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Happiness and Life Satisfaction (2017)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- arberavdullahu 7y agoInteresting that Kosovo(fairly new country, with low GDP) have highest Cantril Ladder in Balkan, and higher than some countries in EU
- TomMarius 7y agoWhich also seems very weird if you have ever visited these countries
- account73466 7y agoHappiness is often about the change of your state rather than about the state itself.
- TomMarius 7y agoI don't think the change that happened there really makes anyone happy. Have you been there?
- account73466 7y agoThis is not what I meant. I am talking about the change happening in the last few years might be positive w.r.t. what was happening say 10-20 years ago.
- arberavdullahu 7y agoI'm not sure what you meant, because of the football match, Kosovo vs England a lot England fans visited and really enjoyed the time there!
- TomMarius 7y agohttps://www.politico.eu/article/kosovo-hashim-thaci-un-special-court-tribunal-organ-trafficking-kla-serbia-milosevic-serbia-ramush/ https://www.politico.eu/article/kosovo-hashim-thaci-un-speci... I think people like their organs more than they care about football. Hopefully that's history. I wouldn't derive nation's happiness from experience tourists had during a football match.
- account73466 7y agoSeems like you are consuming hate.
- TomMarius 7y agoNot sure what that means but the stories I heard from the Kosovan (and Serbian and Albanian) people about their dead relatives have certainly filled me with a lot of hate towards pointless wars.
- novaRom 7y agoIt is important when exactly they ask that question. If they would ask me in June vs in November I would certainly give different replies. Time of the year with different amount of good weather conditions makes big difference.
- the_mitsuhiko 7y agoI was always wondering if people are more likely to vote conservative in Europe is elections are in autumn or winter :)
- tandav 7y agoTaking vitamin D shrinks that gap for a little.
- novaRom 7y agoVitamin D deficiency in Winter is quite normal and was always experienced by our ancestors (assuming non-equatorial geography). This is what brings good feeling in Spring.
- sirsuki 7y agohttps://www.grc.com/health/Vitamin-D.htm https://www.grc.com/health/Vitamin-D.htm An amazing amount research on vit-d collected into a digestible web site.
- gombosg 7y agoGood point - though in order for any kind of research to be valuable, statisticians have probably controlled for such stuff. (They already had to control for population demography - sex, race, education - why not for time of year?)
- anoplus 7y agoI immediately searched for the word 'sleep' in this article. > And various surveys have confirmed that people who say they are happy also tend to sleep better and express positive emotions verbally more frequently. Couldn't better sleep be the cause for happiness?
- PedroBatista 7y agoI think so, but couldn’t happiness be the cause of better sleep? Worried and anxious people don’t sleep very well.
- lordnacho 7y agoMy main question with the happiness surveys is whether what you're really getting is the answer you want to hear. So for instance if you're Scandinavian you're expected to say you're happy. This is pretty much one of the first things everyone says when it comes to the region. And if you haven't thought too much about it lately, perhaps you are inclined to just tell the researcher a stock answer. How do we know that people are not just saying what is expected of them? I think there's at least some evidence that people tend to do that when asked a question.
- psychoslave 7y agoWell, neurosciences tend to find generally good correlations between what people say they feel, and what can be measured by other means (IRMf and so on). Plus, it seems human minds is completely sensible to auto-persuasion with methods as trivial as daily individual "say it loudly" and "visualize the situation has you already succeeded in the goal". So being completely acculturated to a social belief of "we are so happy in our land" can surely be granted some favorable credits.
- punchclockhero 7y agoIt goes the other way too, some cultures have the belief that outward displays of happiness invite misfortune, especially around nosy strangers, aka happiness researchers.
- tiborsaas 7y ago> So for instance if you're Scandinavian you're expected to say you're happy. That implies that not only they are not that happy but they are systemically lying for some reason. I find this scenario hard to believe. > How do we know that people are not just saying what is expected of them? I don't know much about statistics, but given a large enough sample size these folks probably an edge case. Source: gut feeling.
- account73466 7y ago>> That implies that not only they are not that happy but they are systemically lying for some reason. I find this scenario hard to believe. Hmm, I find it believable that people may systematically lie when asked at work whether they are happy with their personal life.
- ghgfhgfhn 7y agoTil: most people are happy and it's just me that's miserable.
- tim333 7y agoIt's interesting that there seems to be a trend towards greater happiness during the internet era. If you look at the "Share who say they are 'very satisfied' or 'fairly satisfied' with their life" 1973 - 2016 graphs they are fairly flat 1973-1994 and then go up noticeably after then. Maybe spending time on the net isn't as bad as some make out. Personally I've found it a major plus in my life.
- gombosg 7y agoGreat statistics, thanks for sharing. I think that happiness is definitely something we should care about more, personally and also in statistics and political decision making. Let me share this (free) book written by a psychologist that deals with happiness. It's not the kind of hooray-optimist positive psychology, it's actually backed by research, with the results detailed in each chapter. Tom Stevens: You Can Choose To Be Happy https://csulb.edu/~tstevens/ https://csulb.edu/~tstevens/
- lcall 7y agoI am just me, and I am sure there is a better way to put this but: I have found peace. In my life, the best way to find happiness (in things that I expect to last, though amid serious problems including health challenges) has been the process of learning to follow the principles taught by Jesus Christ. I have learned for myself, it is possible to learn God's will, do it, and trust Him, and therefore have peace. I have put more about various aspects of this, attempting also to anticipate and answer questions, at my web site, in hopefully skimmable form (lukecall.net -- no javascript, no sales, no tracking other than logs my ISP makes, which I haven't looked at in months). He promises peace in this life and eternal life (great things) in the world to come, and I have learned for myself that He is real and His guidance is reliable. It makes a huge difference to know that there is purpose to life and it what we see is not the end. (Many will disagree. We all will choose for ourselves.)
- lcall 7y ago3 downvotes so far, no replies with why. Maybe you think I am stupid. At the site you can see I put a lot of time and work into those conclusions -- they are not lightly made. Best to you.
- RandomBacon 7y agoIt's probably because it almost sounds like you're evangelizing.
- lcall 7y agoThanks. I hoped I was posting a solution that has worked for me, based on careful, long observation and testing, for the topic at hand, like we do for any problem discussed (like the technical ones). Suggestions on how to post such carefully-tested solutions in a better way? (My guess is that some beliefs as solutions are more popular than others. Atheists post their belief too (their "solution", so to speak) but that view seems more popular right now.