Pet Peeves and Happiness: How Do Happy People Complain?

The present study was designed to investigate the relationships among mindfulness, happiness, and the expression of pet peeves. Previous research has established a positive correlation between happiness and mindfulness, but, to date, no research has examined how each of these variables is related to complaining in the form of pet peeves. Four hundred ten male and female college students listed the pet peeves they had with a current or former relationship partner. They also completed measures of happiness, positive and negative affect, depression, mindfulness, relationship satisfaction, and satisfaction with life. Pet peeves were negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction, well-being, and mindfulness. Consistent with hypotheses, support was found for the mediating role of mindfulness in the relationship between happiness and pet peeves.     

Do Populist Leaders Mimic the Language of Ordinary Citizens? Evidence From India

Minimal understandings of populism focus on measuring explicit stances of antielitism and people centrism. What remains poorly understood is the way less overt forms of populist rhetoric enable leaders to emulate the language of common citizens to achieve electoral success. This article suggests that the study of the populist discourse also requires taking into account their implicit occurrences, that is, those conveying connect, closeness, commonness, and similarity with ordinary people. Expressed through performances of “layman likeness,” they enable populist politicians to dissociate from traditional ruling elites while enabling people leaders' identifications. Using a novel 261-million-word dataset of Indian political discourses—including the speeches of 11 Prime Ministers—to proxy such identifications, we argue that populist leaders rely on a mimesis of the common people. Three core mimetic speech items are quantified: intimacy, disintermediation, and simplicity. We use a replicable corpus-contextual multiword collocation technique to populate lexicons of pretested psychometric profiles as well as a threefold validation method. The analysis finds that current Prime Minister Narendra Modi communicates mimetic identification around his persona, indexing the linguistic markers of his stylistic, ideological, and institutional populist politics. We indicate that our context-aware method could also be of use to study the cross-regional variability of mimetic populism.     

Are The Very Happy Too Happy?

Although positive emotions undoubtedly confer benefits, one can have too much of it. There is probably a point beyond which enjoyment interferes with realism, yet it is unclear where that point is. The original States of Mind (SOM) model (Schwartz and Garamoni, 1986; 1989) proposed that a ratio of [positive] to [positive plus negative] affective/cognitive states [P/(P+N)] of about 0.62 is optimal, but previous research indicated that higher ratios may go with good mental health. The revised balanced states of mind (BSOM) model (Schwartz, 1997) suggests a higher cutoff, with ratios above 0.90 being dysfunctional. This paper reports a study of 72 very positive subjects (mean ratio = 0.85) and assessed possible dysfunction by means of questionnaires, role-plays, and physiological responses to induced stress. Signs of dysfunction were no more frequent among the most positive subjects (ratios of 0.90 and above) than among moderately positive subjects. This suggests that there is nothing wrong with the high levels of happiness in present day society. As yet, it is still not established how much more happiness will be too much. One possibility is that standard cognition/emotion measures need to be revised in order to detect truly excessive positivity in a sensitive manner.     

Happy PIIGS?

This paper investigates the causality dynamics between happiness and per capita GDP growth and the impact of the recent financial crisis using a VAR–GARCH model for 10 European EMU countries divided in peripheral and non-peripheral members. The rationale of the analysis is to look at the two different dimensions (mean and variance) of economic growth and happiness within a time-series framework. The results show that GDP growth has significant positive effects on happiness in all countries considered, particularly in the PIIGS countries; happiness volatility is responsive to economic uncertainty. The size of this effect is bigger following the most recent crisis period, especially for the PIIGS countries. Our findings confirm the important role played by economic growth in determining population happiness and, most importantly, provides new evidence on the existence of causality linkages between economic uncertainty and happiness volatility.     

Do Muslims in Germany Really Fail to Integrate? Muslim Integration and Trust in Public Institutions

Multivariate analysis of 2008 data from the German Social Survey (ALLBUS) provides firm evidence on the basis of one important dimension of political integration??individuals?? trust in the political system??that Muslims are integrating well into German society. The results are significant despite controls for multiple indicators of respondents?? social capital, socioeconomic status, post-material views, ideological position, partisan support for parties in power, assessment of government performance, interest in politics, and amount of television viewing. Furthermore, Muslims?? level of religiosity does not influence their level of political trust. The findings raise new questions about integration in that the significantly lower levels of political trust found among non-Muslims may negatively affect their views of government and its efforts to respond to Germany??s Muslim population. Skepticism and distrust of government by non-Muslim ethnic Germans may undermine important programs designed to bridge the actual value and cultural differences which remain the source of the ignorance that fuels prejudice and discrimination.     

