Something to smile about: The interrelationship between attractiveness and emotional expression

Previous studies have suggested a link between the processing of the emotional expression of a face and how attractive it appears. In two experiments we investigated the interrelationship between attractiveness and happiness. In Experiment 1 we presented morphed faces varying in attractiveness and happiness and asked participants to choose the more attractive of two simultaneously presented faces. In the second experiment we used the same stimuli as in Experiment 1 and asked participants to choose the happier face. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the evaluation of attractiveness is strongly influenced by the intensity of a smile expressed on a face: A happy facial expression could even compensate for relative unattractiveness. Conversely, the findings of Experiment 2 showed that facial attractiveness also influences the evaluation of happiness: It was easier to choose the happier of two faces if the happier face was also more attractive. We discuss the interrelationship of happiness and attractiveness with regard to evolutionary relevance of positive affective status and rewarding effects.     

A longitudinal experimental study comparing the effectiveness of happiness-enhancing strategies in Anglo Americans and Asian Americans

Growing evidence suggests that well-being interventions can be effective. However, it is unclear whether happiness-increasing practices are equally effective for individuals from different cultural backgrounds. To investigate this question, Anglo Americans and predominantly foreign-born Asian Americans were randomly assigned to express optimism, convey gratitude, or list their past experiences (control group). Multilevel analyses indicated that participants in the optimism and gratitude conditions reported enhanced life satisfaction relative to those in the control condition. However, Anglo Americans in the treatment conditions demonstrated larger increases in life satisfaction relative to Asian Americans, while both cultural groups in the control condition showed the least improvement. These results are consistent with the idea that the value individualist cultures place on self-improvement and personal agency bolsters the efforts of Anglo Americans to become more satisfied, whereas collectivist cultures’ de-emphasis of self-focus and individual goals interferes with the efforts of Asian Americans to pursue enhanced well-being.     

Evidence for mixed feelings of happiness and sadness from brief moments in time

Theorists disagree about whether valence is a basic building block of affective experience or whether the positive and negative substrates underlying valence are separable in experience. If positivity and negativity are separable in experience, people should be able to feel happy and sad at the same time. We addressed limitations of earlier evidence for mixed feelings by collecting moment-to-moment measures of happiness and sadness that required participants to monitor their feelings only occasionally. In Study 1, participants were occasionally cued to press one button if they felt happy and another if they felt sad. Participants spent more time reporting mixed feelings (i.e., simultaneously pressing both buttons) during bittersweet scenes than non-bittersweet scenes. In Study 2, participants reported their feelings only once. Participants spent more time reporting mixed feelings when cued during a bittersweet, as opposed to non-bittersweet, scene. These results extend earlier evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur.     

Wisdom and good lives: A process perspective

Wisdom and good lives are related. On one hand, judgments about whether wisdom has been manifested are often based on conceptions of what is a good life. On the other hand, wisdom, as manifested by human endeavors throughout history which contributed to the common good over the long term, can itself transform the standards that we use to evaluate good lives. In this article, wisdom is defined as a process encompassing three core components—cognitive integration, embodiment in action, and positive effects for oneself and others. One form of wisdom, which transforms our conceptions of a good life, is discussed, using Mother Teresa's endeavor as an example. Her endeavor which embodied an integrated idea—serving Christ by serving the poorest of the poor—generated positive effects for herself and others, and has transformed people's conceptions of a good life. The relationship of this form of wisdom to hardship, happiness, and old age is also discussed.     

Unikkaartuit: Meanings of Well-Being, Unhappiness, Health, and Community Change Among Inuit in Nunavut, Canada

Suicide among young Inuit in the Canadian Arctic is at an epidemic level. In order to understand the distress and well-being experienced in Inuit communities, a first step in understanding collective suicide, this qualitative study was designed. Fifty Inuit were interviewed in two Inuit communities in Nunavut, Canada, and questionnaires asking the same questions were given to 66 high school and college students. The areas of life investigated here were happiness and wellbeing, unhappiness, healing, and community and personal change. Three themes emerged as central to well-being: the family, talking/communication, and traditional Inuit cultural values and practices. The absence of these factors were most closely associated with unhappiness. Narratives about community and personal change were primarily about family, intergenerational segregation, an increasing population, more trouble in romantic relationships among youth, drug use, and poverty. Change over time was viewed primarily as negative. Discontinuity of kinship structure and function appears to be the most harmful effect of the internal colonialism imposed by the Canadian government in the 1950s and 1960s. Directions toward community control and action are encouraging, and are highlighted. Inuit community action toward suicide prevention and community wellness is part of a larger movement of Indigenous self-determination.     

