produce increased arousal. In response to these feelings, we then search the external environment in order to identify the causes behind them.
The factors we then select play a key role in determining the label we place on our arousal, and so in determining the emotion we experience. If we feel aroused after a near miss in traffic, we will probably label our emotion as “fear” or perhaps “anger.” If, instead, we feel aroused in the presence of an attractive person, we may label our arousal as “attraction” or even “love.” In short, we perceive ourselves to be experiencing the emotion that external cues tell us we should be feeling.
This contrasts with the James-Lange theory, which suggests that we focus on internal physiological cues to determine whether we are experiencing an emotion and what this emotion is. The Schachter-Singer theory is a two-factor view because it considers both arousal and the cognitive appraisal we perform in our efforts to identify the causes of such arousal.
Many studies provide support for the Schachter-Singer theory. For example, in one field study, Dutton and Aron (1974) arranged conditions so that male hikers encountered an attractive female research assistant while crossing a swaying suspension bridge high above a rocky gorge, or while on solid ground. Later, the researchers asked the men to rate their attraction to the assistant.
The theory predicts that those who met the assistant on the swaying bridge would be more aroused and would—to the extent they attributed this arousal to the assistant—report finding her more attractive. The results showed that not only did the hikers who met her on the bridge rate the assistant as more attractive, they were also more likely to call her for a date!
Opponent-Process Theory: Action and Reaction to Emotion:
Have you ever noticed that when you experience a strong emotional reaction, it is soon followed by the opposite reaction? Elation is followed by a letdown, and anger is often followed by calm, or even by regret over one’s previous outbursts.
This relationship is the focus of the opponent-process theory of emotion. The theory suggests that (1) an emotional reaction to a stimulus is followed automatically by an opposite reaction, and (2) repeated exposure to a stimulus causes the initial reaction to weaken and the opponent process, or opposite reaction, to strengthen.
For example, consider a surgeon who initially experiences very positive emotions each time she successfully completes a lifesaving operation. Later, however, she experiences a sharp emotional letdown. Over time, her positive reactions decrease, while the letdown intensifies or occurs sooner after each medical procedure. The result; she may gradually reduce the number of operations she performs or, at least, become increasingly bored with and indifferent to her work.
Opponent process theory provides important insights into drug addiction. For instance, heroin users initially experience intense pleasure followed by unpleasant sensations of withdrawal. With repeated use of the drug, the pleasure becomes less intense and the unpleasant withdrawal reactions strengthen. In response, addicts begin to use the drug not for the pleasure it provides, but to avoid the negative feelings that occur when they don’t use it.
In sum, opponent process theory suggests that a law of physics—every action produces a reaction—may apply to emotions as well. Every emotional action produces a reaction, and such cycles can have important effects on many aspects of our behavior. (An overview of the theories of emotion discussed in this section is provided in Table 10.2.)
2. The Biological Basis of Emotions
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Research concerning the neural basis of emotion is complex, so here we’ll simply try to summarize a few of the key findings.
First, it appears that the right cerebral hemisphere plays an especially important role in emotional functions. The right hemisphere seems to be specialized for processing emotional information. Individuals with damage to the right hemisphere have difficulty in understanding the emotional tone of another person’s voice or in correctly describing emotional scenes.
Similarly, among healthy persons with no damage to their brains, individuals do better at identifying others’ emotions when such information is presented to their right hemisphere rather than to their left hemisphere. The right hemisphere also seems to be specialized for the expression of emotion; for instance, patients with damage to the right hemisphere are less successful at expressing emotions through the tone of their voice than persons without such damage.
In addition, there appear to be important differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain with respect to two key aspects of emotion; valence the extent to which an emotion is pleasant or unpleasant; and arousal the intensity of emotion.
Activation of the left hemisphere is associated with approach, response to reward, and positive affect (i.e., positive feelings), whereas activation of the right hemisphere is associated with avoidance, withdrawal from aversive stimuli, and negative affect.
Further, anterior regions of the hemispheres are associated primarily with the valence (pleasant-unpleasant) dimension, while posterior regions are associated primarily with arousal (intensity). These findings have important implications for our understanding of the neural basis of various psychological disorders.
