The literature, my colleagues and I have found, also suggests that happy individuals are more creative, helpful, charitable, and self-confident, have better self-control, and show greater self-regulatory and coping abilities. The benefits of happiness include higher income and superior work outcomes (e.g., greater productivity and higher quality of work), larger social rewards (e.g., more satisfying and longer marriages, more friends, stronger social support, and richer social interactions), more activity, energy, and flow, and better physical health (e.g., a bolstered immune system, lowered stress levels, and less pain) and even longer life. Is happiness a good thing? Or, does it just simply feel good? A review of all the available literature has revealed that happiness does indeed have numerous positive byproducts, which appear to benefit not only individuals, but families, communities, and the society at large ( Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). teens (for a few of our cross-cultural findings, see Boehm et al., 2011 Layous et al., 2013 Sheldon et al., 2017 Shin & Lyubomirsky, 2017 Shin et al., in press-a, in press-b, 2020). Furthermore, we have carried out happiness-increasing interventions among Japanese engineers, Korean and Hong Kong undergraduates, Spanish, French, and German professionals, Canadian elementary school students, and British and U.S. Of course, parents’ happiness is impacted by myriad factors, including their age and SES and their children’s ages and temperaments ( Nelson, Killingsworth, Layous, Cole, & Lyubomirsky, 2019 Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, 2014). For example, despite media reports, we have found that parents actually experience more happiness and meaning than do non-parents–both when evaluating their lives as a whole, when going about their days, and when caring for their children (versus doing other activities Nelson, Kushlev, English, Dunn, & Lyubomirsky, 2013). To cast our work on happiness in a broader framework, we have also been exploring the meaning, expression, and pursuit of happiness across cultures, subcultures, and age groups. My students and I have found that truly happy individuals construe life events and daily situations in ways that seem to maintain their happiness, while unhappy individuals construe experiences in ways that seem to reinforce unhappiness (e.g., Liberman, Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Ross, 2009 Lyubomirsky, Layous, Chancellor, & Nelson, 2015 Lyubomirsky & Ross, 1997, 1999 see also Boehm, Ruberton, & Lyubomirsky, 2021). These processes include social comparison (how people compare themselves to peers), dissonance reduction (how people justify both trivial and important choices in their lives), self-evaluation (how people judge themselves), person perception (how people think about others), and dwelling or rumination. To this end, my approach had been to explore the cognitive and motivational processes that distinguish individuals who show exceptionally high and low levels of happiness. Thus, my earlier research efforts had focused on trying to understand why some people are happier than others (for a review and theoretical framework, see Lyubomirsky, 2001). I have always been struck by the capacity of some individuals to be remarkably happy, even in the face of stress, trauma, or adversity. Along these lines, my current research addresses three critical questions: 1) What makes people happy? 2) Is happiness a good thing? and 3) How and why can people learn to lead happier and more flourishing lives? Why is the scientific study of happiness important? In short, because most people believe that happiness is meaningful, desirable, and an important, worthy goal, because happiness is one of the most salient and significant dimensions of human experience and emotional life, because happiness yields numerous rewards for the individual, and because it makes for a better, healthier, stronger society. The majority of my research career has been devoted to studying human happiness. Distinguished Professor, University of California, Riverside
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