Music to smile
Listening to happy music not only increases the feeling of happiness and puts a smile on our face. It also increases our ability to perceive happy faces around us, sometimes even when there are no smiling faces to detect, as demonstrated by a Gronigen University study published in the journal PLoS One . Sad songs, according to research, have the opposite effect.
Happiness according to gender
In primary school, boys are happier than girls. Specifically, according to a study by the University of Ulster (Ireland), only a quarter of boys feel happy reading, writing and going to school, while 44% describe themselves as “completely happy” doing these same activities . However, at the end of our lives, women feel more unhappy and dissatisfied with the achievements. Specifically, women are happier until they are 47 years old, and from that moment on, men take over from them, according to Anke Plagnol, from the University of Cambridge, in the Journal of Happiness Studies .
The more television, the less happiness
What you do in your free time defines how happy you are. A study from the University of Maryland based on data from three decades showed that happy people tend to be more involved in social activities , spend more time reading the newspaper and go to the polls more when it comes to voting than unhappy people. The latter, however, spend most of their time watching television.
New experiences
An American study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin revealed that maintaining a permanent state of happiness requires two things: having new experiences that bring positive changes and appreciating what we have instead of wishing for many things. In other words, variety is “the sauce of life,” and happiness is not so much about getting what you want but about valuing what you have.
Being happy lengthens life
According to an analysis published in the Journal of Happiness Studies based on 30 studies, happiness prolongs the existence of healthy people because it prevents us from falling ill. Researchers attribute it, on the one hand, to the fact that chronic unhappiness causes stress and alters the functioning of the immune system, and on the other hand, to the fact that when we feel happy we are more likely to choose a healthy lifestyle. Research conducted by the University of Nebraska with 10,000 adults also confirmed that people who are happy and satisfied with their lives are healthier and suffer from fewer chronic diseases.
Money and happiness
In 2018 the journal Nature Human Behavior echoed a study that quantified the amount of money a person needs to be happy. The scientists estimated an annual income figure from which people feel emotionally satisfied, and they also found that, based on this amount – variable depending on the country analyzed – happiness can stagnate or even decrease.