For instance, depression and anxiety involve negative feelings or emotions, but depression is usually associated with low arousal (depressed people lack energy), while anxiety is associated with high arousal (if you’ve ever experienced anxiety right before an exam, you know this very well!). This leads to interesting predictions. Persons suffering from depression should show reduced activity in the right posterior region, while persons suffering from anxiety should show increased activity in that brain region. These predictions have been confirmed in several studies.
Additional research indicates that structures deep within the brain, too, play an important role in emotions. In particular, the amygdala seems to be involved in our ability to judge the intensity, although not the valence, of others’ emotions. For instance, Adolphs, Russell, and Tranel (1999), studied a woman who had damage to her amygdala resulting from a hereditary disease.
This patient was shown slides of faces demonstrating various emotions (surprise, happiness, fear, anger, sadness) and also heard sentences describing various actions or events (e.g., “Jody giggled and laughed,” “Tom’s wife and children all died in the car crash”). For both sets of stimuli, the patient and a group of control participants who had no brain damage were asked to rate how the persons shown or described were feeling with respect to both arousal and valence.
Results were clear: the patient’s responses were quite similar to those of the control participants in terms of valence she could readily tell which emotions were pleasant and which were unpleasant. However, she showed impaired performance relative to the control group in recognizing arousal, especially for negatively valenced emotions (fear and anger).
For positively valenced emotions (e.g., happiness) her ratings were within the normal range. Indeed the amygdala plays a key role in our interpretation of emotional information relating to threat or danger for instance, signs of fear or anger on the part of other persons. Being able to respond quickly to such stimuli can mean the difference between survival and death.
3. The External Expression of Emotion: Outward Signs of Inner Feelings:
Emotions are a private affair. No one, no matter how intimate with us they are, can truly share our subjective inner experiences. Yet we are able to recognize the presence of various emotions in others, and we are able to communicate our own feelings to them as well. How does such communication occur? A large part of the answer involves nonverbal cues— outward signs of others’ internal emotional states shown in their facial expressions, body posture, and other behaviors.
Nonverbal Cues: The Basic Channels:
Decades of research on nonverbal cues suggest that this kind of communication occurs through several different channels or paths simultaneously. The most revealing of these involve facial expressions and body movements and posture.
i. Unmasking the Face: Facial Expressions as Clues to Others’ Emotions:
Modern research suggests that it is possible to learn much about others’ current moods and feelings from their facial expressions. In fact, it appears that six different basic emotions are represented clearly, and from an early age, on the human face- anger, fear, sadness, disgust, happiness, and surprise. In addition, some findings suggest that another emotion contempt may also be quite basic. However, agreement on what specific facial expression represents this emotion is less consistent than that for the other six emotions just mentioned.
Until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that basic facial expressions such as those for happiness, anger, or disgust are universal that they are recognized as indicating specific emotions by persons all over the world. Some research findings, however, have called this assumption into question.
The findings of several studies indicate that although facial expressions may indeed reveal much about others’ emotions, interpretations of such expressions are also affected by the context in which the expressions occur, and by various situational cues.
For instance, if participants in a study are shown a photo of a face showing what would normally be judged as fear but are also read a story suggesting that the person is actually showing anger, many describe the face as showing this emotion not fear.
Findings such as these suggest that facial expressions may not be as universal in terms of providing clear signals about underlying emotions as was previously assumed. These findings are somewhat controversial, however, so at present it would be unwise to reach firm conclusions about this issue.
ii. Gestures, Posture, and Movements:
Try this simple demonstration- first, remember some incident that made you angry the angrier the better. Think about it for a minute. Now try to remember another incident one that made you feel happy the happier the better. Did you change your posture or move your hands, arms, or legs as your thoughts shifted from the first incident to the second?
The chances are good that you did, for our current mood or emotion is often reflected in the posture, position, and movement of our body. Together, such nonverbal behaviors are sometimes termed body language or, more scientifically, kinesics-, and they can provide several kinds of information about others’ emotions.