Alone and happy: Personality moderates the effect of happy mood on social approach

Happy moods are believed to evoke an approach orientation and to broaden one’s potential courses of action. Although positivity is strongly associated with approach, social approach is a more complex behavior because interacting with other individuals can offer either positive or negative consequences. We provide novel experimental evidence that happiness actually reduces social approach among individuals whose happiness might be threatened by social interaction. Specifically, experimentally induced mood interacted with participants’ personality, such that participants who were high in social inhibition (e.g., shyness, rejection sensitivity) sat further away from another individual when in a happy mood. We suggest that happiness may produce a general orientation to approach other individuals except when such approach threatens mood.     

Do you believe happiness can change? An investigation of the relationship between happiness mindsets,well-being,and satisfaction

Three studies (N = 794) examined if beliefs about the malleable nature of happiness (growth mindsets) are associated with well-being and if this well-being had downstream implications for satisfaction with one’s relationships (Studies 1–3), health (Study 3), and job (Study 3). In Study 1 (N = 277), happiness growth mindsets were associated with greater well-being and greater relationship satisfaction. In Study 2 (N = 337), using an experimental paradigm and serial mediation, encouraging growth mindsets led to stronger beliefs in the changeable nature of happiness, which in turn was associated with subjective well-being, and, finally, relationship satisfaction. In Study 3 (N = 180), we replicated the downstream effects of growth mindsets of happiness on well-being and subsequently on relationship satisfaction and extended these serial mediation effects to health and job satisfaction. We discuss the implications of happiness mindsets.     

To Balance or not to Balance: Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Affect-Balance Scale

This study examined the psychometric quality of the Affect-Balance Scale (ABS) (Bradburn, 1969) using data collected from 292 middle-aged and older adults, living independently. The dimensionality of the scale was examined, the quality of individual items was tested, and the validity of the ABS was studied. Using a tetrachoric correlation matrix with the robust weighted least squares (WLSMV) estimation method of the Mplus program, we found that two moderately correlated (r = -0.37) constructs are needed to adequately account for the pattern of item scores in the ABS. Two of the 10 ABS items were found to be problematic. When raw sum scores were used in analysis, the correlation between the positive-affect and the negative-affect subscales was lower (r = -0.17), indicating that random and nonrandom measurement error masked the relationship between the two. While affect-balance correlated substantially with five criterion well-being measures, the negative-affect subscale (which constitutes half of the ABS) had a similar pattern of correlations, with only slightly lower magnitude. The theoretical construct of nobreak 'balance' is also questioned. The 'balance' scoring method (subtracting the negative-affect subscale score from the positive-affect subscale score) nets exactly the same score as does summing scores from both subscales together. Accordingly, the summed scores have the very same correlations with other variables as do the balance scores.     

Happiness and Domain Satisfaction in Taiwan

Happiness and life satisfaction are two empirically correlated but nobreak conceptually different measures of well-being. As an emotional state, happiness is sensitive to sudden changes in mood, whilst satisfaction is regarded as a cognitive or judgmental state. Using estimations from two empirical models, the aim of this study is to examine the determinants of happiness and satisfaction amongst nobreak Taiwanese people in a number of life domains. First of all, we attempt to investigate the individual characteristics of happiness by using an ordered probit model. Secondly, using ordinary least squares, we include an individual's value or attitude variables as nobreak determinants of the level of satisfaction with different life domains.Our results suggest that higher income is associated with a higher level of subjective well-being. Measures of comparison income are significantly negatively correlated with the reported level of happiness and job satisfaction, which supports the hypothesis that well-being depends on income relative to a reference group. Consistent with the results from other countries, married people report a higher degree of happiness and satisfaction, whilst the past experience of unemployment significantly reduces subjective well-being. There is little gender difference in happiness or satisfaction with different domains. Furthermore, individual's personal values have strong effects on both marital satisfaction and job satisfaction. The findings of this paper confirm that the effects of personal characteristics are fundamentally different in terms of happiness and satisfaction with specific domains of life.