Hope and Happiness, final count (N = 23).
Health | Hope | Harmony | 42 Unique | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Se | Study | Journal | Happiness Measure | Sample | Correlation of Happiness in Findings | Reviewers’ Agglutination of the Findings with the Three Categories Identified | Country | Culture | Quality Score (h5 Median) | ||
< 0.01. | |||||||||||
Harmony and Happiness, final count (N = 76).
Health | Hope | Harmony | 74 Unique | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Se | Study | Journal | Happiness Measure | Sample | Correlation of Happiness in Findings | Reviewers’ Agglutination of the Findings with the Three Categories Identified | Country | Culture | Quality Score (h5 Median) | ||
Personal happiness economic (upper income), upper social class, social capital (freedom of choice and honesty), community engagement, perceived good health status, active religious involvement/regular attendance to religious services, ethnicity/culture (Akan). | , Sub-Saharan Africa | , Sub-Sahara African | |||||||||
< 0.01). Items related to subjective happiness investigated the degree of happiness in relation to various life events. Non-organized religious activity (NORA) had a significant ( < 0.01) and a moderate positive correlation with IR (+0.172) and subjective happiness (+0.182). IR was positively correlated (+0.241) with subjective happiness with statistical significance ( < 0.01). | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
<0.05), and happiness was directly related to mental health, ( <0.05). Happiness, which is an essential dimension of life and related to functioning and success, generally is considered to comprise three main components—frequency and degree of positive affect or joy; absence of negative feelings, such as depression or anxiety; and the average level of satisfaction over a period. | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
< 0.001) and improving partner well-being (B = 0.20, 95% CI [0.12, 0.28], φ = 0.16, < 0.001). | |||||||||||
(+) indicates positive influence of the determinants with happiness categories (Health, Hope, Harmony). While (−) indicates a negative influence of the determinant on happiness. SD—‘Standard Deviation’.
This research received no external funding.
Conceptualization, S.S. and R.V.; methodology, S.S. and S.K.; software, S.K. and S.S.; validation, S.S., S.K. and R.V.; formal analysis, S.S., S.K. and R.V.; investigation, S.S., S.K. and R.V.; resources, S.S. and S.K.; data curation, S.S. and S.K.; writing—original draft preparation, S.S. and S.K.; writing—review and editing, S.K. and R.V.; visualization, S.K. and R.V.; supervision, S.K. and S.S.; project administration, S.K. and S.S.; funding acquisition, S.S. and R.V. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Summary: New research adds to the growing body of evidence that happiness not only feels good, it is good for your physical health, too.
Good health and a happy outlook on life may seem like equally worthy yet independent goals. A growing body of research , however, bolsters the case that a happy outlook can have a very real impact on your physical well-being.
New research published in the journal Psychological Science shows that both online and in-person psychological interventions—tactics specifically designed to boost subjective well-being—have positive effects on self-reported physical health. The online and in-person interventions were equally effective.
“Our research is one of the first randomized controlled trials to suggest that increasing the psychological well-being even of generally healthy adults can have benefits to their physical health.” Kostadin Kushlev [Georgetown University]
“Though prior studies have shown that happier people tend to have better cardiovascular health and immune-system responses than their less happy counterparts,” said Kostadin Kushlev , a professor in Georgetown University’s Department of Psychology and one of the authors of the paper, “our research is one of the first randomized controlled trials to suggest that increasing the psychological well-being even of generally healthy adults can have benefits to their physical health.”
Intervention for Healthy Outcomes
Over the course of six months, Kushlev and his colleagues at the University of Virginia and the University of British Columbia examined how improving the subjective well-being of people who were not hospitalized or otherwise undergoing medical treatment affected their physical health.
A group of 155 adults between the ages of 25 and 75 were randomly assigned either to a wait-list control condition or a 12-week positive psychological intervention that addressed three different sources of happiness: the “Core Self,” the “Experiential Self,” and the “Social Self.”
The first 3 weeks of the program focused on the Core Self, helping individuals identify their personal values, strengths, and goals. The next 5 weeks focused on the Experiential Self, covering emotion regulation and mindfulness. This phase also gave participants tools to identify maladaptive patterns of thinking. The final 4 weeks of the program addressed the Social Self, teaching techniques to cultivate gratitude, foster positive social interactions, and engage more with their community.
The program, called Enduring Happiness and Continued Self-Enhancement (ENHANCE), consisted of weekly modules either led by a trained clinician or completed individually using a customized online platform. None of the modules focused on promoting physical health or health behaviors, such as sleep, exercise, or diet.
Each module featured an hour-long lesson with information and exercises; a weekly writing assignment, such as journaling; and an active behavioral component, such as guided meditation .
“All of the activities were evidence-based tools to increase subjective well-being,” Kushlev noted.
When the program concluded, the participants were given individual evaluations and recommendations of which modules would be most effective at improving their happiness in the long term. Three months after the conclusion of the trial, researchers followed up with the participants to evaluate their well-being and health.
A Happy Future
Participants who received the intervention reported increasing levels of subjective well-being over the course of the 12-week program. They also reported fewer sick days than control participants throughout the program and 3 months after it ended.
The online mode of administering the program was shown to be as effective as the in-person mode led by trained facilitators.
“These results speak to the potential of such interventions to be scaled in ways that reach more people in environments such as college campuses to help increase happiness and promote better mental health among students,” Kushlev said.
Psychological Science , the flagship journal of APS, is the leading peer-reviewed journal publishing empirical research spanning the entire spectrum of the science of psychology. For a copy of this article, “ Does Happiness Improve Health? Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial ,” and access to other research in Psychological Science , contact [email protected] .
Kushlev, K., et al, (2020) Does Happiness Improve Health? Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial. Psychological Science , https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620919673
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Psychological scientists once equated happiness with well-being, but recent research suggests that there is significant cultural variation in the ingredients of a good life.
Lesson plans about the emotions within and between us and the positives of autism, ASD, and other psychological disorders.
The founding editor of APS’s Perspectives on Psychological Science journal, he received the APS William James Fellow Award in 2013.
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What leads to happiness? The 2022 World Happiness Report (WHR) identified Finland as the happiest country. The United States slotted in at No. 16 — not bad when you consider the report ranked 146 countries.
Every year, lists like the WHR attempt to measure and quantify happiness. (It’s a collaborative effort of universities, research groups, and Gallup World Poll data.)
But this task is easier said than done. What makes a country and its people happy? Is it their overall sense of well-being? Or their daily experiences of positive emotions like laughter or enjoyment? The WHR relies on these and many other measures to assemble its list, and its authors acknowledge that even defining the word “happiness” can be tricky.
Psychologists who study happiness agree. “When we ask people what it means to be happy, we get a huge variety of responses,” says Iris Mauss, PhD , a professor of psychology at the University of California in Berkeley. “A lot of people say happiness means having positive feelings, but then if we ask them what feelings specifically, some say it means to be excited and others say it means to be peaceful.”
Other people, she says, don’t talk about emotions at all. They say that happiness is knowing that their life is better now than it was in the past or that their life has meaning and purpose . Dr. Mauss and her colleagues have also found that people from different cultures sometimes define happiness in starkly different ways.
Happiness, in other words, is a slippery concept to get a handle on. But there is some consistency in the ways that experts define and evaluate it. And their work has found that greater happiness is both achievable and associated with a range of health benefits.
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines happiness as “an emotion of joy, gladness, satisfaction, and well-being.”
Many of us would agree with the APA’s definition, yet the more you look at it, the more it can seem incomplete. For example, you may feel all of those emotions at one moment, but an hour later you may feel none of them. So are you a happy person or not?
“When people talk about happiness, they’re usually talking about their overall well-being,” says Robin Stern, PhD , a psychoanalyst and the associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence in New Haven, Connecticut. Emotions like joy and excitement can contribute to well-being, she says, but so do broader feelings of fulfillment, contentment, and achievement.
If you read through the published research on happiness, you find that most of it actually focuses on well-being. And experts who study well-being often break down that concept into two categories: hedonia and eudaimonia.
“Hedonic well-being focuses on feelings of positive affect and life satisfaction,” according to the authors of a study published in 2021 in Psychological Review (PDF) . “Eudaimonic well-being focuses on a sense of optimal functioning and realizing potential.”
Any complete definition of happiness probably needs to acknowledge both sides of the well-being coin.
As the APA’s definition makes plain, happiness can mean a lot of things. Pleasure, joy, excitement, contentment, and satisfaction could all be considered types or shades of happiness. But so could deeper senses of contentment or life satisfaction, Dr. Stern says.
Apart from these distinctions, researchers have also found that people in different parts of the world may define happiness in different ways.
“Cross-culturally, there are differences in how people think about happiness,” Mauss says. “In the West, we tend to understand happiness as more of an individualistic state, but in some East Asian cultures, it’s more a social concern.”
For example, an American may define happiness in terms of their own feelings or successes. But some of Mauss’ research shows that people in many East Asian cultures think of happiness as a state of social harmony, family connectedness, and community well-being. In other words, some people’s idea of happiness is less about personal joy or achievement and more strongly associated with community cohesion and harmony.
Interestingly, more of her research has found that when people in the United States and other Western nations place a high value on being happy, this emphasis is associated with higher rates of depression symptoms and diagnoses . While being happy is great, her work suggests that actively trying to be happier can backfire. (More on what psychologists say actually works to boost happiness below.)
Going back to the APA’s definition, happiness is associated with feelings like joy, gladness, satisfaction, and well-being.
Other researchers have found that, at least in the United States, many people say that happiness involves no negative feelings. (In most other countries, people don’t see happiness as a total absence of negative feelings.) According to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology , feelings of inner harmony, meaning, and positive emotions also describe what happiness feels like.
“Happier people are healthier.” That’s according to the authors of a study published in 2020 in Psychological Science .
Like most of the research on happiness, that study defines happiness in terms of subjective well-being. Researchers asked participants questions about how they feel and used the answers to determine their well-being. The authors say that there’s ample evidence linking higher levels of subjective well-being to health benefits.
Some of those research-backed health benefits include:
How could subjective well-being contribute to all these health benefits? A lot of research, including the aforementioned paper linking happiness to lower stress and anxiety, points to the effect of well-being on the body’s nervous system. Specifically, elevated levels of well-being are associated with less activation of the body’s sympathetic nervous system, also known as the fight-or-flight system.
Happiness and positive attitudes toward life may prevent activation of physiological reactions to some life events that could otherwise have cumulative detrimental effects on health, researchers explained in the Social Science & Medicine paper. That study cites reduced activation of the automatic nervous system, which includes the fight-or-flight response, as one of the likeliest benefits of improved well-being.
While there’s ample evidence linking happiness and well-being with health benefits, it’s less clear if becoming happier will make you healthier. Some research, including the 2020 Psychological Science paper, has found that when people improved their well-being, they experienced fewer sick days. “This work provides some evidence for a causal effect of subjective well-being on self-reported physical health,” according to the authors.
Can you be too happy? Not really. If you feel good, that’s a good thing.
However, psychologists have begun to examine a concept called “toxic positivity,” which researchers at the University of Winnipeg in Canada have described as a tendency to “reject, deny, or displace” any negative feelings or experiences in an attempt to see the world through rose-colored glasses.
It’s trying to force happiness or positivity when neither is naturally present that can backfire.
“To think that on a gray day, with a backdrop of a recent death in the family, or stress at work , or illness, or other bad news, that you should feel positive or happy, that’s not realistic or even healthy,” Stern says.
While we may regard some feelings as negative or difficult, they are still normal and healthy aspects of emotional experience, she says.
They can also be valuable pieces of feedback. “If you feel afraid or upset or anxious because of an unhealthy relationship or work environment, those feelings are information that can help you make decisions,” she says. They may help lead you to make positive, constructive changes in your life.
Many books, blogs, articles, and motivational speakers have attempted to answer this question. The list of things you could do to boost your happiness and well-being is long, and the specifics are in large part determined by your individual preferences and goals. But here are some do's and don’ts supported by both experts and newer research.
Recent research (PDF) suggests that “psychological richness” may be a major component of well-being. “We define psychological richness as a life full of interesting and perspective-changing experiences,” says Shigehiro Oishi, PhD , a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and coauthor of that research.
