Creating Optimism

A lot has been written over the last few years about the benefits of happiness to individuals, organizations, the heath system and just about anything and anybody else.  There is a whole positive psychology movement which has swept the globe.

Unfortunately, up until very recently, there has been no conclusive proof of the supposed benefits of happiness. Most of what we relied on was hearsay, anecdotal evidence and people’s gut feelings. Many studies had shown, for example, that happy people were healthier and that happy people were more productive at work. However these findings showed nothing causal—put another way saying healthy people are happier is not to say, necessarily, that happiness causes good health. Or that happy people are more productive is not to say that happiness necessarily increases productivity.

Some of this confusion was cleared up recently when an article was published in the March edition of the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Wellbeing by Professor Ed Diener of the University of Illinois. Diener and his team did a meta study of many studies on the subject including the famous ‘nun study’ which followed 180 nuns from childhood to old age and another that followed 5000 people for 40 years.

There were a few exceptions, but most of the long-term studies the researchers reviewed found that anxiety, depression, a lack of enjoyment of daily activities and pessimism all are associated with higher rates of disease and a shorter lifespan, where as the reverse was true of happy people.

In fact they found that happy people live 14% longer, and are even less likely to be involved in accidents.

They have better immune systems and lower blood pressure. Experiments have also shown (see Science magazine Feb 4, 2011) that by manipulating emotions in laboratory conditions (for example showing people an upbeat film and thus raising their level of happiness) researchers can actually alter immune response and blood pressure.

I suspect it is only a matter of time before a meta analysis of studies comes to the same sort of conclusions regarding happiness and work productivity. One such study is one conducted by the Gallup Organization which shows that a culture of praise in a corporation can increase its profitability by 20%. Praise is one of the essential ingredients of happiness.

Aristotle considered that happiness is the major goal most people aspire to. These most recent studies show why.