The Optimum Level of Well-Being: Can People Be Too Happy?

ABSTRACT— Psychologists, self-help gurus, and parents all work to make their clients, friends, and children happier. Recent research indicates that happiness is functional and generally leads to success. However, most people are already above neutral in happiness, which raises the question of whether higher levels of happiness facilitate more effective functioning than do lower levels. Our analyses of large survey data and longitudinal data show that people who experience the highest levels of happiness are the most successful in terms of close relationships and volunteer work, but that those who experience slightly lower levels of happiness are the most successful in terms of income, education, and political participation. Once people are moderately happy, the most effective level of happiness appears to depend on the specific outcomes used to define success, as well as the resources that are available.     

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.     

Understanding Middle School Students Life Satisfaction: Does School Climate Matter?

This study of 461 middle school students explored associations between perceived school climate and life satisfaction. At the bivariate level, higher life satisfaction co-occurred with greater perceptions of each aspect of school climate. Taken together, students’ perceptions of school climate accounted for 19 % of the variance in their life satisfaction. When controlling for the commonality amongst school climate dimensions, four of six dimensions (i.e., student interpersonal relations, student-teacher relations, order and discipline, and parent involvement in schooling) emerged as unique predictors of life satisfaction. Follow-up analyses clarified that parent involvement in schooling co-occurred with greater life satisfaction for girls only. Preventative strategies to promote youth life satisfaction by targeting the most salient aspects of school climate are suggested.     

The Ecological Level of Analysis: Can Neogibsonian Principles be Applied Beyond Perception and Action?

Is it useful to apply ecological principles, developed to understand perception and action, in research areas such as social psychology? Charles (Integrative Psychological &; Behavioral Sciences 43(1) 53–66 2009) warns ecological psychologists interested in this question that much time and effort can be saved through a backwards extension to or rediscovery of the New Realism tradition. In response, we analyze what ecological psychology risks to lose with such a backwards extension and describe existing extensions of the approach not considered by Charles. According to Charles, New Realism holds that: (1) we experience reality, (2) relations are real, and (3) things are what you see when you see those things. Our arguments originate from a comparison of these principles with six recently described ecological ones: (1) organism-environment systems are the proper units of analysis, (2) environmental realities should be defined at the ecological scale, (3) behavior is emergent and self-organized, (4) perception and action are continuous and cyclic, (5) information is specificational, and (6) perception is of affordances (Richardson et al. 2008).     

Can unpredicted outcomes be intended? The role of outcome-beliefs in children's judgments of intention

An adult-like concept of intention includes a deliberate action to achieve a goal and a belief that one's action (if successful) will cause the desired outcome. For example, good outcomes caused by accident or by chance are not believed to be caused intentionally. In two experiments, we asked whether children understand this connection between intentions and outcomes. Children played two games in which actions could produce unintended outcomes (i.e., causes were unplanned). Children sometimes received a desirable reward independent of intention. In Experiment 1, 4- and 5-year-olds mistakenly claimed they had intended the desirable outcome even when it was unexpected. Four-year-olds judged that they had not intended a deliberate action if it did not yield a rewarding outcome. Experiment 2 demonstrates that 6-year-olds seldom make these errors. The results suggest that 4- and 5-year-old children have not yet attained an adult-like concept of intention. Their inaccurate judgments regarding their intentions, given a rewarding yet unexpected outcome, can be explained by a positivity bias.     

Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction

Large samples of students in the Midwest and in Southern California rated satisfaction with life overall as well as with various aspects of life, for either themselves or someone similar to themselves in one of the two regions. Self-reported overall life satisfaction was the same in both regions, but participants who rated a similar other expected Californians to be more satisfied than Midwesterners. Climate-related aspects were rated as more important for someone living in another region than for someone in one's own region. Mediation analyses showed that satisfaction with climate and with cultural opportunities accounted for the higher overall life satisfaction predicted for Californians. Judgments of life satisfaction in a different location are susceptible to a focusing illusion: Easily observed and distinctive differences between locations are given more weight in such judgments than they will have in reality.     

Why Did They Claim Too Much? The Role of Causal Attributions in Explaining Level of Cooperation in Commons and Anticommons Dilemmas

The present study ( N  = 200) investigated participants' attributions for explaining the behavior of noncooperative and cooperative targets in a commons and anticommons dilemma. The attribution dimensions of concern for others, fear, (low levels of) greed, and efficiency were highly related and were interpreted to reflect prosocial orientation. Cooperative targets were judged as more prosocial, but these differences were more pronounced in the commons than in the anticommons dilemma. Crossover interaction effects were obtained for ignorance and fear, revealing higher attribution scores for the noncooperative target in the commons dilemma and the cooperative target in the anticommons dilemma. It is argued that commons and anticommons dilemmas constitute different frames of reference for judging cooperative behavior.     