“Novel activities, games, sports, and arts help us deal with boredom inherent in life,” he adds.
New experiences also foster curiosity, which research shows is a major contributor to well-being. Likewise, a lot of research has linked strong social relationships to improved happiness and well-being.
“Close relationships and warm connections with other people are one of the biggest elements of happiness,” Stern says. “If work or personal achievement or improvement are the only things in your life, you may be missing a big piece of what makes us humans happy or content.”
She says that when most people recall their happiest moments, most of those memories are centered around social connections and relationships, not solitary pursuits.
According to a review published in 2021 , there’s strong evidence linking feelings of gratitude to higher levels of happiness and well-being. Studies have also found that cultivating gratitude can actually boost happiness.
“Gratitude is our best weapon — an ally to counter these internal and external threats that rob us of sustainable joy,” says Robert Emmons, PhD , a professor of psychology at the University of California in Davis.
He says that making an effort to tell the people in your life that you’re grateful for them — and why — is one way to cultivate gratitude. Another is taking time each day to think about the things you are grateful for.
Some of Dr. Emmons' work has found that keeping a daily journal in which you write what you’re grateful for can also lead to greater levels of positivity (Stern was a coauthor).
Mindfulness comes up so often these days that it almost feels like a cliche. But research continues to find that practicing mindfulness really can improve well-being. “Mindfulness-based practices have broadly been found to have several benefits including, but not limited to, reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as enhancing attentional focus, working memory capacity, cognitive flexibility, positive mood, resilience, immune functioning, interpersonal relationships, and well-being,” per the authors of a study published in 2020 in Frontiers in Psychology . Their work found that just three minutes of daily practice may be enough to improve measures of well-being.
Another important point: For these changes to work, your heart has to be in it. “There are no shoulds with emotions,” Stern says. “It’s all about if you want to.”
She has helped develop an app called Mood Meter that encourages users to regularly note how they’re feeling by marking their emotion on a color-coded axis. “If you are using the app regularly, you will start to notice patterns,” she says. “That information is useful and, for many, surprising.” It may help you identify times or activities that sour your mood, as well as those that tend to make you happier.
Happiness is a wonderful thing. We all deserve plenty of it in our lives. But there’s a lot more to it than feeling positive emotions like joy or elation.
American Psychological Association
One of the country’s premier mental health organizations offers in-depth information on all topics to do with emotional health and well-being.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Emotional Well-Being
This webpage offers a wealth of evidence-backed resources on all aspects of happiness and well-being. That includes research on well-being at home, in the workplace, and as you age.
National Health Service
One of the world’s leading public health organizations, the U.K. National Health Service offers clear, straightforward, and research-backed advice on many emotional health topics, including happiness and well-being.
National Institutes of Health
The agency's emotional wellness toolkit is a comprehensive guide to building a lifestyle that supports happiness and other positive emotions.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
The department's Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center offers resources for adults who want to ensure that the kids in their lives are growing up happy and emotionally healthy.
Speaking of Psychology
The APA’s Speaking of Psychology podcast offers an encyclopedic examination of happiness, what supports it, and what interferes with it.
Countless apps can help bolster your happiness. Waking Up nests its well-being resources in discussions of meditation, ancient wisdom, and other bigger picture topics.
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy . We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Medical reviewer.
Featured series.
A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.
Read the latest.
Good genes are nice, but joy is better.
Harvard Staff Writer
Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer, and be happier
A series on how Harvard researchers are tackling the problematic issues of aging.
W hen scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 during the Great Depression, they hoped the longitudinal study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives.
They got more than they wanted.
After following the surviving Crimson men for nearly 80 years as part of the Harvard Study of Adult Development , one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, researchers have collected a cornucopia of data on their physical and mental health.
Of the original Harvard cohort recruited as part of the Grant Study, only 19 are still alive, all in their mid-90s. Among the original recruits were eventual President John F. Kennedy and longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. (Women weren’t in the original study because the College was still all male.)
In addition, scientists eventually expanded their research to include the men’s offspring, who now number 1,300 and are in their 50s and 60s, to find out how early-life experiences affect health and aging over time. Some participants went on to become successful businessmen, doctors, lawyers, and others ended up as schizophrenics or alcoholics, but not on inevitable tracks.
“Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.” Robert Waldinger, psychiatrist, Massachusetts General Hospital
During the intervening decades, the control groups have expanded. In the 1970s, 456 Boston inner-city residents were enlisted as part of the Glueck Study, and 40 of them are still alive. More than a decade ago, researchers began including wives in the Grant and Glueck studies.
Over the years, researchers have studied the participants’ health trajectories and their broader lives, including their triumphs and failures in careers and marriage, and the finding have produced startling lessons, and not only for the researchers.
“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” said Robert Waldinger , director of the study, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School . “Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”
Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.
“The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80,” said Robert Waldinger with his wife Jennifer Stone.
Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer
The long-term research has received funding from private foundations, but has been financed largely by grants from the National Institutes of Health, first through the National Institute of Mental Health, and more recently through the National Institute on Aging.
Researchers who have pored through data, including vast medical records and hundreds of in-person interviews and questionnaires, found a strong correlation between men’s flourishing lives and their relationships with family, friends, and community. Several studies found that people’s level of satisfaction with their relationships at age 50 was a better predictor of physical health than their cholesterol levels were.
“When we gathered together everything we knew about them about at age 50, it wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old,” said Waldinger in a popular TED Talk . “It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”
He recorded his TED talk, titled “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness,” in 2015, and it has been viewed 13,000,000 times.
The researchers also found that marital satisfaction has a protective effect on people’s mental health. Part of a study found that people who had happy marriages in their 80s reported that their moods didn’t suffer even on the days when they had more physical pain. Those who had unhappy marriages felt both more emotional and physical pain.
Those who kept warm relationships got to live longer and happier, said Waldinger, and the loners often died earlier. “Loneliness kills,” he said. “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”
According to the study, those who lived longer and enjoyed sound health avoided smoking and alcohol in excess. Researchers also found that those with strong social support experienced less mental deterioration as they aged.
In part of a recent study , researchers found that women who felt securely attached to their partners were less depressed and more happy in their relationships two-and-a-half years later, and also had better memory functions than those with frequent marital conflicts.
“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.” George Vaillant, psychiatrist
“Good relationships don’t just protect our bodies; they protect our brains,” said Waldinger in his TED talk. “And those good relationships, they don’t have to be smooth all the time. Some of our octogenarian couples could bicker with each other day in and day out, but as long as they felt that they could really count on the other when the going got tough, those arguments didn’t take a toll on their memories.”
Since aging starts at birth, people should start taking care of themselves at every stage of life, the researchers say.
“Aging is a continuous process,” Waldinger said. “You can see how people can start to differ in their health trajectory in their 30s, so that by taking good care of yourself early in life you can set yourself on a better course for aging. The best advice I can give is ‘Take care of your body as though you were going to need it for 100 years,’ because you might.”
The study, like its remaining original subjects, has had a long life, spanning four directors, whose tenures reflected their medical interests and views of the time.
Under the first director, Clark Heath, who stayed from 1938 until 1954, the study mirrored the era’s dominant view of genetics and biological determinism. Early researchers believed that physical constitution, intellectual ability, and personality traits determined adult development. They made detailed anthropometric measurements of skulls, brow bridges, and moles, wrote in-depth notes on the functioning of major organs, examined brain activity through electroencephalograms, and even analyzed the men’s handwriting.
Now, researchers draw men’s blood for DNA testing and put them into MRI scanners to examine organs and tissues in their bodies, procedures that would have sounded like science fiction back in 1938. In that sense, the study itself represents a history of the changes that life brings.
Physically active.
Absence of alcohol abuse and smoking
Having mature mechanisms to cope with life’s ups and downs
Stable marriage.
Psychiatrist George Vaillant, who joined the team as a researcher in 1966, led the study from 1972 until 2004. Trained as a psychoanalyst, Vaillant emphasized the role of relationships, and came to recognize the crucial role they played in people living long and pleasant lives.
In a book called “Aging Well,” Vaillant wrote that six factors predicted healthy aging for the Harvard men: physical activity, absence of alcohol abuse and smoking, having mature mechanisms to cope with life’s ups and downs, and enjoying both a healthy weight and a stable marriage. For the inner-city men, education was an additional factor. “The more education the inner city men obtained,” wrote Vaillant, “the more likely they were to stop smoking, eat sensibly, and use alcohol in moderation.”
Vaillant’s research highlighted the role of these protective factors in healthy aging. The more factors the subjects had in place, the better the odds they had for longer, happier lives.
“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment,” said Vaillant. “But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”
“We want to find out how it is that a difficult childhood reaches across decades to break down the body in middle age and later.” Robert Waldinger
The study showed that the role of genetics and long-lived ancestors proved less important to longevity than the level of satisfaction with relationships in midlife, now recognized as a good predictor of healthy aging. The research also debunked the idea that people’s personalities “set like plaster” by age 30 and cannot be changed.
“Those who were clearly train wrecks when they were in their 20s or 25s turned out to be wonderful octogenarians,” he said. “On the other hand, alcoholism and major depression could take people who started life as stars and leave them at the end of their lives as train wrecks.”
The study’s fourth director, Waldinger has expanded research to the wives and children of the original men. That is the second-generation study, and Waldinger hopes to expand it into the third and fourth generations. “It will probably never be replicated,” he said of the lengthy research, adding that there is yet more to learn.
“We’re trying to see how people manage stress, whether their bodies are in a sort of chronic ‘fight or flight’ mode,” Waldinger said. “We want to find out how it is that a difficult childhood reaches across decades to break down the body in middle age and later.”
Lara Tang ’18, a human and evolutionary biology concentrator who recently joined the team as a research assistant, relishes the opportunity to help find some of those answers. She joined the effort after coming across Waldinger’s TED talk in one of her classes.
“That motivated me to do more research on adult development,” said Tang. “I want to see how childhood experiences affect developments of physical health, mental health, and happiness later in life.”
Asked what lessons he has learned from the study, Waldinger, who is a Zen priest, said he practices meditation daily and invests time and energy in his relationships, more than before.
“It’s easy to get isolated, to get caught up in work and not remembering, ‘Oh, I haven’t seen these friends in a long time,’ ” Waldinger said. “So I try to pay more attention to my relationships than I used to.”
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Happiness is characterized by experiencing positive emotions while simultaneously perceiving one’s life as meaningful and worthwhile. Research on the mental health of healthcare professionals usually focuses on psychopathology as opposed to the positive aspects of mental health. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine recent literature on individual-level and organization-level determinants of healthcare professionals happiness. The EBSCOhost, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases were searched for articles published between 2009 and 2019 that focused on happiness among healthcare professionals. Based on the eligibility criteria, both quantitative and qualitative studies were selected for this systematic review. The final review included a total of 18 studies. The main measures of healthcare professionals happiness in cross-sectional and intervention studies were self-report measures, and the main measures of happiness in qualitative studies were interviews. Multiple determinants of healthcare professionals happiness were identified in this systematic review. The interplay between individual-level and organization-level determinants collectively contributes to the happiness of healthcare professionals. Existing evidence highlights the importance of healthcare professionals happiness in the strengthening of the healthcare workforce and healthcare systems. This review also highlights the importance of health policy makers, health authorities and healthcare professionals in creating and effectively implementing policies and strategies to increase healthcare professionals happiness. Future similar studies should use large and more heterogeneous samples of healthcare professionals from various settings to generate contextually relevant and robust evidence regarding methods to enhance healthcare professionals happiness and ultimately the performance of health systems globally.
Introduction.
For centuries, happiness has been viewed as an essential component in human life (Pollock et al., 2016 ). Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) believed that happiness was the ultimate motivator of peoples’ choices and actions (Pollock et al., 2016 ). Additionally, the United Nations (UN) has recognized the pursuit of happiness as an important human goal (Paiva et al., 2016 ). On July 12, 2012, the United Nations General Assembly comprising of all 193 presidents of the UN member states, passed a resolution (A/Res/66/281) declaring every 20 March the International day of happiness; this was following the authorization of a prior resolution (A/Res/65/281) titled, Happiness: towards a holistic approach to development (United Nations, 2012 ). Both resolutions encourage policy makers to aim to achieve and enhance happiness and well-being when creating or modifying policies (United Nations, 2012 ). Since 2012, the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UNSDSN) has published the World Happiness Report (WHR) and has ranked countries according to the World Happiness Index annually.