First, frequent body movements, especially ones in which a particular part of the body does something to another part, such as touching, scratching, or rubbing, suggest emotional arousal. The greater the frequency of such behavior, the higher a person’s level of arousal or nervousness seems to be.
Larger patterns of movements involving the whole body can also be informative. Such phrases as “she adopted a threatening posture” and “he greeted her with open arms” suggest that different body orientations or postures can be suggestive of contrasting emotional reactions.
Finally, more specific information about others’ feelings is often provided by gestures—body movements carrying specific meanings in a given culture.
4. Emotion and Cognition: How Feelings Shape Thought and Thought Shapes Feelings:
In many instances, our thoughts seem to exert strong effects on our emotions. And this relationship works in the other direction as well: Being in a happy mood often causes us to think happy thoughts, while feeling sad tends to bring negative memories and images to mind. In short, there are important links between emotion and cognition—between the way we feel and the way we think. Let’s take a brief look at some of the evidence for such links.
We should clarify one important point before beginning. Here we’ll be focusing on affect relatively mild feelings and moods rather than on intense emotions. The boundary between emotions and affective reactions is somewhat fuzzy; but because most research has focused on the effects of relatively modest shifts in mood, the kinds of changes we experience many times each day as a result of run-of-the-mill experiences these will be the focus here.
For many years it was assumed that affective reactions are bipolar in nature; that is, that positive affect and negative affect represent opposite ends of a single dimension, and that our moods fall somewhere along this dimension at any point in time. However, in recent years this assumption has been challenged by the suggestion that perhaps positive affect and negative affect are actually independent dimensions so that we can be high in one, low in the other, high in both, or low in both.
This issue has not yet been resolved, although recent findings seem to offer fairly strong support for the idea that positive and negative affect are indeed two ends of a single dimension. But remember, this conclusion is tentative; the scientific jury is still out on this one.
How Affect Influences Cognition:
The findings of many studies indicate that our current moods can strongly influence several aspects of cognition. Here we’ll focus on other ways in which moods or feelings influence cognition. One such effect involves the impact of our current moods, or affective states, on our perception of ambiguous stimuli.
In general, we perceive and evaluate these stimuli more favorably when we are in a good mood than when we are in a negative one. For example, when asked to interview applicants whose qualifications for a job are ambiguous neither very strong nor very weak research participants assign higher ratings to applicants when they (the interviewers) are in a positive mood than when they are in a negative mood.
Another way in which affect influences cognition is through its impact on the style of information processing we adopt. A positive affect encourages us to adopt a flexible, fluid style of thinking, while negative affect leads us to engage in more systematic and careful processing. Why? Perhaps because we interpret negative affect as a kind of danger signal, indicating that the current situation requires our full attention.
Happy mood can increase creativity perhaps because being in a happy mood activates a wider range of ideas or associations than being in a negative mood, and creativity consists, in part, of combining such associations into new patterns.
A fourth way in which affect can influence cognition involves its impact on our plans and intentions in a wide range of social situations. For instance, recent findings reported by Forgas (1998b) suggest that negotiators who are in a good mood adopt more cooperative strategies and expect better outcomes than ones who are in a bad mood.
How Cognition Influences Affect:
Most research on the relationship between affect and cognition has focused on how feelings influence thought. However, when internal reactions are ambiguous, we look outward at our own behavior or at other aspects of the external world for clues about the nature of our feelings. In such cases the emotions or feelings we experience are strongly determined by the interpretation or cognitive labels we select.
A second way in which cognition can affect emotions is through the activation of schemas containing a strong affective component. For example, if we label an individual as belonging to some group, our schema for this social category may suggest what traits he or she probably possesses. In addition, it may also tell us how we feel about such persons. Thus, activation of a strong racial, ethnic, or religious schema or stereotype may exert powerful effects upon our current feelings or moods.
Third, our thoughts can often influence our reactions to emotion-provoking events. For example, anger and resulting aggressive motivation can often be reduced by apologies and other information that helps explain why others have treated us in a provocative manner. Further, anger can sometimes be reduced or even prevented by techniques such as thinking about events other than those that generate anger. In such instances, the effects of cognition on feelings can have important social consequences.