The Role of a “Happy Personality” in the Relationship of Subjective Social Status and Domain-Specific Satisfaction in China

Most scholars have focused on group differences in overall life satisfaction, and little research has explored group differences in domain-specific satisfaction. This study investigated the variation in the effects of subjective social status on domain-specific satisfaction across personality styles (combined extraversion and neuroticism) in a sample of 1120 female and 745 male Chinese. Participants completed a questionnaire comprising demographics factors, MacArthur Scale, BFI personality scale and self-rated domain-specific satisfaction with interpersonal, health, political, financial, environmental, environmental, and cultural. The findings revealed that subjective social status positively, extraversion positively, and neuroticism negatively predicted six domain-specific satisfactions. Additionally, the results of the hierarchical regression analysis confirmed that the moderating roles of personality traits, but neither extraversion nor neuroticism alone moderated the effects of subjective social status on six domains of life satisfaction. Higher subjective social status related to a substantial increase in domainspecific satisfaction with health, political and environmental for respondents with high extraversion and low neuroticism. Taking together, from the “bottom-up” perspectives, these findings provide support to extend Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory to explain the relationship between subjective social status and domain-specific satisfaction.

     

Can independence be observed in a dependent system? The case of tip-of-the-tongue states.

Caramazza and Miozzo (1997) found that speakers experiencing tip-of-the-tongue states are able to report phonological information independently from syntactic information. They used this finding to reject sequential models of production, in which syntactic units (lemmas) are retrieved before form units (lexemes). To see whether this conclusion is warranted, we performed two simulation experiments based on sequential architectures. Both models we simulated produced statistically uncorrelated syntax and phonology despite sequentially retrieving lemmas and lexemes. Finally, we analyzed a corpus of Spanish errors, finding syntactic constraints on phonological word substitution errors that are not easily explained without sequentiality.     

The Ethics of Humor: Can Your Sense of Humor be Wrong?

I distill three somewhat interrelated approaches to the ethical criticism of humor: (1) attitude-based theories, (2) merited-response theories, and (3) emotional responsibility theories. I direct the brunt of my effort at showing the limitations of the attitudinal endorsement theory by presenting new criticisms of Ronald de Sousa’s position. Then, I turn to assess the strengths of the other two approaches, showing that that their major formulations implicitly require the problematic attitudinal endorsement theory. I argue for an effects-mediated responsibility theory, holding that the strongest ethical criticism that can be made of our sense of humor is that it might indicate some omission on our part. This omission could only be culpable in so far as a particular joke could do harm to oneself or others. In response to Ted Cohen’s doubts that such a mechanism of harm is forthcoming, I argue that the primary vehicle of the harmful effects of humor is laughter.     

Increasing Middle School Students’ Life Satisfaction: Efficacy of a Positive Psychology Group Intervention

This study identified middle school students who were less than delighted with their lives (reported life satisfaction scores between 1 and 6 on a 7-point scale), and attempted to improve these students’ mental health via a 10-week group wellness-promotion intervention developed from prior applications of positive psychology research. Complete data at baseline, post-intervention, and 6-month follow-up was gathered from 55 sixth grade students who were randomly assigned to the intervention condition (n = 28) or wait-list control (n = 27). Repeated measures analyses of a propensity score matched sample of 40 participants indicated a significant group by time interaction for global life satisfaction from baseline to post-intervention. Specifically, life satisfaction of students in the intervention group increased significantly, while the control group declined during the same period (although this change was not statistically significant). The intervention group’s gains were maintained at follow-up, but were matched by similar gains for students in the control group. No effects of intervention group were identified in the indicators of affect or psychopathology. The improvements in life satisfaction evidenced by students in the intervention group during the first semester of middle school are important given the adjustment difficulties that often appear during this sensitive developmental period marked by biological and educational changes.     

The Change in Middle School Students’ Achievement Goals in Mathematics Over Time

Through the use of longitudinal survey data the change of achievement goal orientations was tested in a sample of middle school students in mathematics as they moved from sixth to seventh grade. Achievement goals include task goals and performance goals, with the partitioning of performance goals into approach and avoidance components. Results indicate that all goal orientations were moderately stable over time. Task goals in sixth grade positively predicted academic efficacy in seventh grade. Performance-approach goals in sixth grade positively predicted performance-avoid goals in seventh grade. Multiple regression and multi-sample analyses revealed that the path from performance-approach goals to performance-avoid goals was significant only among students reporting high academic efficacy before the transition. The results suggest that individuals who feel efficacious in math while endorsing a performance-approach goal orientation may be particularly vulnerable to adopting maladaptive performance-avoid goals over time and with change in circumstances.     