The UN and various researchers have recognized the significance of happiness not only as an individual endeavor but also as a public endeavor (Paiva et al., 2016 ). Veenhoven explains the importance of governments applying a utilitarianism approach to happiness (Veenhoven, 2017 ). A utilitarianism approach to happiness means authorities should aim to achieve greater happiness for the greater numbers within their populations (Veenhoven, 2017 ). Basing happiness policy on factual and logical reasoning such as research findings will potentially result in individuals being more optimistic about living and working towards a better life (Veenhoven, 2017 ). Thus, it is essential that policy creation and the implementation of effective strategies pertaining to happiness be based on contextually relevant characteristics (Paiva et al., 2016 ).
Positive psychology theorists believe that research and policy needs to move from solely focusing on psychopathological aspects, i.e., individuals’ weaknesses, to optimizing the positive aspects, i.e., individuals’ strengths (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ). There are several definitions of happiness as a construct, and these definitions generally imply the experience of a positive state of emotion (Paiva et al., 2016 ). Positive psychologists advocate for the understanding of how an individual’s happiness and well-being influence his or her productivity and optimal functionality to fully achieve his or her potential in life (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ). Happiness is an attitudinal phenomenon, meaning one’s perceptions and beliefs of happiness influence the actual experience of happiness (Veenhoven, 2017 ; Joshanloo et al., 2017 ).
Happiness is the hallmark of positive affect, which entails both experiencing positive emotions in conjunction with perceiving one’s life as virtuous, meaningful and worthwhile (Berkland et al., 2017 ; Walsh et al., 2018 ; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005 ). In 2017, the WHR reported that happiness at work is associated with increased productivity and consistency (Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, 2017 ). The World Health Organization (WHO) Health System Framework consists of six building blocks, one of which is the health workforce (World Health Organization, 2007 ). In 2012, researchers stated that the health workforce is at the core of every health system (Anand and Bärnighausen, 2012 ). Healthcare professionals are part of the health workforce. Healthcare professionals are individuals who are formally trained in providing healthcare services to human beings that are curative, preventive, and/or promotive in nature (World Health Organization, 2013 ).
Nevertheless, mental health research among healthcare professionals within health systems is largely focused on reporting their weaknesses and pathologies as opposed to positive aspects of their mental health. For instance, there is more evidence on healthcare professionals experiences of higher levels of distress, burnout syndrome, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideations more than among other professionals in other sectors (Brand et al., 2017 ; Kokonya et al., 2014 ; Dyrbye et al., 2017 ; Lafreniere et al., 2016 ). It is essential to recognize problems and challenges, but it is equally important to promote the optimistic aspects of mental health. Although positive attitudes and experiences may not eliminate difficult experiences, they act as a buffer that is paramount for healthcare professionals (Einarsdottir, 2012 ).
In 2018, scholars reported that happiness is a significant factor of health system efficiency (See and Yen, 2018 ). Recently, empirical studies assessing and reporting happiness among healthcare professionals have been increasing. Hence, this study aims to systematically review recent literature to determine the role of individuals and organizations in healthcare professionals happiness. Systematic reviews are important tools used for summarizing evidence in a precise and reliable way (Liberati et al., 2009 ). Using a systematic review, the purpose of this study was to examine the individual and organizational determinants of healthcare professionals happiness. Specifically, we performed a narrative synthesis of recent literature between 2009 and 2019.
The main research questions of this study were, ‘ What are the individual and organizational determinants of healthcare professionals happiness and how can they be applied in happiness-related policies and strategies ?’ Though there have been various empirical studies on healthcare professionals happiness, to the best of our knowledge, there is no systematic review reporting or answering this research question. This systematic review will also provide up-to-date information for decision makers to make informed decisions regarding healthcare professionals happiness behavioral interventions (Liberati et al., 2009 ). Based on the belief that we can achieve “… better health outcomes through better informed decisions.” p. 1040 (Atkins et al., 2005 ), this systematic review aims to summarize recent literature in order to inform policy makers and to identify the significant roles of individuals (i.e., healthcare professionals) and organizations (e.g., health facilities and the national health systems) in enhancing healthcare professionals happiness. Happiness-related studies have improved and informed decision-making processes in terms of policies and regulations based on legal, organizational and national happiness interventions (Huang, 2010 ). Finally, this review identifies research gaps and provides for future directions for studies in this area.
The protocol of this systematic review was registered in advance, and the PROSPERO registration number is CRD42020145855. The protocol is available at elsewhere Footnote 1 .
This systematic review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher, 2015 ). The results of the systematic selection process are illustrated in a PRISMA flowchart that is shown in Fig. 1 (Moher, 2015 ). Additionally, to ascertain the quality of this systematic review, we applied the guidelines provided by the Risk of Bias Assessment Tool for Systematic Reviews (ROBIS). The ROBIS has been used to assess and strengthen systematic reviews in healthcare-related fields that influence health policy in specialties such as public health and quality of health care, among others (Whiting et al., 2016 ).
As adapted from source: Moher ( 2015 ).
The selection process of this systematic review was based on eligibility criteria for both inclusion and exclusion. The inclusion criteria included selecting empirically peer-reviewed studies that report on the determinants or factors of healthcare professionals happiness that were published in the English language between 2009 and 2019, and the studies must have clearly indicated the measure of happiness. Focusing on this 10-year period allowed us to examine recent literature on healthcare professionals happiness in this systematic review. This was essential because systematic reviews are among the ideal sources of evidence-based health policy, and they often use recent literature to facilitate relevant, informed decision making (Shojania et al., 2007 ). Since there is currently no gold standard tool for measuring happiness, various tools were used in the included studies (Paiva et al., 2016 ). Both quantitative and qualitative studies were reviewed.
Exclusion criteria included nonempirical studies, reviews, gray literature, non-peer-reviewed studies, studies that were not published in the English language, and studies not published between 2009 and 2019. In addition, studies on happiness among workers in other sectors, students and non-medically trained caregivers were also excluded. Additionally, studies with no specific measure for happiness were excluded. Studies that claimed to assess happiness then reported on a different construct, even ones related to mental health, were also excluded.
The PRISMA flow diagram shown in Fig. 1 presents the number of articles included and excluded during the selection process as per the PRISMA statement and study eligibility criteria (Moher, 2015 ).
The eleven countries represented in this review included the United States of America (USA) ( n = 7 studies), Iran ( n = 2 studies), Iceland ( n = 1 study), Brazil ( n = 1 study), India ( n = 1 study), Romania ( n = 1 study), South Africa ( n = 1 study), Canada ( n = 1 study), Croatia ( n = 1 study), Thailand ( n = 1 study), and Spain ( n = 1 study) (see Fig. 2 ).
Source: Authors own.
The databases used to systematically search for relevant articles were EBSCOhost, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. These databases are credible platforms that are sources of scholarly and peer-reviewed information with search tools that enable access to dates of coverage and provide a platform to identify studies in a systematic way (Liberati et al., 2009 ). These databases were selected because they contain literature related to various disciplines of health, including healthcare professionals, and health policy. Therefore, through these four databases, we obtained scholarly data from studies on our topic of focus from reliable researchers and experts.
The search terms used were “happiness” AND “healthcare professionals”, “healthcare workers”, “health personnel”, “happy doctors”, “happy physicians”, and “happy nurses”. A multidisciplinary search using various combinations of keywords and MeSH terms was used and differed accordingly between databases. Boolean operators such as “AND” and “OR” were applied to accommodate different terminology related to our review.
From the databases, citations were exported into Endnote X8™ (Clarivate Analytics, Philadelphia, PA, United States of America), a referencing manager software. Duplicates were removed on Endnote X8™. Articles that failed to meet the inclusion criteria were excluded. The final selection of the articles was based on the independently selected articles and approved by the review team.
Publication metadata were extracted using a data extraction template that was created and modified according to all the studies reviewed. The publication details were captured and summarized in a tabular format developed by the authors of this review. The publication metadata were as follows: author(s), year of publication, country of study, main goal of study, sample size, measure of happiness, statistical procedure used and main findings of the reviewed studies. Discrepancies were discussed and resolved through discussion by the review team.
Using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Critical Appraisal Checklist tools, we performed quality assessments on the risk of bias for each study in this systematic review ( Joanna Briggs Institute ). The quality assessment was performed according to the study design of each study reviewed, such as cross-sectional studies, cohort studies, randomized controlled trials and qualitative research studies. After assessing the risk of bias, the review team selected a total of 18 studies.
In this review, based on a systematic search of the Scopus, PubMed, EBSCOhost, and Web of Science databases, 3689 records were identified. The 3689 records were exported into Endnote X8 TM , and 1262 duplicate records were eliminated, leaving 2427 records. After screening the titles, 2046 records were excluded, leaving 381 records. After screening the abstracts, 31 records remained. After full-text screening, 13 records were excluded. The reasons for excluding studies were either lack of a specific measure for happiness n = 7, reporting a different construct other than happiness n = 4 or reporting on participants who are not healthcare professionals n = 2. In total, 18 studies were eligible for this review, including 15 quantitative studies and 3 qualitative studies (see Fig. 1 and Tables 1 – 3 ). The total number of healthcare professionals represented across all articles included was N = 3501.
Of the 18 eligible studies included in this review, six different measures of happiness were identified in the quantitative studies. The Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) (Lyubomirsky and Lepper, 1999 ) was used in six studies to assess overall happiness on a 7-point Likert-type scale. The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) (Hills and Argyle, 2002 ) was used in three studies to measure happiness on a 6-point Likert scale. The Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI) (Argyle et al., 1989 ) assessed happiness in two studies on a 6-point Likert scale. The Happiness Measure Questionnaire (Appel et al., 2013 ) was used in one study to assess happiness with a 10-point scale. The Pemberton Happiness Index (PHI) (Hervás and Vázquez, 2013 ) measured happiness in one study with an 11-point Likert scale. Two studies used a single item to measure happiness; one study used an item with a 5-point Likert scale (Petriş et al., 2013 ), and the other used an item with a 10-point Likert scale (Prizmic et al., 2009 ). The three remaining studies that applied a qualitative approach used interviews and/or participant observations to measure happiness.
As shown in Table 4 , all 18 reviewed studies underwent methodological quality assessments and were of high quality due to their low risk of bias. Nonetheless, two studies with unclear critical appraisal outcomes were found, due to confounding variables. Nevertheless, these issues were appropriately addressed in the multivariate analysis performed in both quantitative studies.
In this systematic review, there were eleven cross-sectional studies that included approximately 86.1% of the total number of healthcare professionals ( n = 3014/3501). The types of healthcare professionals represented in the cross-sectional studies included counselors (Chaverri et al., 2018 ), cardiologists (Petriş et al., 2013 ), dentists (Kaipa et al., 2017 ), nurses (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ; Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ), physiotherapists (Elliot et al., 2018 ), psychiatrists (Machado et al., 2016 ), physicians (family, general and fellowship graduate) (Eckleberry-Hunt et al., 2016 ; Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ), and general healthcare workers (Prizmic et al., 2009 ; Benzo et al., 2017 ). The measures used in the cross-sectional studies to assess healthcare professionals happiness included the OHI, the OHQ, the SHS and single-item measures, as presented in Table 1 .
In Iran, moderate happiness was reported both in 2014 among 252 nurses (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ) and 2018 among 422 nurses (Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ). In 2014, nurses reported higher levels of happiness among nurses with greater hardiness (the ability to adapt oneself in problematic life situations) (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ). Lower scores of perceived stress result in higher happiness scores among nurses, which was depicted by the negative correlation between stress and happiness scores (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ). Four years later, in 2018, another study among nurses in Iran reported that 50.3% of the variance in happiness was attributed to 10 determinants (Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ). The determinants included monthly income, satisfaction with income, job satisfaction, quality of life, current hospital ward, length of working in the current ward, work shift, age and satisfaction with physicians’ conduct and performance (Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ). Among the 10 determinants, the most significant determinant was satisfaction with mental health, which explained 13% of the variance in nurses’ happiness (Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ).