Value Words and Lizard Brains: Do Citizens Deliberate About Appeals to Their Core Values?

Political elites often present citizens with frames that define issues in terms of core values. This study tests two competing accounts of how citizens might process such frames. According to the "passive receiver" thesis, citizens process elite frames automatically, without engaging in critical thought. In contrast, the "thoughtful receiver" thesis holds that the impact of frames may depend on how favorably or unfavorably citizens respond to them. An experiment in value framing produced evidence more consistent with the thoughtful receiver thesis: The message that welfare reform is "tough love" influenced opinion only among those it did not anger, whereas the message that welfare reform is "cruel and inhumane" produced an effect only among those who judged it to be strong. More generally, these findings suggest that active processing of frames may limit the power of elite framing.     

Do We Know How Happy We Are? On Some Limits of Affective Introspection and Recall

This paper aims to show that widespread, serious errors in the self‐assessment of affect are a genuine possibility—one worth taking very seriously. For we are subject to a variety of errors concerning the character of our present and past affective states, or “affective ignorance.” For example, some affects, particularly moods, can greatly affect the quality of our experience even when we are unable to discern them. I note several implications of these arguments. First, we may be less competent pursuers of happiness than is commonly believed, raising difficult questions for political thought. Second, some of the errors discussed ramify for our understanding of consciousness, including Ned Block's controversial distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. Third, empirical results based on self‐reports about affect may be systematically misleading in certain ways.     

I’m Happy, Hope You’re Happy Too.

While most empirical studies show stable and high levels of subjective well-being in Western societies, other studies have documented an apparently contradictory feeling of a loss of sense of community and high levels of discontent with the way society functions. Based on an analysis of the Social Cohesion Indicators survey (SCIF, Belgium), we demonstrate that subjective well-being and one’s view on society are two distinct concepts. Both measurements are related, however, with some spill-over effects from individual well-being toward the assessment of society. Most notably, ethnocentrism does not have an impact on subjective well-being, but it has a strong negative impact on the view on society. Ethnocentrism has a strong effect on the distribution of discontent with society. We hypothesize that ethnocentric actors might still be satisfied with their own living conditions, but that they feel increasingly alienated from the culturally diverse society they live in.     

“What Button Do I Press?” the Consequences of Conducting a Service Learning Project with Senior Citizens

In an effort to build interest in the two-year old service learning center and to fulfill its mission to integrate academic life with service in thoughtful and relevant ways, a competition was held to award developmental grants to faculty to create innovative courses incorporating service learning. The winning proposal from the business school used a business ethics course as the vehicle for formally introducing service into the business curriculum. This paper will tell the story of the intended and unintended consequences of building collaboration on several levels: between generations, between college and community, between faculty and college resources, between student teams, and between theory and practice.     

Europe 2020 Strategy and Citizens’ Life Satisfaction

The aim of this paper is to analyse whether the Europe 2020 Strategy approach might guide policymaking toward citizens’ life satisfaction. We find that the Member States closer to attaining the Europe 2020 targets report higher levels of satisfaction. That is, Europe 2020 Strategy, as a set of public policies, is aligned with people’s life satisfaction. In addition, and given the current context of rising economic and social inequalities in the European Union and their negative consequences for people’s well-being, we study whether an “inequality-extended Europe 2020 Strategy”, incorporating more specific targets for inequalities, is more aligned with European’s life satisfaction. Results show that inequality-extended Europe 2020 Strategy is more associated with life satisfaction than Europe 2020 Strategy. Thus inequalities do matter to European citizens and a refinement of the Europe 2020 Strategy could enhance the effectiveness of its programs.     

Do They Know How Happy They Are? On the Value of Self-Rated Happiness of People With a Mental Disorder

Quality of life is often measured using questions about happiness. This method presumes that respondents are able to judge their life. Research suggest that this is typically the case, but this is not to say that everybody can. In that context one may doubt whether people with a mental disorder can judge their life adequately. Happiness can be rejected as a indicator for quality of life for people with mental disorders, because of affective and cognitive distortions. We therefore checked the validity of happiness and satisfaction measures in the context of mental disorders. Psychiatric diagnoses were determined at baseline and at 12 and 36 months follow-up in a representative sample (N = 7,076) of the Dutch population, using a full Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Respondents indicated how often they had felt happy during the past month and how satisfied they were with their lives in general. The measurements have a satisfactory concurrent, ecological and predictive validity for people with mental disorders. Though the level of happiness is lower among the people with mental disorders, conditions for happiness and contentment appear to be similar.     