Can Hope be Changed in 90 Minutes? Testing the Efficacy of a Single-Session Goal-Pursuit Intervention for College Students

Despite extensive research demonstrating relationships between hope and well being, little work addresses whether hope is malleable. We test a single-session, 90-min intervention to increase college students’ hopeful goal-directed thinking (as defined by Snyder et al. in, Pers Soc Psychol 60:570–585, 1991). To date, this study represents the only test of hope’s malleability in fewer than five sessions and contributes to the small but growing literature regarding positive-psychology interventions. This intervention is especially relevant to college students, given the increasing psychological distress and lack of perceived control noted among this population (Lewinsohn et al. in, J Abnorm Psychol 102:110–120, 1993; Twenge et al. in, Pers Soc Psychol Rev 8:308–319, 2004). Ninety-six participants were assigned to the hope intervention or one of two comparison/control conditions—progressive muscle relaxation or no intervention. Assessment occurred prior to intervention (pre-test), following intervention (post-test), and at one-month follow-up. Participants in the hope intervention showed increases in measures of hope, life purpose, and vocational calling from pre- to post-test relative to control participants. They also reported greater progress on a self-nominated goal at one-month follow-up. Counterintuitively, although hope predicted goal progress, hope did not mediate the relationship between intervention condition and goal progress. Implications of these findings and future directions are discussed.     

The Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale: Sex,Race, and Grade Effects for Applications with Middle School Students

Preliminary normative data for the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS) total score were collected from 2,987 South Carolina middle school students in Grades 6 though 8. Tests for gender and ethnicity (African-American vs. Caucasian) effects were non-significant. Statistically significant differences between grade levels were discovered, but the magnitude of these differences was quite small. Thus, a single set of norms is appropriate for use when interpreting middle school students’ responses to the BMSLSS.     

Can Constructive Mathematics be Applied in Physics?

The nature of modern constructive mathematics, and its applications, actual and potential, to classical and quantum physics, are discussed.     

Students’ Oppositional Behaviors and Engagement in School: The Differential Role of the Student-Teacher Relationship

Students presenting oppositional behaviors often display lower behavioral and emotional engagement in class as compared to their peers. Moreover, children in general are known to be deeply affected by their relationships with teachers while in school. It is therefore possible that such relationships could also influence the engagement of students presenting higher levels of oppositional behavior. As a way of verifying this hypothesis, the present study investigated the contribution of students’ levels of oppositional behavior to their behavioral and emotional engagement in literacy. Furthermore, it examined whether these relationships were different for boys and girls, or changed as a function of two components of student-teacher relationships: closeness and conflict. Three hundred and eighty five third and fourth grade students and their teachers participated in the study. Two series of linear regressions were conducted. Findings indicate that students who presented higher levels of oppositional behavior showed lower behavioral engagement than their peers. Moreover, students who had close relationships with their teachers reported higher behavioral engagement. Although closeness in student-teacher relationships protected students from behavioral disengagement, students with higher oppositional behaviors were less protected than students who presented lower levels of oppositional difficulty. Having a warm relationship with a teacher was also more beneficial for the behavioral engagement of girls, whereas a high level of conflict between student and teacher was more harmful for the emotional engagement of boys. This was deemed to be true whether the boys or girls presented high levels of oppositional behavior or not. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of the student-teacher relationship in fostering all students’ engagement in school.     

Can phonemic awareness be trained in kindergarten?

The effect of a training program designed to develop phonemic awareness skills in kindergarten was assessed in a study involving three experimental groups and two control groups. The degree of structure imposed upon the program was varied in the experimental groups. One control group was trained in non-verbal auditory discrimination, and the second control group followed the ordinary preschool program during the 6–8 week observational period. A clear improvement in the ability to segment and blend three-phoneme words was observed in the highly structured training cohdition, especially among the children with poor pre-test performance, while no clear changes from pre- to post-test were found in the other groups. It was concluded that phonemic awareness can be developed in prereaders outside the context of formal reading instruction.     

Does the Thought Count? Gratitude Understanding in Elementary School Students

Gratitude, although studied throughout history by scholars from diverse backgrounds, has been largely understudied in psychology until recently. The psychological literature on gratitude is expanding, but it is still particularly limited with children. The authors compared younger (first- and second-grade students; n = 30) and older (fourth- and fifth-grade students; n = 27) children on gratitude-related ratings surrounding gift giving vignettes that included either a desirable (e.g., a birthday cupcake) or an undesirable (e.g., a melted ice cream cone) gift. Empathy was also measured. Hierarchical regressions revealed different patterns of predictors for desirable and undesirable gifts. For desirable gifts, liking significantly predicted gratitude and liking predicted effort. For undesirable gifts, older children and those who perceived the target as liking the gift more predicted higher gratitude ratings. Finally, higher gratitude rating predicted both higher ratings of giver effort (i.e., intention or how hard did the giver try to give a nice gift) and liking of the undesirable gifts. More research on children's understanding of gratitude is needed but these results suggest that school-aged children take into account givers’ intentions and thoughts behind gift giving in determining feelings of gratitude. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.     

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.