Average to moderately high scores of happiness were reported in India, Romania and South Africa across different types of healthcare professionals. In India, moderately high scores of happiness were reported among dentists ( n = 194), with the most important determinant of happiness being the type of profession. The dentists who were both clinicians and academicians reported experiencing more happiness than the dentistry professionals who were either clinicians or academicians (Kaipa et al., 2017 ). In Romania, among cardiologists ( n = 187), an average level of happiness was reported (Petriş et al., 2013 ). The determinants of happiness among the cardiologists included age, number of vacation days per year and single marital status (Petriş et al., 2013 ). Among physiotherapists ( n = 395), moderately high scores of happiness were reported (Elliot et al., 2018 ). Approximately 60% of the variance in physiotherapist happiness was explained by high scores on four determinants, namely, life balance, leisure, influence and optimism (Elliot et al., 2018 ).
Among mental healthcare professionals, specifically counselors ( n = 153) in the United States of America (USA) and physiatrists in Brazil ( n = 104), moderate to moderately high scores of happiness were reported. In 2018, among counselors, higher happiness scores were predicted by an increased number of sessions per client and low severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms experienced by the counselor (Chaverri et al., 2018 ). In Brazil, researchers reported that 50.2% of their happiness was explained by the following determinants: having children, good quality sleep and the use of three defense styles related to mature factors, namely, anticipation, humor, and the use of neurotic factors (e.g., annulment) (Machado et al., 2016 ). Hence, the less psychiatrists reported using the defense mechanism of acting out (an immature factor) in their profession, the happier they were (Machado et al., 2016 ).
Two studies in the USA reported moderately high happiness scores among family physicians. In 2014, general family physicians reported lower scores of happiness compared to fellowship-trained family physicians (Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ). The type of physician training as a determinant of happiness explained 10% of the variance in happiness scores (Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ). In addition, gender differences were found, such that male family medicine physicians reported significantly higher happiness scores than their female counterparts (Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ). In 2016, among family physicians ( n = 449), happiness was significantly determined by four factors, including experiencing a sense of career purpose, a sense of personal accomplishment, less distress and a higher perceived ability to manage their workload experience (Eckleberry-Hunt et al., 2016 ). Workload manageability among family physicians explained ~35.8% of their subjective happiness (Eckleberry-Hunt et al., 2016 ).
In the USA, scholars examined two determinants of healthcare workers’ ( n = 400) happiness, namely, self-compassion and weekly exercise (Benzo et al., 2017 ). These factors explained ~39% and 40% of the variance in healthcare workers’ happiness, respectively (Benzo et al., 2017 ). In Croatia, average scores of overall happiness were reported, and age was the only noteworthy determinant of overall happiness among the healthcare workers ( n = 185) (Prizmic et al., 2009 ). Younger healthcare workers reported being happier (Prizmic et al., 2009 ).
The four intervention studies examined in this review included ~11.9% ( n = 418/3501) of the healthcare professionals in this review. The healthcare professionals represented included medical surgical nurses (Appel et al., 2013 ), oncologists (Clemons et al., 2019 ), and healthcare workers’/professionals in general (Sexton and Adair, 2019 ; Coo and Salanova, 2018 ). Like the cross-sectional studies, the intervention studies all used self-report measures to assess happiness, namely, the Happiness Measure Questionnaire, the OHQ, the PHI and the SHS. A summary of the intervention studies on healthcare professionals happiness in this systematic review is presented in Table 2 .
In North America (specifically in the USA and Canada), three studies assessed happiness following different interventions. In a study among medical surgical nurses in the USA ( n = 91), no statistically significant differences in general happiness scores were found between the control group ( n = 43) and group that completed an intervention involved the impact of journaling on perceived happiness ( n = 48) (Appel et al., 2013 ). However, the variance in the quality of care provided by the nurses was explained by baseline happiness scores both pre- and postintervention (Appel et al., 2013 ). Additionally, in the USA, another study among healthcare workers ( n = 280) who completed the Three Good Things intervention revealed increases in subjective happiness over time (Sexton and Adair, 2019 ). In a Canadian study among oncologists ( n = 13), an intervention involving a 13-week self-improvement virtuous program led to no statistically significant improvements in oncologists’ happiness (Clemons et al., 2019 ) (see Table 2 ).
In Spain, a trial involving a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) with three 150-min sessions among healthcare workers ( n = 34) (intervention group n = 19 and control group = 15) was carried out (Coo and Salanova, 2018 ). Both interaction and time effects of the intervention and control groups were reported (Coo and Salanova, 2018 ). Scholars reported that the MBI program of three (150-min) sessions led to an increase in happiness among healthcare workers (Coo and Salanova, 2018 ).
The three qualitative studies reviewed herein included ~2% ( n = 69/3501) of the healthcare professionals. Across the three qualitative studies, a total of 18 determinants of healthcare professionals happiness were reported (as shown in Table 3 ). Among the three studies were two ethnographic and one narrative inquiry.
An ethnographic study among pediatricians and nursing personnel ( n = 40) in the NICU in Iceland identified approximately four considerable emerging determinants of happiness (Einarsdottir, 2012 ). The determinants of healthcare professionals happiness in the NICU reported include the opportunity to do good via the provision of professional healthcare to children, professional pride, love for the well-being of the children, and a belief that happiness supersedes ethical dilemmas.
In the USA, another ethnographic study among physiotherapists ( n = 15) reported four substantial determinants of physiotherapist happiness (Gannotti et al., 2019 ). The determinants of the physiotherapists’ happiness included feeling and believing that one’s work is meaningful and purposeful, the chance to be altruistic by helping the patients learn new and healthy skills to increase their independence, having an opportunity for quality time with family and friends and leisure time to do recreational activities (Gannotti et al., 2019 ).
The third qualitative study performed in Thailand involved the qualitative research design known as narrative inquiry. From a total of nine advanced practice nurses, 10 substantial determinants of happiness were reported among APNs (Buaklee et al., 2017 ) (see Table 3 ). The determinants that led to increased happiness among APNs were being more optimistic by changing one’s perspective from problem-focused to solution-focused, engaging in self-empowerment personally or professionally, striving to be a role model, time management, professional pride, exercising patience as one seeks opportunities to achieve their professional goals, helping, teaching, and coaching junior nurses and colleagues, and seeking spiritual support.
In this systematic review, we aimed to examine the individual- and organization-level determinants of healthcare professionals happiness globally between 2009 and 2019. Happiness is the degree to which an individual enjoys his or her present life (Veenhoven, 2017 ). The happier healthcare professionals are, the better the quality of health care and services they provide (Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ; Kaipa et al., 2017 ). Since happiness is an attitudinal concept, we cannot measure it solely based on observing behavior; instead, assessments are a better way of comprehensively measuring the subjective delight of one’s life (Veenhoven, 2017 ). Thus, the studies reviewed herein applied different forms of questioning, such as self-report measures and interviews. The determinants of happiness reported in this review indicate the roles of the individual and organizations in the happiness of healthcare professionals.
In this review, individual determinants are the inimitable factors that contribute to healthcare professionals happiness. From the research findings reported in this review, individual determinants refer to the role of attitudes, perceptions, knowledge and skills on healthcare professionals happiness.
Age is an individual determinant of happiness and was reported in four studies with differing outcomes (Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ; Petriş et al., 2013 ; Kaipa et al., 2017 ; Prizmic et al., 2009 ). Among Romanian cardiologists, older cardiologists (specifically those above 65 years) were happier (Petriş et al., 2013 ), which was similar to the findings among dentists from India (Kaipa et al., 2017 ). However, in Croatia, the opposite was true; the younger healthcare workers were, the happier they were (Prizmic et al., 2009 ). These differences could be attributed to contextual factors. Although both countries are in Europe, they are different countries, and cultural differences cannot entirely be dismissed. In addition, the period during which the studies were performed could influence the results. For example, the two studies reported findings in two years, i.e., 2009 in Croatia (Prizmic et al., 2009 ) and 2013 in Romania (Petriş et al., 2013 ), thus partially explaining the varied findings on the phenomenon of age and happiness.
Gender is a social construct that defines and describes human behavior in terms of perceptions of masculinity and femininity (Muthuri, 2016 ). Gender differences among healthcare professionals happiness were reported in two cross-sectional studies. In the USA, for instance, female fellowship graduate physicians were happier than their male counterparts (Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ). In India, among dentists, males are happier than their female counterparts (Kaipa et al., 2017 ). This could be attributed to cultural perceptions of masculinity and femininity in the different countries. According to Hofstede, masculinity and femininity are based on societal perceived values assigned between males and females, which vary across cultures and contexts (Hofstede, 2011 ). To create and effectively implement factual and relevant happiness policies, collaboration between healthcare professionals, researchers and policy makers is paramount. The collaboration in the research capturing, the perceptions of gender and how it impacts healthcare professionals happiness could be done across different contexts, either regional, national or rural versus urban.
The results of the present review reveal the role of attitude on healthcare professionals happiness. Attitude is both cognitive and affective in nature and has been found to influence health behavioral change (Lawton et al., 2009 ). A positive attitude is a signature strength that contributes to authentic happiness (Seligman, 2004 ). In this review, adopting positive attitudes resulted in increased happiness among healthcare professionals. A positive attitude involving self-empowering attitudes, adopting the attitude that happiness supersedes ethical dilemmas, allowed healthcare professionals to view challenges from a problem to a solution-focused point (Buaklee et al., 2017 ; Einarsdottir, 2012 ). A positive attitude among healthcare professionals allowed them to achieve a sense of purpose and personal accomplishment (Elliot et al., 2018 ; Eckleberry-Hunt et al., 2016 ; Seligman, 2004 ; Peterson et al., 2005 ).
Acquiring a sense of meaning and purpose in one’s life has been reported to result in the long-term experience of happiness (Peterson et al., 2005 ). As a result, healthcare professionals professional pride allows them to strive to be role models for their colleagues (Einarsdottir, 2012 ; Buaklee et al., 2017 ). The more compassionate healthcare professionals were to themselves, the happier they were (Benzo et al., 2017 ). Thus, policy makers should not only emphasize compassion towards others but also self-compassion, thus enabling individuals to provide compassion to others. Generosity is another signature strength (Seligman, 2004 ), referred to as altruism in this review; this trait contributed to healthcare professionals happiness.
Altruism was a universal emerging theme across the qualitative studies in this systematic review. Altruistic behavior involves helping another individual enhance their welfare (Muthuri, 2018 ). In the WHR 2012, altruism was one of the causes of increased happiness, implying that the more altruistic an individual is, the happier they are (Richard Layard and Claudia, 2012 ). The healthcare professionals reported finding happiness by helping patients learn skills to enhance their independence (Gannotti et al., 2019 ), doing good by helping preterm infants and their parents during the challenging times (Einarsdottir, 2012 ), and helping colleagues by coaching and teaching new skills and techniques to enhance their performance (Buaklee et al., 2017 ). The nature of healthcare professions involves having a desire to help others effectively perform and provide quality healthcare. Health authorities could provide opportunities for healthcare professionals to express their generosity or altruism, which has been found to increase happiness. For example, creating mentorship programs recognizable within health facilities and the health system to encourage altruistic behavior could result in increased happiness among healthcare professionals.
Researchers have suggested future research and policy to shift focus from mental illness to mental health (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ). In this review, satisfaction with mental health was a determinant of happiness to increase happiness healthcare professionals cope in various ways, such as by perceiving stress as minimal and using defense mechanisms such as optimistic anticipation and humor (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ; Eckleberry-Hunt et al., 2016 ; Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ; Machado et al., 2016 ). These findings highlight the importance of implementing programs promoting mental health strategies. Strategies related to generating healthy coping mechanisms and increasing happiness among healthcare professionals to optimize their productivity at an individual and organizational level.
Quality of life is a cognitive concept that is used as a basis for lifestyle decision making based on an individual’s perception of consequences (Susniene and Jurkauskas, 2009 ). As constructs, happiness and quality of life are closely associated but are not identical (Susniene and Jurkauskas, 2009 ). In this review, quality of life was a determining factor of healthcare professionals happiness. Some decisions, such as participating in recreational activities, taking vacations and breaks, spending quality time with their friends and family, and good quality sleep, are related to quality of life among healthcare professionals, thus contributing to their happiness (Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ; Petriş et al., 2013 ; Machado et al., 2016 ; Gannotti et al., 2019 ). Policies and programs allowing for enhanced quality of life can enable healthcare professionals to revitalize and reenergize themselves through some of the ways reported in this systematic review. The examination of the individual determinants of healthcare professionals happiness illustrates the role of individuals in their own happiness as well as the role of organizations they work for.