In sum, as our everyday experience suggests, there are indeed many links between affect and cognition. The ways we feel our current mood influences the way we think, and our thoughts, in turn, often shape our moods and emotions.
5. Culture and Emotion:
Emotional expression is guided by the cultural beliefs, values, and rules regarding appropriate expression. Research, too, has evidenced that expressed emotions vary across cultures and situations.
Cultural norms vary regarding expression of emotions, for example in China women are encouraged to express grief and conceal happiness, and in the United States the reverse is true. The Latin American culture expects hugging and kissing friends while greeting or leaving or crying at weddings is considered normal in some cultures and not in others.
Studies have revealed that most basic emotions are inborn and do not have to be learned and that emotion, especially facial expressions, have strong biological ties. For example, children who are visually impaired from birth and have never observed the smile or seen another person’s face, still smile or frown in the same way that children with normal vision do. But on comparing different cultures we see that learning plays an important role in emotions.
This happens in two ways. First, cultural learning influences the expression of emotions more than what is experienced, for example, some cultures encourage free emotional expression, whereas other cultures teach people, through modeling and reinforcement, to reveal little of their emotions in public. Second, learning has a great deal to do with the stimuli that produce emotional reactions. It has been shown that individuals with excessive fears (phobia) of elevators, automobiles, and the like learnt these fears through modeling, classical conditioning, or avoidance conditioning.
The display rules are learnt as a part of socialization process. For example, in Asian cultures emphasis is on collective effort, social connections and interdependence, and display of emotions such as sympathy, respect, and shame are more common than the display of feelings or negative emotions that might disrupt peace among group members. In contrast, Western cultures encourage individuality and people display emotions openly which are usually intense and prolonged.
A felt emotion may be communicated through other non-verbal channels as well, for example, gaze behavior, gestures, paralanguage, and proximal behaviors. The emotional meaning conveyed via gestures (body language) varies from culture to culture. For example, in China, a handclap is an expression of worry or disappointment, and anger is expressed with laughter.
Silence has also been found to convey different meanings across different cultures. For example, in India, deep emotions are sometimes communicated via silence. This may convey embarrassment during communication in Western countries. It has been observed that the Latin Americans and the Southern Europeans direct their gaze to the eyes of the interact ant.
Asians, in particular, Indians and Pakistanis, prefer a peripheral gaze (looking away from the conversational partner) during an interaction. The physical space (proximity) also divulges different kinds of emotional meaning during emotional exchanges.
The Americans, for example, do not prefer an interaction too close; the Oriental Indians consider a close space comfortable for an interaction. In fact, the touching behavior in physical proximity is considered reflective of emotional warmth. For example, it was observed that the Arabs experience alienation during an interaction with the North Americans who prefer to be interacted from a distance.
Basic emotions also vary in the extent of elaboration and categorical labels. For example Tahitian language includes 46 labels for the English word anger.
The Indian tradition identifies eight such emotions, namely, love, mirth, energy, wonder, anger, grief, disgust, and fear. In Western literature, certain emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust are uniformly treated as basic to human beings. Emotions like surprise, contempt, shame, and guilt are not accepted as basic to all.
Indeed the Indian tradition offers a very rich conceptualization of emotions and its role in life has been conceived and elaborated to encompass physical, social and spiritual planes of existence. Again, it is important to remember that culture plays a significant role in all processes of emotion. In order to illustrate this point let us consider the emotion of Lajja — an Indian emotion.
Lajja (shame) in the Indian context has a positive connotation. It means possessing the virtue of behaving in a civilized manner. To experience lajja is to experience a sense of graceful submission and virtuous, courteous well-mannered self; infact, it is equated with “respectful restrain.”
In Orissa, India, “Bite your tongue” is an idiomatic expression for Lajja, and also the facial expression used by women as an iconic apology in face of failure to uphold social norms. According to Shweder et al. (2008), Lajja is viewed as the salient ideal of South Asia because it is seen as helping preserve social harmony by helping women swallow their rage.
