Friday post: The secret to happiness is...

LOW EXPECTATIONS, according to Psychologist Barry Schwartz in this TED talk, where he mostly talked about the problems of having too many choices. 

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"Less stuff = more happiness"

Edit your life ruthlessly (TED video by Graham Hill)!

A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind

From the latest Science.

"We developed a smartphone technology to sample people’s ongoing thoughts, feelings, and actions and found (i) that people are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is and (ii) found that doing so typically makes them unhappy. "

Lessons learned: 1) try to stay focused, and 2) write down what is in mind when finding myself mind-wandering and come back to it later.

Australia is the 3rd happiest of all

Costa Rica is the first.

The result is intriguing. I cannot find the original study but the index was calculated with "an equation that weighs life expectancy and people's happiness against their environmental impact."

I don't think Australians have a small environmental impact and they live super long. So they must be super happy to be the 3rd on the list.

Happiness as a valuation tool

USING HAPPINESS DATA FOR ENVIRONMENTAL VALUATION: ISSUES AND APPLICATIONS

Heinz Welsch and Jan Kühling

Journal of Economic Surveys 23(2):385 - 406, 2009

KEYWORDS: Environmental quality • Happiness • Life satisfaction • Non-market valuation • Well-being

HT: Environmental Economics

The neurocognitive mechanism of envy and schadenfreude

"This means that people who tend to have higher pain or conflict are more likely to have a strong pleasant feeling once they are relieved from this pain...At the same time, ventral striatum activation without receiving an actual reward indicates that we did not evaluate objects solely by their absolute value but that social comparison plays a substantial role in evaluation (from Science)."

Drugs designed to boost the dating and relationship area of your life

Neuroscience is revealing the biophysical basis of love, Nature reports.

Sounds a bit scary to me, I have to say.

Happiness is more contagious than previously thought

From NYT, but it is hard to believe "a cheery next-door neighbor has more effect on your happiness than your spouse’s mood".

Most Chinese and Australians are statisfied with their countries direction

"Eighty-six percent of the Chinese surveyed said they were content with the country's direction, up from 48 percent in 2002 and a full 25 percentage points higher than the next highest country, Australia.

By comparison, only 23 percent of Americans surveyed said they were satisfied with the country's direction and only 20 percent said the U.S. economy was good.

Russians were the third most-satisfied people with their country's direction, at 54 percent.

Except for Spain, which placed fourth at 50 percent, the peoples of major European countries were far from content. Only about 3 in 10 British, French and Germans expressed satisfaction (IHT)."

I wonder whether they took the cultural factor into consideration when analyzing the survey result. Chinese generally has a stronger sense of "homeland" and that make them more likely to say yes to a question such as "Are you satisfied with where the country is heading?" I think this is more true in a face-to-face survey.

Here is a piece of evidence for Chinese's national pride, from the same article.

"Murphy said China's mobilization for the Games was something unimaginable in a Western country. "I cannot imagine London taxi drivers complying with instructions to wear uniforms and learn 100 words of Chinese for the 2012 Games," she said."

People of the same happy faces flock together.

Reported Nature. It also applies in the virtual world.

"Understandably enough, emotions are contagious over short distances and times. Waitresses who smile at their customers get bigger tips, and students with depressed room mates are more likely to get depressed themselves."

If you want the world to be a better place, smile. It has rippling effect.