Organizational determinants of healthcare professionals happiness are related to organization dynamics, structure and behavior within health facilities and/or health systems at large.
In 2008, researchers stated that not only can career success result in happiness but also happiness can result in career/workplace success (Boehm and Lyubomirsky, 2008 ). Career development, specifically vocational identity achievement, has been associated with pursuit engagement and meaning as orientations of happiness (Hirschi, 2011 ). Career development is a progressive process involving the diversification of oneself through various actions to acquire better knowledge and skills. Findings from this review showed that healthcare professionals career development was a determinant of happiness; through increasing their work experience, acquiring higher qualifications, being both clinicians and academicians, were some of the career development and success strategies that contributed to the healthcare professionals happiness (Kaipa et al., 2017 ; Petriş et al., 2013 ). This implies that opportunities for career development within health organizations and health systems need to be considered when developing happiness policies and strategies.
Among healthcare professionals in this review, time management, workload manageability, satisfaction with income, satisfaction with colleagues conduct and performance, having more sessions with clients, job rotation in the hospital wards and shifts were among the organizational dynamics that contributed to their happiness (Buaklee et al., 2017 ; Eckleberry-Hunt et al., 2016 ; Khosrojerdi et al., 2018 ). The more satisfaction one experiences both at work and in life, the happier they are likely to be and the better they are likely to perform (Argan et al., 2018 ; Streimikiene and Grundey, 2009 ). Therefore, policy makers should not only consider financial satisfaction but also enhance job satisfaction by improving organizational culture and dynamics.
Intervention studies such as other types of studies provide insight into promising strategies through developing research-based capacity-building interventions in policy settings (Haynes et al., 2018 ). In this review, two other studies reported a significant improvement in healthcare professionals happiness using two interventions, namely, the Three Good Things intervention (3GT) (Sexton and Adair, 2019 ) and the Mindfulness Based Intervention (MBI) (Coo and Salanova, 2018 ). However, another two intervention studies showed no significant improvement in healthcare professionals happiness when using journaling as an intervention (Appel et al., 2013 ) or the 13-virtuous self-improvement program (Clemons et al., 2019 ). The findings from this review suggest that some interventions could work, and others may not. The success or failure of an intervention is based on its interaction with the context (Haynes et al., 2018 ). An ideal intervention involves components such as contextually based interventions, goals and genuine collaboration of persons and partners (Haynes et al., 2018 ). Therefore, health policy makers and researchers could consider adopting an open mindset when exploring the effectiveness of happiness interventions among populations such as healthcare professionals in varied organizational contexts.
Work–life balance involves taking actions towards effectively managing the demands and responsibilities of both work and life (such as the self, family and friends) (Otken and Erben, 2013 ). The opposite of work–life balance is work–life conflict. As a result of work–life conflict, some organizations chose to develop policies and strategies geared towards empowering their employees to achieve work–life balance (Otken and Erben, 2013 ). In this review, achieving work–life balance was a determinant of happiness among healthcare professionals balance (Petriş et al., 2013 ; Machado et al., 2016 ; Elliot et al., 2018 ). In Turkey, research has reported that the happiness of employees increases when they are driven both in their work and life domains (Otken and Erben, 2013 ). Therefore, evidence-based policies and strategies geared towards energizing and empowering healthcare professionals to feel better at home and work are significant in increasing their happiness.
Physical health is paramount, but people also strive for happiness, sense of meaning and purpose and being a good person with healthy relationships (VanderWeele et al., 2020 ). All these factors contribute to a healthy and full life. A study based on global data on happiness found that the greater happiness, the better health and longevity the population is likely to experience, thus reflecting human flourishing (Veenhoven, 2017 ). In this review, exercising and having leisure time to perform recreational activities were determinants of healthcare professionals happiness (Gannotti et al., 2019 ; Benzo et al., 2017 ). In this review, it is evident that healthcare professionals are human beings who strive to be healthy and need physical, psychological, and social support to be healthier and happier.
Policies and implementation of strategies geared towards training healthcare professionals holistic development are essential. Interventions empowering healthcare professionals to enhance the synergy between their intrapersonal and interpersonal development are paramount for their happiness. From an individual standpoint, happiness is a result of being in harmony with one’s life (Streimikiene and Grundey, 2009 ). Based on evidence in this review, individual determinants of healthcare professionals happiness do not operate mutually exclusively from the organizational determinants. Healthcare professionals happiness is a result of an interplay between the healthcare professionals (as individuals) and the organization (health facilities and health system). In the research area of healthcare professionals happiness, there are knowledge gaps that still exist. In the following section, we identify limitations and research gaps in the current literature to inform future research on healthcare professionals happiness.
Various limitations were noted in this review, which are possible avenues for further research. The most cited limitation was a small sample size across both quantitative and qualitative studies (Buaklee et al., 2017 ; Gannotti et al., 2019 ; Coo and Salanova, 2018 ; Clemons et al., 2019 ; Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ; Chaverri et al., 2018 ; Machado et al., 2016 ; Petriş et al., 2013 ). According to researchers, a small sample size results in lower power for statistical comparison (Gannotti et al., 2019 ), an inability to generalize results (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ; Coo and Salanova, 2018 ; Machado et al., 2016 ), seemingly erroneous data (Clemons et al., 2019 ), sample bias (Elliot et al., 2018 ; Abdollahi et al., 2014 ), selection bias (Chaverri et al., 2018 ; Eckleberry-Hunt et al., 2016 ; Kaipa et al., 2017 ), response bias (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ; Benzo et al., 2017 ), and low response rates (Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ).
While larger samples were highly recommended, the same is true for heterogeneous samples; future studies should include various groups of healthcare professionals (Coo and Salanova, 2018 ; Clemons et al., 2019 ; Prizmic et al., 2009 ; Elliot et al., 2018 ; Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ; Benzo et al., 2017 ; Machado et al., 2016 ; Eckleberry-Hunt et al., 2016 ). Some researchers pointed out that heterogeneous sampling is essential in cases where there is no gender balance or when there is an overrepresentation of a healthcare profession (Sexton and Adair, 2019 ). Researchers recommend that future studies consider using complementary approaches or multidimensional approaches when assessing happiness both methodologically and theoretically to provide a comprehensive understanding of the concept of happiness among healthcare professionals (Einarsdottir, 2012 ; Coo and Salanova, 2018 ; Buaklee et al., 2017 ).
Additional limitations included high attrition rates in intervention studies (Coo and Salanova, 2018 ); inaccurately completed questionnaires or answers, some of which were attributed to limited understanding of a concept (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ; Buaklee et al., 2017 ); measurement error due to the use of only self-report assessments that could result in positive or negative tendencies (Kaipa et al., 2017 ; Coo and Salanova, 2018 ); and the timing of the studies, as receiving negative news on disasters could affect individuals’ happiness (Appel et al., 2013 ).
In addition, more comparative studies between healthcare professionals happiness and other psychological factors are needed (Abdollahi et al., 2014 ), as well as studies on the role of organizational culture on the quality of services provided by healthcare professionals (Coo and Salanova, 2018 ). Other behavioral indicators should also be used, such as ratings from a second person and not solely focusing on self-report measures (Coo and Salanova, 2018 ). Similar studies should be done in various settings (Buaklee et al., 2017 ; Duffrin and Larsen, 2014 ) to discover the impact of happiness on health systems in different countries across the seven continents. Last, longitudinal studies were recommended by various researchers to assess healthcare professionals happiness over time (Elliot et al., 2018 ).
In this review, the authors examined the role of healthcare professionals (as individuals) and organizations (health facilities and health systems) in determining healthcare professionals happiness. Happiness is a significant component of healthcare professionals optimal functioning. Based on an examination of recent literature, it is evident that the individual and organizational determinants are not mutually exclusive but interdependently function to achieve healthcare professionals happiness. Thus, ideal and effective happiness policies and implementation strategies need to apply a collaborative approach between healthcare professionals and health authorities at the organization and health system levels. Health policy makers should consider continuously increasing the happiness of healthcare professionals, as it has a significant role in improving the quality of healthcare delivery and health outcomes within health systems. By promoting evidence-based contextually relevant healthcare professionals happiness policies, programs and strategies, health workforce strengthening, and health system strengthening are likely to occur. This review sets the stage for subsequent research contributions aimed at promoting healthcare professionals happiness. Based on the research gaps highlighted in this study, more research on healthcare professionals happiness is needed across all continents. Thus, researchers should explore and contribute to bridging the knowledge gaps regarding healthcare professionals happiness in various contexts.
All the data (reviewed articles) used, were from already published empirical articles, retrieved from databases. All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
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The authors thank Estelle Grobler of the Medical School Library at the University of Pretoria, for her support as an information specialist during our comprehensive systematic search across the databases. We are deeply grateful to God for meeting all our needs during the entire process of the study reported in this paper.
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Muthuri, R.N.D.K., Senkubuge, F. & Hongoro, C. Determinants of happiness among healthcare professionals between 2009 and 2019: a systematic review. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 7 , 98 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00592-x
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15 ways to deepen the connections that matter most..
Posted February 18, 2023 | Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
In 1938, researchers at Harvard University embarked on an ambitious long-term study to determine what creates happiness in life.
To date, this project has followed 724 men from various socioeconomic backgrounds—from the original group of 268 Harvard undergrads to inner-city Boston neighborhoods—in one of the world’s longest studies of adult life.
Over the years, the researchers have collected and analyzed a vast array of information from each participant’s health records, as well as in-person interviews, questionnaires, and interviews with family members about their lives and their mental and emotional wellness at two-year intervals. The results indicate that specific traits and behaviors are linked with increased happiness levels across the entire group and over time.
Contrary to what you might think, the most important ingredient in health and happiness is not career achievement, material success, exercise, or diet . The most consistent finding over 85 years of research is that–more than any other factor, by far—positive relationships with family, friends, and community keep us happier and healthier and help us live longer. 1
Psychiatrist George Vaillant joined the Harvard study team as a researcher in 1966 and led the study from 1972 until 2004. Trained as a psychoanalyst , Vaillant came to recognize that relationships were the key to healthy aging and the ability of people to live long and satisfying lives.
Researchers also found that those with strong social support experienced less mental deterioration as they aged. Human beings are hard-wired to connect with others, which creates mental and emotional stimulation that activates the parasympathetic division of the automatic nervous system and boosts mood, whereas a sense of social isolation generates loneliness and deflates mood. This suggests the health and wellness value of focusing on enhancing positive relationships and downsizing negative people in your life—by being intentionally selective about your interactions with them or even letting go of the relationship altogether.
While the role of genetics is still significant, it turns out to be less important to longevity than the level of satisfaction with relationships in midlife . Other meaningful protective factors are reasonable physical activity, the absence of alcohol abuse and smoking , having mature mechanisms to cope with life’s ups and downs, and a healthy weight. The more these study participants evidenced, the better their chances for longer, happier lives.
Primary relationship/marital satisfaction has a particularly protective effect on people’s mental health. Related research by the Harvard study’s current director, Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist, and Zen priest, found that people who had happy marriages in their 80s reported that their moods didn’t suffer, even on days when they had more physical pain. Those with unhappy marriages felt both more emotional and physical pain. 2
It's never too late to expand and deepen the relationships that matter to you. Being active in connecting and reconnecting with the people in your life to enrich your relationship with them has profound bio-psycho-social- spiritual benefits. Not only can these benefits last a lifetime, but they can also help extend your lifetime. Whether it's a thoughtful text, a DM via social media , an email, a phone call, or in-person contact, all moments of dedicated attention have meaning and value.
Copyright 2023 Dan Mager, MSW.
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[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-har…
[2] Waldinger RJ, Schulz MS. What's love got to do with it? Social functioning, perceived health, and daily happiness in married octogenarians. Psychol Aging. 2010 Jun;25(2):422-31. doi: 10.1037/a0019087. PMID: 20545426; PMCID: PMC2896234.