Lajja illustrates the dependence of emotional experience on social and moral context. The ethics of “autonomy,” “community,” and “divinity” and their importance across cultures affect their experience and expression of emotions along with the cultural conceptualization of emotion.
Also, emotions felt by those whose morality is based on ethic of autonomy, i.e., focuses on individuals’ striving to maximize their personal selves may not be the same as those whose morality is based on ethic of community where family is of main concern. Menon and Shweder (1994) state that “Lajja will not felt in a culture that sees hierarchy and exclusive prerogative of others as unjust than powerful object of others admiration and respect.”
Schimmack, Oishi, and Diener (2002) noted that Asian cultures have dialectical view of emotion, i.e., opposite valence like happy and sad were found to be compatible with each other while in the western view, these are perceived as conflicting with each other. The Buddhist practice of self-observation of emotional states can lead to self-understanding which can in turn help to develop insight into emotional problems and facilitate wellness.
The Rasa and Bhava theory of Emotions: An Indigenous Perspective:
The theory of Rasa and Bhav was propounded by sage Bharat in his treatise entitled Natya Shastra. The Sanskrit term, rasa, which means at once sap or essence of a thing and its taste? Rasa means to taste, to savor, or to sample but when the term is used to refer to the grand meta-emotion of esthetic experience, it is usually translated as esthetic pleasure, enjoyment, or rapture. It is a pleasure which lasts only as long as the dramatic illusion that makes “rasa” a reality.
Because it is possible for the members of the audience who witness a drama (the “rasik”) to experience enjoyment or pleasure (“rasa”) even from the apprehension of negative emotional states (disgust, fear, anger, sorrow), which in other circumstances one might want to avoid or repress, it is reasoned by Sage Abhinavagupta and others that “rasa” must be an autonomous meta-emotion, a sui generis form of consciousness (Table 10.3).
In addition to the eight basic emotions, some scholars have posited Shant (Peace), Bhakti (devotion) and Vatsalya (love for children) as emotions. Sage Bharata has described 33 minor or relatively transient (vyabhicari) emotions: repose or withdrawal (nirveda), debility or weakness (glani), doubt or apprehensiveness (sanka), jealousy (asuya), intoxication or pride (mada), weariness (srama), indolence (alasya), depression (dainya), anxiety (cinta), infatuation (moha), recollecting or turning things over in the mind (smriti), contentment (dhriti), shame (vrida), impulsiveness (capalata), joy (barsa), agitation (avega), stupor (jadata), pride or arrogance (garva), despair (visada), eagerness (autsukya), drowsiness (nidra), convulsions (apasmara), sleepiness (supta), awakening (vibodha), indignation (amarsa), dissimulation or hiding under false appearance (avahittha), ferocity (ugrata), thoughtfulness [matt), sickness (vyadhi), insanity (unmada), the “dying” experience (marana), fright (trasa), and hesitation (vitarka).
Emotions are the experiences of particular individuals resulting from particular causes. Shorn of all connections with particular persons, the emotion expressed in art is detached from the context of time and place, and thus is truly generalized. Abhinavagupta is very specific and clear about the importance of the ability of works of art to separate emotions from their common loci, namely the egos of particular persons at a particular time and place, leading to particular consequences, experiential or behavioral.
When tied to a specific context, the lure or threat of external factors leads to either pleasure or pain, satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the ego. Pried away from that context, the feelings involved in the esthetic experience are neither directly pleasurable nor threatening, and yet they strike a chord deep in the psyche of the esthete. They are enjoyable without being either pleasurable or painful, such that even fear and disgust are “relished”.
The experience of bhava or basic emotions takes place by a combination of emotions (sthayibhavri), transitory emotions (vyabhicaribhavri), eliciting conditions (vibhava), consequences (anubhava), and organic manifestations of emotions (sattvikabhava).
We attain to something of the capacity for variable but universal delight in the esthetic reception of things as represented by Art and Poetry, so that we enjoy the rasa or the taste of the sorrowful, the terrible, even the horrible or repellant; and the reason is because we are detached, disinterested, not thinking of ourselves or of self-defense (jugupsa), but only of the thing and its essence.