Can I Be Ill and Happy?

Can one be ill and happy? I use a phenomenological approach to provide an answer to this question, using Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between the biological and the lived body. I begin by discussing the rift between the biological body and the ill person’s lived experience, which occurs in illness. The transparent and taken for granted biological body is problematised by illness, which exposes it as different from the lived experience of this body. I argue that because of this rift, the experience of illness cannot be captured within a naturalistic view and propose to supplant this view with a phenomenological approach. The latter approach accounts for changes in the ill person’s relationship to her social and physical world. These changes, I argue, cannot be captured by a naturalistic perspective. I then propose the notion of health within illness as a useful concept for capturing the experience of well-being reported by some ill people. I present empirical evidence for this phenomenon and assess its philosophical significance. Finally, I suggest that adaptability and creativity are two common positive responses to illness, demonstrating that health within illness is possible. The three elements combined – the transformed body, health within illness and adaptability and creativity – serve as the basis for a positive answer to the question posed above.     

How Do Happy Leaders Enhance Team Success? The Mediating Roles of Transformational Leadership,Group Affective Tone,and Team Processes1

Extending previous research regarding the relationship between leader positive moods and team performance, the present study examined 2 mediating mechanisms that explain the leader positive moods–team performance linkage: transformational leadership, and positive group affective tone. Data were collected from 85 sales teams (85 team leaders, 365 team members). Structural equation modeling analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. The results showed that leader positive moods not only directly enhanced team performance, but also indirectly led to improved team performance through the explicit mediating process (i.e., transformational leadership) and the implicit mediating process (i.e., positive group affective tone). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Emerging ICT for Citizens’ Veillance: Theoretical and Practical Insights

In ubiquitous surveillance societies, individuals are subjected to observation and control by authorities, institutions, and corporations. Sometimes, citizens contribute their own knowledge and other resources to their own surveillance. In addition, some of “the watched” observe “the watchers” “through” sous‐veillant activities, and various forms of self-surveillance for different purposes. However, information and communication technologies are also increasingly used for social initiatives with a bottom up structure where citizens themselves define the goals, shape the outcomes and profit from the benefits of watching activities. This model, which we define as citizens’ veillance and explore in this special issue, may present opportunities for individuals and collectives to be more prepared to meet the challenges they face in various domains including environment, health, planning and emergency response.     

What Do You Do with Misleading Evidence?

Gilbert Harman has presented an argument to the effect that if S knows that p then S knows that any evidence for not- p is misleading. Therefore S is warranted in being dogmatic about anything he happens to know. I explain, and reject, Sorensen's attempt to solve the paradox via Jackson's theory of conditionals. S is not in a position to disregard evidence even when he knows it to be misleading.     

What Makes People Happy? Some Evidence from Northern Ireland

Using data on over 3000 individuals in Northern Ireland, this paper conducts an econometric investigation into what makes people happy. It draws a distinction between “objective” (income, marital status) and “subjective” (satisfaction with one’s standard of living (SoL); money worries; experience of poverty) factors determining happiness. In so doing, it takes a broader view of “economic status” than one defined solely by income: occupational class, mortgage status, financial worries, rural/urban residence, poverty experience, and, of course, income coalesce to form this, more complex, concept of economic status. Juxtaposed against this, is the concept of “context-free” and “context-specific” well-being. A particular example of the latter is the degree of satisfaction with one’s SoL and an important point of focus of the paper is the relationship between SoL satisfaction and happiness. A complementary point of focus is an analysis of the determinants of context-free and context-specific well-being. The paper also examines the effects of non-economic factors on happiness in particular on specific aspects of the ill-health of respondents and upon the quality of the areas in which they live. Having analysed these effects, it places a money value on each of the diversity of effects that act upon a person’s level of happiness.The analysis in this paper is based on the Poverty and Social Exclusion in Northern Ireland (PSENI) Project’s data and I am grateful to the Project leaders – Paddy Hillyard, Eithne McLaughlin and Mike Tomlinson – for permission to use these data. Thanks are due to Andrew Oswald, to one of the Editors of JOHS, and to two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. Needless to say, the usual disclaimer applies.