[3] Hall, J. A., Holmstrom, A. J., Pennington, N., Perrault, E. K., & Totzkay, D. (2023). Quality Conversation Can Increase Daily Well-Being. Communication Research, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00936502221139363
[4] Association of volunteering with mental well-being: a lifecourse analysis of a national population-based longitudinal study in the UK, BMJ Open 2016;6:e011327. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2016-011327
Dan Mager, MSW is the author of Some Assembly Required: A Balanced Approach to Recovery from Addiction and Chronic Pain and Roots and Wings: Mindful Parenting in Recovery .
Sticking up for yourself is no easy task. But there are concrete skills you can use to hone your assertiveness and advocate for yourself.
Valuable insights from one of the longest happiness studies ever conducted..
If you want to lead a long, happy, and fulfilling life marked by good health and vitality, then you should take a close look at the Harvard Study of Adult Development . This is one of the longest-running studies of adult life, having started in 1938. Over the past 85-plus years, the study has followed the lives of more than 700 original participants and over 1,300 of their descendants.
The study's main goal was to identify the key factors contributing to human happiness and well-being. Researchers collected vast amounts of data through interviews, medical exams, questionnaires, and even brain scans, tracking various aspects of the participants' lives, such as physical health, mental health , career, relationships, and overall satisfaction.
Robert Waldinger, the study director, whose TED Talk has been viewed nearly 50 million times, said one of the study's most significant findings is that the quality of our relationships has a profound impact on our well-being.
The quality of our relationships.
Waldinger and his research team were amazed to discover that individuals who had the strongest bonds with others tended to lead happier, healthier, and longer lives as they aged. In turn, having good relationships was the most important factor in predicting who would enjoy a fulfilled and healthy life in old age.
Waldinger shared a profound truth in a recent episode of the Curiosity Chronicle podcast that could greatly improve your quality of life decades from now. He said:
Relationship satisfaction at age 50 was the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80.
When I'm 80, and my physical health is in tiptop shape, there's no question that my emotional and mental health will also function on all cylinders. That is to say, anyone living that kind of vibrant life into their 80s will achieve a level of happiness unlike that of their peers at the same age. All of this is realized by choosing to develop healthy relationships and friendships earlier in life. Who doesn't want that?
It may be time to reframe what we think leads to happiness. For example:
Thinking that material wealth equals happiness. It's a classic one. Sure, money can make life easier and provide opportunities, but it doesn't guarantee happiness. Studies show that beyond a certain income threshold, additional wealth doesn't significantly increase happiness. In other words, if you're rich and miserable, more money won't help. It's more about how you use your resources and the quality of your relationships.
Thinking that success and achievements equal happiness. Many people believe that achieving certain career goals or milestones will lead to everlasting happiness. While accomplishments can bring some joy, it's often fleeting. True happiness tends to come from within and isn't solely reliant on external achievements.
On that last point, Waldinger expands further in his own words in an interview with McKinsey's Author Talks :
What we find is that the badges of achievement don't make people happy. We had people who were CEOs, who made lots of money, or who became famous. Those things did not relate to happiness. But, to the extent that achieving things that are important to you is fulfilling, that does make a difference in well-being. What we found is that the people who were the happiest were not isolated. They were not workaholics who didn't pay any attention to their relationships. Those people were some of the saddest folks in our study and were filled with regret when they were in their 80s and we asked them to look back on their lives.
Wow. So, the bottom line is simple and attainable, but not everybody will get there. Ultimately, at the end of the road, having strong, supportive relationships with family, friends, and community is crucial for leading a happy, healthy and fulfilling life. That about nails it.
A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta
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Parental bed-sharing is unlikely to impact children's psychological development, new research has found.
The study from the University of Essex looked at nearly 17,000 British babies and tracked them for 11 years – finding kids who shared beds were happy and healthy.
Dr. Ayten Bilgin, from the Department of Psychology, found no association between bed-sharing at 9 months and childhood emotional or behavioral problems.
The practice is mired in controversy as some experts previously thought it negatively affected children's development.
However, others say it helps both parents and children as they are nearby for feeding and if they wake in the night.
Despite the ongoing debate about the potential long-term harms and benefits of bed-sharing, little scientific research has been conducted on this topic. Parents can rest assured that as long as it's practiced safely, bed-sharing is unlikely to have any negative impact on children's emotional and behavioral development. There is a lot of guilt and shame around bed-sharing - but it is a parental choice." Dr. Ayten Bilgin, Department of Psychology, University of Essex
The study, published in Attachment and Human Development, used data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study which follows the lives of 16,599 children born in the UK.
Parents reported on bed-sharing at 9 months and on their children's internalizing behavior – such as depression and anxiety - and externalizing, like aggression and hyperactivity, when they were 3, 5, 7 and 11 years old.
University of Essex
Bilgin, A., et al . (2024). Associations between bed-sharing in infancy and childhood internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Attachment & Human Development . doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2024.2380427 .
Posted in: Child Health News | Medical Research News
Tags: Anxiety , Children , Depression , Hyperactivity , Psychology , Research
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Need some extra motivation to get happier check out the ways science has proven that happiness is good for your health..
Happiness and health are a virtuous circle ( Unsplash )
By Kira M. Newman, Greater Good Over the past decade, an entire industry has sprouted up promising the secrets to happiness. There are best-selling books like The Happiness Project and The How of Happiness , and happiness programs like Happify and Tal-Ben Shahar’s Wholebeing Institute. The Greater Good Science Center offers an online course on “The Science of Happiness” and boast a collection of research-based happiness practices on our new website, Greater Good in Action . READ: The Essential Toolkit for Happiness But all of these books and classes raise the question: Why bother? Many of us might prefer to focus on boosting our productivity and success rather than our positive emotions. Or perhaps we’ve tried to get happier but always seem to get leveled by setbacks. Why keep trying? Recently, a critical mass of research has provided what might be the most basic and irrefutable argument in favor of happiness: Happiness and good health go hand-in-hand. Indeed, scientific studies have been finding that happiness can make our hearts healthier, our immune systems stronger, and our lives longer. Several of the studies cited below suggest that happiness causes better health; others suggest only that the two are correlated—perhaps good health causes happiness but not the other way around. Happiness and health may indeed be a virtuous circle, but researchers are still trying to untangle their relationship. In the meantime, if you need some extra motivation to get happier , check out these six ways that happiness has been linked to good health.
Love and happiness may not actually originate in the heart, but they are good for it. For example, a 2005 paper found that happiness predicts lower heart rate and blood pressure. In the study, participants rated their happiness over 30 times in one day and then again three years later. The initially happiest participants had a lower heart rate on follow-up (about six beats slower per minute), and the happiest participants during the follow-up had better blood pressure. Research has also uncovered a link between happiness and another measure of heart health: heart rate variability, which refers to the time interval between heartbeats and is associated with risk for various diseases. In a 2008 study , researchers monitored 76 patients suspected to have coronary artery disease. Was happiness linked to healthier hearts even among people who might have heart problems? It seemed so: The participants who rated themselves as happiest on the day their hearts were tested had a healthier pattern of heart rate variability on that day. Over time, these effects can add up to serious differences in heart health. In a 2010 study , researchers invited nearly 2,000 Canadians into the lab to talk about their anger and stress at work. Observers rated them on a scale of one to five for the extent to which they expressed positive emotions like joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm, and contentment. Ten years later, the researchers checked in with the participants to see how they were doing—and it turned out that the happier ones were less likely to have developed coronary heart disease. In fact, for each one-point increase in positive emotions they had expressed, their heart disease risk was 22 percent lower.
Do you know a grumpy person who always seems to be getting sick? That may be no coincidence: Research is now finding a link between happiness and a stronger immune system. In a 2003 experiment , 350 adults volunteered to get exposed to the common cold (don’t worry, they were well-compensated). Before exposure, researchers called them six times in two weeks and asked how much they had experienced nine positive emotions—such as feeling energetic, pleased, and calm—that day. After five days in quarantine, the participants with the most positive emotions were less likely to have developed a cold. Some of the same researchers wanted to investigate why happier people might be less susceptible to sickness, so in a 2006 study they gave 81 graduate students the hepatitis B vaccine. After receiving the first two doses, participants rated themselves on those same nine positive emotions. The ones who were high in positive emotion were nearly twice as likely to have a high antibody response to the vaccine—a sign of a robust immune system. Instead of merely affecting symptoms, happiness seemed to be literally working on a cellular level. A much earlier experiment found that immune system activity in the same individual goes up and down depending on their happiness. For two months, 30 male dental students took pills containing a harmless blood protein from rabbits, which causes an immune response in humans. They also rated whether they had experienced various positive moods that day. On days when they were happier, participants had a better immune response, as measured by the presence of an antibody in their saliva that defends against foreign substances.
Happy kids are healthy kids ( Unsplash )
Stress is not only upsetting on a psychological level but also triggers biological changes in our hormones and blood pressure. Happiness seems to temper these effects, or at least help us recover more quickly. In the study mentioned above, where participants rated their happiness more than 30 times in a day, researchers also found associations between happiness and stress. The happiest participants had 23 percent lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol than the least happy, and another indicator of stress—the level of a blood-clotting protein that increases after stress—was 12 times lower. Happiness also seems to carry benefits even when stress is inevitable. In a 2009 study , some diabolically cruel researchers decided to stress out psychology students and see how they reacted. The students were led to a soundproof chamber, where they first answered questions indicating whether they generally felt 10 feelings like enthusiasm or pride. Then came their worst nightmare: They had to answer an exceedingly difficult statistics question while being videotaped, and they were told that their professor would evaluate their response. Throughout the process, their heart was measured with an electrocardiogram (EKG) machine and a blood pressure monitor. In the wake of such stress, the hearts of the happiest students recovered most quickly.
A 2001 study asked participants to rate their recent experience of positive emotions, then (five weeks later) how much they had experienced negative symptoms like muscle strain, dizziness, and heartburn since the study began. People who reported the highest levels of positive emotion at the beginning actually became healthier over the course of the study, and ended up healthier than their unhappy counterparts. The fact that their health improved over five weeks (and the health of the unhappiest participants declined) suggests that the results aren’t merely evidence of people in a good mood giving rosier ratings of their health than people in a bad mood. A 2005 study suggests that positive emotion also mitigates pain in the context of disease. Women with arthritis and chronic pain rated themselves weekly on positive emotions like interest, enthusiasm, and inspiration for about three months. Over the course of the study, those with higher ratings overall were less likely to experience increases in pain.
Happy days = less pain ( Dimedrol68 / Shutterstock.com )
Happiness is associated with improvements in more severe, long-term conditions as well, not just shorter-term aches and pains. In a 2008 study of nearly 10,000 Australians, participants who reported being happy and satisfied with life most or all of the time were about 1.5 times less likely to have long-term health conditions (like chronic pain and serious vision problems) two years later. Another study in the same year found that women with breast cancer recalled being less happy and optimistic before their diagnosis than women without breast cancer, suggesting that happiness and optimism may be protective against the disease. As adults become elderly, another condition that often afflicts them is frailty, which is characterized by impaired strength, endurance, and balance and puts them at risk of disability and death. In a 2004 study, over 1,550 Mexican Americans ages 65 and older rated how much self-esteem, hope, happiness, and enjoyment they felt over the past week. After seven years, the participants with more positive emotion ratings were less likely to be frail. Some of the same researchers also found that happier elderly people (by the same measure of positive emotion) were less likely to have a stroke in the subsequent six years; this was particularly true for men.
In the end, the ultimate health indicator might be longevity - and here, especially, happiness comes into play. In perhaps the most famous study of happiness and longevity, the life expectancy of Catholic nuns was linked to the amount of positive emotion they expressed in an autobiographical essay they wrote upon entering their convent decades earlier, typically in their 20s. Researchers combed through these writing samples for expressions of feelings like amusement, contentment, gratitude, and love. In the end, the happiest-seeming nuns lived a whopping 7-10 years longer than the least happy. You don’t have to be a nun to experience the life-extending benefits of happiness, though. In a 2011 study , almost 4,000 English adults ages 52-79 reported how happy, excited, and content they were multiple times in a single day. Here, happier people were 35 percent less likely to die over the course of about five years than their unhappier counterparts. These two studies both measured specific positive emotions, but overall satisfaction with one’s life—another major indicator of happiness—is also linked to longevity. A 2010 study followed almost 7,000 people from California’s Alameda County for nearly three decades, finding that the people who were more satisfied with life at the beginning were less likely to die during the course of the study.
