demuire Posted October 4, 2005 Report Posted October 4, 2005 I thought this article about happiness was rather interesting. Haven't finished reading it yet, but a few things stood out so far: For happiness levels are probably genetic: identical twins are usually equally bubbly or grumpy. People who feel battered by unsolvable problems learn to be helpless; they become passive, slower to learn, anxious and sad She reminded him that she used to be a whiner but had stopped on her fifth birthday. "And if I can stop whining, you can stop being a grouch." Looking back on "learned helplessness", he reflected that one in three subjects — rats, dogs or people — never became "helpless", no matter how many shocks or problems beset them. More reading to do... Quote
Rolln16 Posted October 4, 2005 Report Posted October 4, 2005 Interesting Yes...Beneficial No... Well i think that all those people must be sad, self-obsessed and inactive because they are studying "happiness" Why is it that scientists have to always know why things happen, why are we happy, why are we sad??? Why can't we just be??? these things and not have some lunatic studying the genetics behind it - it seems to me that soon we will know so much about ourselves that we will not have feelings because they will just be simply cast aside as "genetic malfunctions" Why on earth would you want to study why people are happy - where is the point??? Why not put the effort into studying cancer, sids, heart disease and find cures for these things instead of trying to find out the reasons people are happy... Its crazy... Why do we even need to know that sort of thing??? Sorry...it just really annoys me that people can go and spend all this time - years even, on trying to find out what makes the genetics of happiness in a person behave the way they do... WHAT THE??? Quote
demuire Posted October 4, 2005 Author Report Posted October 4, 2005 Maybe because, if you can find the key to happiness, then maybe you can help people who aren't happy achieve it. And happy people are healthy people. Quote
demuire Posted October 4, 2005 Author Report Posted October 4, 2005 Rolln16: Since its origins in a Leipzig laboratory 130 years ago, psychology has had little to say about goodness and contentment. Mostly psychologists have concerned themselves with weakness and misery. There are libraries full of theories about why we get sad, worried, and angry. It hasn't been respectable science to study what happens when lives go well. Positive experiences, such as joy, kindness, altruism and heroism, have mainly been ignored. For every 100 psychology papers dealing with anxiety or depression, only one concerns a positive trait. *snip* Professor Alice Isen of Cornell University and colleagues have demonstrated how positive emotions make people think faster and more creatively. Showing how easy it is to give people an intellectual boost Quote
demuire Posted October 4, 2005 Author Report Posted October 4, 2005 ... and there's a lot more about why he did the research on page 2... Quote
Rolln16 Posted October 4, 2005 Report Posted October 4, 2005 (edited) MMMmmm... i do see your point - but i just feel that everybody has their own key to happiness - some people like cars others like flowers - so to find the key to happiness is really a bit silly because there is no real distinct key for everyone different things help different people - and happinees is not the only key to health - there is so much more - often the happy people are the ones who get cancer, have heart attacks and die suddenly - and i have two of those cases in my family alone... so from my point of view i guess i just wish that there was a better way for the more important things to be looked at rather than going off on tangants that are supposed to cure people... Edited October 4, 2005 by Rolln16 Quote
demuire Posted October 4, 2005 Author Report Posted October 4, 2005 Stay in your Eeyore-ish bubble of existentialist angst and have a life that's short, sickly, friendless and self-obsessed. Or find a way to get happy, and long life, good health, job satisfaction and social success will be yours. Gee, I guess I'd better start making myself be a happier bubblier person soon :D Rolln16: I think you're looking taking it too much at face level. Of course different things make different people happier, just as different people's personalities are different. But we all share a similar biological build, and as written in the research, happiness and joy triggers the same part of the brain for different people. The key is, how do you trigger this? There's a lot of interesting things in that article, I could quote it all but I'd go on forever, and then you might as well read the article :( Haha, I like the last bit they put in: Men often complain about their wives' volatility. Now research confirms that women really are both happier and sadder. Positive and negative emotions are not polar opposites — you can have both in your life. Women experience more of all emotions except anger. First it was found that women experience twice as much depression as men. Next, researchers found that women report more positive emotion than men, more frequently and more intensely. It all points to men and women having a different emotional make-up. Cognitive psychologists say that men and women have different skills related to sending and receiving emotion. Women are expressive; men conceal or control their emotions. Women convey emotion through facial expression and communication; men express emotion through aggressive or distracting behaviour. Does the difference lie in biology, social roles or just women's willingness to report emotion? That's up for debate Quote
Rolln16 Posted October 4, 2005 Report Posted October 4, 2005 (edited) I'm Sorry i mustnt understand it the way you do and i did read the entire write-up...I'll leave you to your thread Demuire... Edited October 4, 2005 by Rolln16 Quote
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