The recognition of the power of the art experience to rise above egoistic concerns is an important aspect of some of the most dominant values of the Indian culture. Rasa invokes the experience of bliss that is said to result from arduous pursuit of self-realization. The Sanskrit expression used to describe the relationship between joy of the art experience and the supreme bliss of Brahman is “brahmananda Sahodara,” which literally means “born from the same womb.”
It becomes possible through the process of communion which makes the person a competent receptacle of art (Sahridaya). Through continuous appreciation of art the person identifies with the object of art because his mind has been purified and made like a mirror. He is capable of having heart-to-heart communion with the art puts the artist in communion with his own self. Rasa is experiences as a revelation of the self. Through communion art transforms all the participants.
6. Subjective Well-Being: Some Thoughts on Personal Happiness:
Suppose you were asked the following questions: “How happy are you?” and “How satisfied are you with your life?” Suppose that in both cases your answer could range from 1 (very unhappy; very unsatisfied) to 7 (very happy; very satisfied). How would you reply? If you are like most people a large majority, in fact you would probably indicate that you are quite happy and quite satisfied with your life. In fact, research findings suggest that something like 80 percent of all people who answer this question report being satisfied.
In other words, they report relatively high levels of what psychologists term subjective well-being individuals’ global judgments of their own life satisfaction. Moreover, this seems to be true all over the world, across all age groups, at all income levels above grinding poverty, among relatively unattractive persons as well as among attractive ones, and in all racial and ethnic groups.
Does this mean that everyone is happy, no matter what their life circumstances? Not at all; overall, most people report being relatively happy and satisfied with their lives. Why? We don’t know for certain, but it appears that overall, human beings have a strong tendency to look on the bright side of things to be optimistic and upbeat in a wide range of situations. For instance, they often show a strong optimistic bias a powerful tendency to believe that they can accomplish more in a given period of time than they really can.
But given that most people report being happy, what factors influence just how happy they are? A recent review of research on this question by Diener and his colleagues points to the following variables. First, genetic factors seem to play a role. Some people, it appears, have an inherited tendency to have a pleasant, easygoing temperament, and this contributes to their personal happiness. Because of this tendency they get along well with others, and this can help pave the way to happiness.
Second, personality factors are important. People who are emotionally stable, who are high in affiliation (the tendency to want to relate to other people), and in perceived control (they feel that they are “in charge” of their own lives), tend to be happier than those who are not emotionally stable, who are lower in affiliation, and low in perceived control. In addition, some findings suggest not surprisingly that people who are optimistic, extraverted, and avoid undue worrying also tend to be happier than those who are pessimistic, introverted, and prone to worry excessively.
A third factor involves having goals and the resources (personal, economic, and otherwise) needed to reach them. Many studies indicate that people who have concrete goals, especially goals that they have a realistic chance of reaching, and who feel (realistically or otherwise) that they are making progress toward these, are happier than persons lacking such goals.
Finally, external conditions over which individuals have varying degrees of influence also play a role in personal happiness. Not surprisingly, people living in wealthy countries are happier than those in poor nations. In general, married people tend to be happier than single people, although this finding varies with how the particular culture views marriage. Also, people who are satisfied with their jobs and careers tend to be happier than those who are not.
Perhaps much more surprising than these findings are ones indicating that several factors we might expect to be related to personal happiness do not seem to affect it. For instance, contrary to widespread beliefs, wealthy people are not significantly happier than those who are less wealthy. Similarly, personal happiness does not decline with age, despite the fact that both income and the proportion of people who are married drop as people grow older.
Finally, there appear to be no substantial gender differences in terms of personal happiness. This is true despite the fact that women seem to experience wider swings in affective states than men. Apparently, women’s “lows” are lower than those experienced by men, but their “highs” are also higher; so overall, the two genders do not differ significantly in subjective well-being.
In sum, although many factors can have an impact on personal happiness, most people report relatively high levels of subjective well-being and are quite satisfied with their lives. Despite the many negative events that occur during our adult years, we tend to retain a degree of optimism and a positive outlook on life.