Longevity is the ultimate indicator of health - and happiness plays an important role (Shutterstock)
As the science of happiness and health matures, researchers are trying to determine what role, if any, happiness actually plays in causing health benefits. They’re also trying to distinguish the effects of different forms of happiness (including positive emotions and life satisfaction), the effects of “extreme” happiness, and other factors. For example, a new study suggests that we should look not just at life satisfaction levels but life satisfaction variability: Researchers found that low life satisfaction with lots of fluctuations—i.e., an unstable level of happiness—was linked to even earlier death than low life satisfaction alone. All that said, the study of the health benefits of happiness is still young. It will take time to figure out the exact mechanisms by which happiness influences health, and how factors like social relationships and exercise fit in. But in the meantime, it seems safe to imagine that a happier you will be healthier, too.
7 Stats About How Happy People Live Their Lives What Will Make You Happy? [QUIZ] This article originally appeared on Greater Good , the online magazine of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. View the original article here .
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by Bob Yirka , Medical Xpress
A team of neuroscientists, brain specialists and psychiatrists, led by a group at Cambridge University, in the U.K, has found evidence suggesting that minor brain injuries that occur early in life, may have health impacts later on.
In their paper published in the journal JAMA Network Open , the group describes how they analyzed and compared MRI scans from hundreds of people participating in the U.K.'s Prevent Dementia study.
Prior research has suggested that some forms of dementia could be related to some types of brain injuries. In this new effort, the research team, hoping to learn more about the impact of concussions or other minor brain injuries on dementia, looked at MRI scans of 617 people between the ages of 40 to 59 who had volunteered to take part in the Prevent Dementia study and who had undergone at least three MRI scans. They also studied their medical histories, focusing most specifically on whether they had had brain injuries anytime during their life.
The research team noted that 36.1% of the volunteers reported having experienced at least one brain injury that was serious enough to have caused them to be unconscious for a short period of time—such injuries are classified as traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).
Looking at the MRI scans, the researchers found higher than normal instances of cerebral microbleeds (1 in 6 of them) and other symptoms of what they describe as evidence of small vessel disease of the brain. They also found that those patients with at least one TBI were more likely to smoke cigarettes, had more sleep problems , were more likely to have gait issues and to suffer from depression. They also noted that the more TBIs a person had, the more such problems became apparent.
Another thing that stood out, the team notes, was that those people who had experienced a TBI when younger had a higher risk of memory problems than did patients with cardiovascular disease , high blood pressure or diabetes, a possible clue about their likelihood of developing dementia.
The researchers conclude by suggesting that more work needs to be done to learn about the long-term impacts of TBIs, particularly regarding memory retention problems and possible associations with the development of dementia. They further suggest that their work hints at the possibility of unknown health consequences years after people suffer head injuries.
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F orget everything you think you know about being single—starting with the assumption that it means ready to mingle.
More people than ever before are living solo: Nearly 40% of adults in the U.S. are unpartnered, up from 29% in 1990, according to the Pew Research Center . And about half aren’t interested in dating or a relationship.
Take Bella DePaulo, a 69-year-old in Santa Barbara, Calif., who has been single her entire life. For years, she thought she would eventually develop a desire to marry or enter a long-term relationship—but she’s since realized that single life is her best life. “I had never heard of such a thing as being happily single and wanting to stay single,” says DePaulo, a social psychologist who’s the author of books including Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After and Alone: The Badass Psychology of People Who Like Being Alone . “Once I realized that single was who I really was, and that was never going to change, it was wonderful.” She describes her solo life as authentic, fulfilling, meaningful, and psychologically rich.
Researchers are only beginning to fully understand all the dimensions of singlehood—including who it appeals to and why, its challenges and joys, and how it affects health and happiness . For years, singles were hardly studied. Why? In part, probably because “science isn’t independent of society’s values and norms,” says Geoff MacDonald, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto who researches relationships and singlehood. “We’ve been going along with society’s story about single people, and there have been structural incentives to kind of make single people the punching bag.”
But that’s beginning to change. The marriage rate has been decreasing for decades , and those who do get married often wait until later in life. Marriage is no longer a necessity for having a family or achieving financial comfort; it’s only one path among many that can lead to joy.
Overall, MacDonald says, the available evidence indicates that people in romantic relationships enjoy greater well-being than singles: They tend to be happier and report higher levels of life satisfaction . However, marriage doesn’t necessarily make you happy; there’s evidence that, more likely, happier people choose to get married. And there are lots of variables at play. For instance, some people who are single might be exceptionally happy, while others in relationships are miserable. ( Research has found that people in unhappy marriages have equal or worse health outcomes compared to those who were never married.)
Another important caveat: The singles who have the hardest time with their relationship status tend to be divorced people. Traditionally, research hasn’t accounted for the fact that about 39% of marriages end in divorce. “There’s evidence suggesting that when people get divorced, it can have lasting negative effects,” MacDonald says. Widowhood is also associated with poor mental health, and can lead to grief, depressive symptoms, and loneliness.
As the new science of singlehood crystallizes, here are some of the most intriguing insights that researchers have uncovered.
Long-term singles tend to have certain values in common, says Elyakim Kislev, a faculty member at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author of books including Happy Singlehood . These are people who “cherish freedom, independence, and even creativity and nonconformity more than others,” he says.
Research backs that up. In one study published in 2022, hundreds of men and women were surveyed about what makes single life attractive, and they rated the top benefits as having more time for themselves, being able to focus on their goals, and not having anyone else dictate their actions.
Another study , co-authored by MacDonald, zeroed in on what unpartnered people prioritize the most—and the results suggest they care about being mentally and physically healthy and fostering strong family relationships. Sex and dating were among participants’ least important priorities. Additional research suggests certain traits might hardwire people to be single. Among them: sociosexuality (or the willingness to have sex outside a committed relationship) and high career focus, especially among young women.
“Some people just don’t want to organize their lives around a romantic partner,” says DePaulo, the happily single social psychologist. “They want to take advantage of the freedom to curate lives of their own.”
Some people believe a romantic relationship is essential for their happiness and well-being, while others find fulfillment and satisfaction without a partner. Those in the latter group tend to fare better. “Wanting a relationship more only emphasizes the gap between one’s reality and one’s desire,” Kislev says. People who focus on what they don’t have “often find themselves miserable, which only feeds into more failed dates in a vicious circle.” His research indicates that the more someone wants a relationship, the less satisfied they’ll be with their life.
What’s a single longing for love to do? Kislev says it’s key to find ways to enjoy your current relationship status. Even if you eventually want to couple up—based on your own desires, not those of, say, your parents—take stock of the benefits of your singleness. Regularly engaging in hobbies and self-care activities can boost self-esteem and overall life satisfaction, he says. So can a sense of purpose, achieved perhaps by volunteering or pursuing a passion.
People who are coupled up often turn inwards to their partners and families—researchers call it “the greedy marriage,” Kislev says. As a result, “coupled people, especially men, may lose their friends over time and find themselves lonely later in life.”
Singles, on the other hand, typically have stronger social ties, which researchers consistently name as the bedrock of happiness . Research suggests that those without a partner are more likely to support and visit their parents and siblings than people who are currently or previously married, and they usually have more friends . Singles are also more likely to socialize with those friends and to give and receive help from them.
Not all single people live alone, but social scientists have found that those who do tend to be actively involved in the lives of their cities and neighborhoods. “They aren’t just staying home, the way people who live with others often do,” DePaulo says. “They walk out the door and meet other people.” One study found that people who lived with others—not those who lived alone—actually had the highest levels of loneliness.
Kislev has studied the connection between loneliness and marital status in old age, and his findings indicate that married seniors are the least lonely group, followed by those who never married. Both groups were less lonely than people who were widowed, divorced, or separated. The findings indicate that “long-term singles, in particular, develop strong social ties, self-sufficiency, and a sense of purpose over their lifetime,” he says.
Ask a married person to describe singles’ sex lives, and they might imagine something more exciting than reality. There’s an assumption that those who aren’t in a relationship have “amazing sexual opportunities for variety and exploration,” MacDonald says. “But our data suggest quite clearly that people have more sex in romantic relationships than they do if they’re single.” That makes sense, he adds, considering the convenience factor.
Still, MacDonald’s research indicates that the extent to which single people are happy with their sex lives predicts their satisfaction with their relationship status. Those with higher sexual satisfaction tend to report less desire to marry and hold stronger beliefs that singletons can be happy, he says.
There’s a common misconception that older singles are the least happy with their relationship status. But actually, MacDonald’s research suggests that starting around age 40, singletons become more satisfied with their solo lives.
There are likely a couple reasons for this, he says. For one thing, by the time they’ve reached midlife, many people have “filtered into the stream that they’re looking for,” he says. “If you’re somebody who wants a romantic relationship, oftentimes you’ve gotten there, and so unhappy singles have kind of been selected out of the single group.”
Plus, MacDonald adds, there’s evidence that overall well-being tends to increase after midlife, so the connection might not be unique to singlehood.
Even now, as more people choose solo lives, single-shaming persists. A study published in 2020 found that being prejudiced against singles is considered more acceptable than prejudice toward certain nationalities or sexual orientation groups—and it might manifest, for example, as a landlord disclosing that they’d rather rent an apartment to a married couple than a single person. “Singlism,” as it’s sometimes called, could also mean excluding singles from social events, pressuring them to “settle down,” or making assumptions that certain shortcomings must be keeping them from finding a match.
Kislev points to research in which undergraduate students were asked to list characteristics they associated with married and single individuals. Married people were referred to as mature, happy, kind, honest, and loving. Singles, on the other hand, were perceived as immature, insecure, self-centered, unhappy, lonely, and even ugly. Many people, he says, continue to see singlehood as a transitory stage on the way to a romantic relationship—and as “a second-best option or a failure to find a partner.”
In reality, there’s no one-size-fits-all definition of “happily ever after,” DePaulo says, and it’s possible to reach that vaunted place alone. If you’re single but worried about what others think of you, “live your single life fully, joyfully, and unapologetically,” she advises. “People who try to stigmatize you are the ones who should be embarrassed—not you.”
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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
New research has shown a potential link between microplastics in the human brain and the global rise in Alzheimer’s disease.
The University of New Mexico study, which has yet to be reviewed by other scientists, has shown that the highest concentration of microplastics was found in 12 brain samples from people that died with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Researchers analysed microplastic concentrations in 51 liver, kidney, and brain samples collected in 2016 and 2024.
While particles could be found in all these organs, the brain samples showed the highest concentration, seven to 30 times more than liver or kidney samples.
12 brain samples from people that died with dementia or Alzheimer’s were shown to contain up to 10 times more plastic by weight than healthy samples, as reported in the New Lede .
While these early findings alone do not go far enough to prove that there is a link between microplastics in the brain and incidence of dementia or Alzheimer’s, they do suggest a need for further research.
As researchers stated in their report, the incidence of these diseases is rising across the globe. At the same time, the amount of plastic in brains has increased over 50 percent in the past eight years.
Previous studies in mice also linked nanoplastics (plastic particles that are even smaller than microplastics) in the brain to cognitive changes and other conditions of the brain.
A different study, published in the journal Science Advances in 2023, found that nanoplastics can interact with a protein called alpha-synuclein, which plays a role in nerve cell communication.
It is said that these particles can bind tightly to alpha-synuclein, which can result in the formation toxic clumps similar to what is seen in Parkinson’s disease
‘It’s pretty alarming,’ Matthew Campen, toxicologist at the University of New Mexico and lead author of the study, told the New Lede.
‘There’s much more plastic in our brains than I ever would have imagined or been comfortable with.’
The extent to which these particles, which are present in air, water, and food, affect human health is not fully understood yet.
According to a 2022 study published in the Lancet Public Health , Global dementia cases are on track to triple by 2050.
But more research is needed in order to explain the possible link microplastics to this trend, scientists have concluded.
This week, it emerged the ‘groundbreaking’ drug lecanemab will not be made available on the NHS because it’s too costly .
