Making Happy People: The nature of happiness and its origins in childhood. Paul Martin

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СКАЧАТЬ in this area has focused on a personality characteristic known as extroversion, which is essentially an indirect measure of sociability. Extroverts are friendly, outgoing, sociable, warm and active. They have a natural tendency to enjoy social situations and social activities such as parties, games and team sports.¹ Numerous studies have uncovered links between extroversion and happiness throughout the lifespan, including in old age.

      By the same token, shy people – those who consistently feel anxious, self-conscious and reticent in social situations – tend to score low on measures of happiness. Shyness can be a real problem, both for adults and children. On average, shy children are lonelier, have lower self-esteem and suffer from more anxiety than sociable children. Very shy adults are found to be unhappier even than people suffering from anxiety or mood disorders. Not all shy people are unhappy, however. A significant minority of ‘happy introverts’ are happy despite not being gregarious.

      Sociability and happiness form a virtuous circle: sociable people become happier because they are more connected, and happiness, in turn, makes us more sociable, as we saw in the previous chapter. Happy people spend more of their time engaging with other people and have a larger number of social interactions.

       2. Social and emotional competence

      A second almost universal characteristic of happy people is having at least moderate levels of social and emotional competence. To be happy, you need basic social skills to form and maintain personal relationships, together with the emotional literacy to understand and deal effectively with your own feelings and other people’s.

      A socially and emotionally competent adult or child can read and interpret the feelings that underlie other people’s actions and expressions. They can work out whether another person is angry, sad, jealous or afraid, and then respond appropriately. Such skills are subtle but crucial, and not everyone is richly endowed with them. Aristotle put it like this: ‘Anyone can be angry – that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy.’

      Individuals with poor social skills are, not surprisingly, at greater risk of being socially isolated, with potentially damaging consequences for their happiness and health. Children and adults who lack emotional literacy find it hard to manage their own feelings or to understand other people’s feelings. They consequently have more problems coping with anger and aggression, among other things. Studies of school children have found that those who are poor at understanding and managing emotions are more likely to become violent. Responding aggressively may be the only tactic in their repertoire for dealing with everyday situations of conflict.

      Socially and emotionally competent people are better equipped to succeed in the classroom and in the adult world of work. They tend to be better motivated, more persistent, more focused and less easily diverted by upsets or squabbles. Social and emotional competence is a stronger predictor of children’s future success than narrow measures such as exam grades. It even reduces the long-term risk of drug abuse: studies have found that teenagers with good social skills are significantly less likely to be using drugs when they are in their thirties.

       3. Freedom from excessive anxiety

      We saw in chapter 2 that happiness is a mixture of three basic elements: pleasure, the absence of displeasure, and satisfaction. Being prey to frequent unpleasant emotions can erode happiness. And the unpleasant emotion that probably does most to erode happiness among the largest number of people is anxiety – that nagging sense that something might go wrong. Research confirms that anxious individuals who frequently worry about themselves or their loved ones tend to be less happy. Conversely, happy people typically experience low levels of anxiety and are less inclined to feel anxious in any given situation.

      In addition to being an everyday source of displeasure, anxiety erodes happiness in other ways. Someone who continually feels anxious will find it harder to focus on whatever they are doing, or to pay full attention to their personal relationships. Anxiety fosters a distracted self-consciousness that eats away at other sources of happiness.

      Some people are consistently more prone than others to be anxious, worried and emotionally changeable; they are inclined to fret even when objectively there is little to fret about. Psychologists describe these natural-born worriers as neurotic. Not surprisingly, individuals who score high on measures of neuroticism are found to be less happy. Indeed, neuroticism is one of the stronger predictors of unhappiness.

       4. Communication skills

      The ability to exchange information and feelings with other people is crucial for happiness and success. You are unlikely to maintain good relationships with partner, friends, relatives, parents, children or colleagues if you are unable to communicate effectively with them or if you keep inadvertently sending them the wrong messages. Moreover, education is a social activity, and virtually every job involves interacting with other people. Poor communication skills can therefore be a real impediment to success at school and in the workplace.

      Happy people are generally good at making themselves understood, both emotionally and rationally, and good at listening to other people. (Communication is of course a two-way process, although you would not think so from the way some people behave: perhaps you know someone who is permanently jammed on transmit.) Good communicators are capable of communicating through all the available channels, using speech, facial expressions, gestures, body language and the written word, as appropriate. Adequate communication skills may not be a sufficient condition for happiness, but they are certainly necessary.

       5. Engagement in meaningful activity

      We humans are by nature problem-solvers. We are generally happier when actively engaged in some reasonably challenging task, rather than passively witnessing other people’s experiences on a TV screen. Happy people spend at least some of their time engaged in meaningful and satisfying activities. Happy children socialise, play games or learn in the classroom; happy adults throw themselves into their jobs, hobbies, sports or voluntary work. The precise nature of the activity seems to be unimportant, provided it is reasonably demanding and worthwhile. Bored people with nothing much to do are seldom very happy.

      Most adults spend a large proportion of their waking lives at work, so it is not surprising that paid work has an important bearing on happiness. Having a satisfying job is strongly connected with happiness. And, as with many other ingredients of happiness, the connection is two-way: job satisfaction contributes to happiness, and happiness in turn fosters job satisfaction. Happy people enjoy their jobs more. Despite media stories about work-related stress and the joys of downshifting, research shows that most people feel at least neutral about their job, and around one in three positively like what they do for a living. Noel Coward once opined that the only way to enjoy life is to work, because work is so much more fun than fun.

      Work brings far more than just money. A satisfying job can also bring structure and meaning to one’s life, mental and emotional stimulation, personal relationships, regular opportunities to use and develop skills, social status, self-esteem and a sense of identity. Personal relationships are a particularly important benefit of work, and the evidence shows that people who work in small, cohesive groups tend to be the most satisfied with their job and generally happiest.

      Pay, on the other hand, has a surprisingly weak influence on job satisfaction – certainly when compared with personal relationships or the nature of the work itself. People doing unpaid voluntary work often enjoy it more than people who are paid to do something similar. In fact, СКАЧАТЬ