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) said the benefits of the medication are ‘just too small to justify the significant cost to the NHS’.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected] .
For more stories like this, check our news page .
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Doctors often fail to express empathy. artificial intelligence — done right — might be able to help them.
By Evan Selinger and Thomas Carroll
Aug. 15, 2024
Selinger is a professor of philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Carroll is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Modern medicine has an empathy problem. Artificial intelligence — done right — might be able to help ease it.
Despite the proliferation of communication training programs over the past decade or two, doctors often fail to express empathy, especially in stressful moments when patients and their families are struggling to hear bad news and make difficult decisions. Since empathy has been shown to enhance what patients understand and how much they trust their medical team, falling short compromises the quality of patient care.
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Can AI help? That might sound like an ironic question, because doctors who struggle to express empathy can come across as robotic. Yet researchers and health care professionals are increasingly asking it, and not just because we’re living through an AI hype cycle .
One reason for the growing interest in AI to help solve medicine’s empathy problem is that this aspect of medical care has proven particularly hard to improve. This isn’t surprising, given that physicians face ever-increasing pressures to quickly see large numbers of patients while finding themselves drowning in paperwork and a myriad of administrative duties. These taxing conditions lead to both a lack of time and, perhaps more importantly, a lack of emotional energy. An American Medical Association report indicated that 48% of doctors experienced burnout last year .
Given the magnitude of the empathy problem and its significant clinical and ethical stakes, various possible uses of AI are being explored. None of them are likely to be silver bullets and, while each is well-intentioned, the entire endeavor is fraught with risks.
One rather extreme option has been suggested by Dr. Arthur Garson Jr., a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a clinical professor of health systems and population health sciences the University of Houston. He urges us to prepare for a time when some human doctors are replaced with AI avatars . Garson thinks it’s possible, even likely, that AI-powered avatars displayed on computer screens could be programmed to look “exactly like a physician” and have “in-depth conversations” with “the patient and family” that are customized to provide “highly appropriate reactions” to a patient’s moods and words.
Whether AI will ever get this advanced raises tricky questions about the ethics of empathy, including the risk of creating negative dehumanizing effects for patients because, for the foreseeable future, computer programs can’t experience empathy . To be sure, not all human doctors who sound empathetic truly feel that way in the moment. Nevertheless, while doctors can’t always control their own feelings, they can recognize and respond appropriately to patients’ emotions, even in the midst of trying circumstances.
Simulated AI “doctors,” no matter how apparently smart, cannot truly care about patients unless they somehow become capable of having the human experience of empathy. Until that day comes — and it may never arise — bot-generated phrases like “I’m sorry to inform you” seem to cheapen the very idea of empathy.
A more moderate vision revolves around various applications of generative AI to support doctors’ communication with patients in real time. Anecdotal evidence suggests this use of this technology is promising, like Dr. Joshua Tamayo-Sarver’s moving account of how ChatGPT saved the day in a California emergency department when he struggled to find the right words to connect with a patient’s distraught family. Preliminary academic research, like a much-discussed article in JAMA Internal Medicine, also suggests generative AI programs based on large language models can effectively simulate empathetic discourse.
Another recent study , however, suggests that while the content of an empathic message matters, so does the messenger’s identity. People rate AI-generated empathic statements as better on average than human-generated ones if they don’t know who or what wrote them. But the machine’s advantage disappears once the recipient learns that the words had been generated by a bot.
In a forthcoming book, “Move Slow and Upgrade,” one of us (E.S.) proposes the following possibility: integrating a version of generative AI into patient portals to help doctors sound more empathetic. Patients see portals as a lifeline, but doctors spend so much time fielding inbox messages that the correspondence contributes to their burnout . Perhaps a win-win is possible. Doctors might improve patient satisfaction and reduce the number of follow-up questions patients ask by pushing an empathy button that edits their draft messages.
While this application of AI-generated empathy is promising in a number of ways, it also runs many risks even if the obvious challenges are resolved, like the technology consistently performs well, is routinely audited, is configured to be HIPAA compliant, neither doctors nor patients are forced to use it, and doctors use it transparently and responsibly. Many tricky issues would still remain. For example, how can doctors use AI quickly and oversee its outputs without placing too much trust in the technology’s performance? What happens if the technology creates a multiple persona problem, where a doctor sounds like a saint online but is a robot in person? And how can a new form of AI dependence be created to avoid further deterioration of human communication?
Some visions capitalize on AI’s potential to enhance doctors’ communication skills. For example, one of us (T.C.) is involved with the SOPHIE Project , an initiative at the University of Rochester to create an AI avatar trained to portray a patient and provide personalized feedback. It could help doctors improve their ability to appropriately express empathy. Preliminary data are promising, although it is too soon to draw firm conclusions, and further clinical trials are ongoing.
This approach has the advantages of being reproducible, scalable, and relatively inexpensive. It will, however, likely have many of the same limitations as traditional, human-actor-based communication training courses. For example, on the individual level, communication skills tend to degrade over time, requiring repeated training. Another issue is that the doctors who most need communication training may be least likely to participate in it. It is also unrealistic to expect SOPHIE-like training programs to overcome system-level stresses and dysfunction, which are a major contributor to the empathy problem in the first place.
Because technology changes so quickly, now is the time to have thoughtful and inclusive conversations about the possibilities we’ve highlighted here. While the two of us don’t have all the answers, we hope discussions about AI and empathic communication are guided by an appreciation that both the messages and the messengers matter. Focusing too much on what AI can do can lead to overestimating the value of its outputs and undervaluing essential relationships of care — relationships that, at least for the foreseeable future, and perhaps fundamentally, can occur only between human beings. At the same time, prematurely concluding that AI can’t help may unnecessarily contribute to preserving a dysfunctional system that leaves far too many patients seeing doctors as robotic.
Evan Selinger, Ph.D., is a professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology and the co-author, with Albert Fox Cahn, of the forthcoming book “ Move Slow and Upgrade: The Power of Incremental Innovation” (Cambridge University Press). Thomas Carroll, M.D., Ph.D., is an associate professor of medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Have an opinion on this essay? Submit a letter to the editor .
STAT’s investigation is based on interviews with nearly 100 people around the country, including incarcerated patients and grieving families, prison officials, and legal and medical experts. Reporter Nicholas Florko also filed more than 225 public records requests and combed through thousands of pages of legal filings to tell these stories. His analysis of deaths in custody is based on a special data use agreement between STAT and the Department of Justice.
You can read more about the reporting for this project and the methodology behind our calculations.
The series is the culmination of a reporting fellowship sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists and supported by The Commonwealth Fund.
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Other research supports this mindset, and has found that older adults are better about letting go of past failures. "They tend to realize how life is short and they are more likely to pay more attention on what makes them happy now," says Dr. Waldinger. You could do the same.
Here are some strategies to try. Stay connected. The Harvard study led by Dr. Waldinger found a strong link between happiness and close relationships with family and friends. "Personal connection creates emotional stimulation, which is an automatic mood booster, while isolation is a mood buster," says Dr. Waldinger. Raise your hand.
In the current study, we deployed a comprehensive, 3-month positive psychological intervention as an experimental tool to examine the effects of increasing subjective well-being on physical health in a nonclinical population. In a 6-month randomized controlled trial with 155 community adults, we found effects of treatment on self-reported ...
If you are happy and you know it… you may live longer. Plenty of research suggests optimistic people have a reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, and declines in lung capacity and function. Optimism is also associated with a lower risk of early death from cancer and infection. And now a new study links optimism to living a longer life.
In a 6-month randomized controlled trial with 155 community adults, we found effects of treatment on self-reported physical health—the number of days in the previous month that participants felt healthy or sick, as assessed by questions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System ...
The present research replicated previous findings that happier people tend to have better physical health and longer survival. Extending our understanding of the happiness-health link, the present research found that becoming happier across time was independently associated with better physical health, above and beyond average happiness level.
Consequences of poor adherence include both health and economic implications; thus, the issue of compliance is a major focus of health change research. Since the 1980s, medical regimen adherence has been viewed more as an issue of self-regulation, albeit triggered by a visit with a provider, rather than of compliance based on the doctor-patient ...
Fifty-eight out of 10,585 days. Of course, this is assuming a lot of good fortune, and the real number is almost certainly going to be lower. Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has ...
Genetics Factors. In the recent years appeared a new branch of human psychobiology: a genetic approach to well-being and happiness. Twin studies suggested that genetic factors count for 35 -50 percent of happiness ().In a comprehensive investigation, happiness (subjective well-being) was measured in a birth-record-based sample of several thousand middle-aged twins using the Well-Being scale of ...
Most research suggests that the connection between happiness and health is bidirectional. This means that greater well-being leads to better physical health, and better physical health leads to ...
A systematic review examines the happiness-promoting strategies most commonly recommended in the media. This review suggests that the scientific evidence underlying some of these strategies, such ...
Several studies investigated medical health policies and the perceptions of health and their relation to happiness. ... Studies found that the characterization of a happy person differed at a cultural level, ... Cross-cultural research has shown that the within-country correlations between how much money individuals make, and their happiness ...
Happiness research may have implications for the general public, as well. "People are doing a lot of things to stay healthy; they're jogging, riding their bikes, eating fruits and vegetables ...
Intervention for Healthy Outcomes. Over the course of six months, Kushlev and his colleagues at the University of Virginia and the University of British Columbia examined how improving the subjective well-being of people who were not hospitalized or otherwise undergoing medical treatment affected their physical health.
Although Vaillant has since found that after age 50 vascular risk factors such as smoking, elevated diastolic blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and alcohol abuse appear to play a far greater role than mental health in subsequent health and longevity, other research still supports a link to mental health. Research by Ichiro Kawachi, an HMS ...
Research has also found that some sense of happiness may come with age. Older adults may be able to better regulate their emotions than younger people, expose themselves to less stress and ...
Being happy promotes a range of lifestyle habits that are important for overall health. Happy people tend to eat healthier diets, with higher intakes of fruits, vegetables and whole grains ( 1, 2 ...
Going back to the APA's definition, happiness is associated with feelings like joy, gladness, satisfaction, and well-being. Other researchers have found that, at least in the United States, many ...
W hen scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 during the Great Depression, they hoped the longitudinal study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives.. They got more than they wanted. After following the surviving Crimson men for nearly 80 years as part of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world's longest studies of adult life ...
Happiness is characterized by experiencing positive emotions while simultaneously perceiving one's life as meaningful and worthwhile. Research on the mental health of healthcare professionals ...
Smile intentionally and often. A genuine smile is a small yet profound act of kindness and generosity that also elevates mood by triggering the release of the feel-good neurotransmitters serotonin ...
Researchers collected vast amounts of data through interviews, medical exams, questionnaires, and even brain scans, tracking various aspects of the participants' lives, such as physical health ...
Parental bed-sharing is unlikely to impact children's psychological development, new research has found. The study from the University of Essex looked at nearly 17,000 British babies and tracked ...
In the meantime, if you need some extra motivation to get happier, check out these six ways that happiness has been linked to good health. 1. HAPPINESS PROTECTS YOUR HEART. Love and happiness may not actually originate in the heart, but they are good for it. For example, a 2005 paper found that happiness predicts lower heart rate and blood ...
The research team noted that 36.1% of the volunteers reported having experienced at least one brain injury that was serious enough to have caused them to be unconscious for a short period of time ...
Ed O'Brien. University of Chicago. Objective: Happy people are healthy people. However, past research has largely overlooked the influence of romantic partners' happiness on physical health, particularly how a person's own emotional and physical well-being might also be affected by the happiness and health of their partner.
New research finds that unpartnered people can be healthy, happy, and more socially connected than married people. ... A study published in 2020 found that being prejudiced against singles is ...
The researchers analysed microplastic concentrations in 51 liver, kidney, and brain samples collected in 2016 and 2024. (Picture: Shutterstock / chayanuphol) New research has shown a potential ...
Most of our ability to be happy is based on genes — some people are just naturally happier than others. But research suggests that 40% of people's happiness comes from the choices they make. "The idea that you can't be happier is false," says Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of the longest-running study on happiness, the Harvard Study on Adult ...
One rather extreme option has been suggested by Dr. Arthur Garson Jr., a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a clinical professor of health systems and population health sciences the ...