Happiness Fall 2017 Argyle Update Project

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Argyle update project

The goal of this optional research exercise is to find recent happiness research on some of the areas reported by Argyle in order to update and confirm or revise his 2003 report.

Report up to three findings by copying and pasting the following template in the appropriate subsection below:

Topic of research:
Summary of findings:
Link to article or resource:
Your name:

Arglyle, "Causes and Correlates of Happiness"

  • Age
  • Education
  • Social Status
  • Income
  • Marriage
  • Ethnicity
  • Employment
  • Leisure
  • Religion
  • Life Events


Topic of research:
Summary of findings:
Link to article or resource:
Your name:
Topic of research: Democracy and Happiness
Summary of findings: This article proves the assumption that Democracy positively correlates with greater happiness. This was found to be true in this research study, but in order for Democracy to fully increase happiness, governments have to be upholding civil liberties of citizens.
Link to article or resource: http://theartsjournal.org/index.php/site/article/view/913/459
Your name: Sophie Anton
Topic of research: Education Effect on Happiness
Summary of findings: People who receive more education have greater social networks and greater involvement, which leads to greater happiness. This data was found from East Asian country's survey data.
Link to article or resource: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/docview/918771193?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:primo&accountid=1557
Your name: Sophie Anton
Topic of research: Leisure and Personality Effect on Happiness
Summary of findings: This article studied college students in China in order to find that extraverted people are more likely to do leisure activities versus neurotic people who are more likely to not partake in leisure activities. Extraverted people also gained more satisfaction from leisure than neurotic people. This study found that extraverted people are more likely to be happy than neurotic people and that leisure activities are more likely to make people happy than other activities.
Link to article or resource: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23545547_Personality_Leisure_Experiences_and_Happiness
Your name: Sophie Anton
Topic of research: Income's effect on life happiness and state happiness.
Summary of findings: Higher income is associated with higher life satisfaction, but is not associated with increase emotional state happiness, where as low income is associated with both lower life satisfaction and decreased emotional wellbeing.
Link to article or resource: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2944762/
Your name: Bridger Scholten
Topic of research: Children's effect on happiness.
Summary of findings: Having children has a small negative effect on happiness, when one takes into account the better circumstances of those who choose to have children. "Parents experience more daily joy and more daily stress than non-parents."
Link to article or resource:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910586/
Your name: Bridger Scholten
Topic of research: Age of Marriage & Happiness
Summary of findings: Beginning with a discussion of the implications of the “Great Crossover” – the average age of having your first child now precedes the average age of marriage – which has altogether poor happiness effects for children (as children born to unmarried parents are more likely to suffer “emotionally, academically, and financially”). Further finding that although marriages formed later in life have smaller divorce rates (and women who marry later often earn up to $15,000 more a year), women who marry at age 24-26 are more likely to describe their marriage as “very happy.” To boot, these studies found that Twentysomethings who are unmarried are “more likely to drink to excess, to be depressed, and to report lower levels of happiness with their lives” compared to married Twentysomethings.
Link to article or resource: https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/late-marriage-and-its-consequences/?mcubz=0 http://nationalmarriageproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/KnotYet-FinalForWeb.pdf
Your name: Nicole Rogers
Topic of research: Marriage & Life Happiness
Summary of findings: A yearly study of 10,000 adults from 1981 through 2008 finds that marriage doesn’t make people happier, but seems to “safeguard” against declines in happiness. Becoming a parent seems to reap similar results as people have higher state happiness in the time surrounding the child’s birth then seem to return to their baseline.
Link to article or resource: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/are_married_people_happier
Your name: Nicole Rogers
Topic of research: Age & Happiness
Summary of findings:An analysis of happiness and age finds that the graphical representation of age and level of happiness would look like a “U-bend.” As both the young and old report higher levels of happiness and the middle age people and Twentysomethings report lower levels.
Link to article or resource: http://www.economist.com/node/17722567
Your name: Nicole Rogers
Topic of research: Happiness exists because of positive affect through marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health
Summary of findings: Happiness is positively correlated with indicators of superior mental and physical health. Happiness, as well as the experience of frequent positive affect, likely plays a role in health through its effects on social relationships, healthy behavior, stress, accident and suicide rates. Happy people appear to be more successful than their less happy peers in the three primary life domains: work, relationships, and health.
Link to article or resource: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-1316803.pdf
Your name:Caitlin Miller
Topic of research: Relationship between happiness and health
Summary of findings: Happiness and positive attitudes towards life prevent the autonomic nervous system from activating physiological reactions that could have cumulative detrimental effects on income, work status, and education. Additionally, the quality of relationships with friends has been found to be strongly associated with happiness. The authors find that best friendship quality – as measured by the subjective rating of respondents’ relationships with their best friends – is the only significant predictor of happiness. Happiness is found to be the best predictor of health in all of the stages of the analysis explained in the article.
Link to article or resource: https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/herc/wp/11_07.pdf
Your name: Caitlin Miller
Topic of research: Socio-demographic and economic factors of happiness
Summary of findings: Young and old people report being happier than middle-aged people. The least happy people are aged between 30 and 35. Women report being slightly happier than men. Couples with and without children are happier than singles, single parents and people living in collective households. People with higher education indicate significantly higher well-being. Bad health significantly lowers self-reported happiness. Unhappy people do not perform well in the workplace, thus leading to being laid off. Happy people are more likely to be high performers in their jobs so they are able to maintain a steady employment. People with higher incomes have more opportunities to achieve whatever they desire, such as material goods and service, which makes them happier.
Link to article or resource: https://www.bsfrey.ch/articles/_365_2002.pdf
Your name: Caitlin Miller
Topic of research: Happiness, Age, & Money
Summary of findings: A higher income tends to increase the happiness of young adults, more-so than it does for elderly people.
Link to article or resource: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X10001431
Your name: Anna Wodarz
Topic of research: Leisure & Happiness
Summary of Findings: Leisure is incredibly important to happiness, but not because of the leisure itself, but the aspects that are normally associated with leisure activities (quality time with friends, self-fulfillment, etc).
Link to article or resource: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/docview/1497149520/fulltextPDF/7EF7408CCA1F423BPQ/1?accountid=1557 - Titled: “ Happiness and Leisure Across Countries: Evidence from International Survey Data”
Your name: Anna Wodarz
Topic of research: Leisure & Happiness
Summary of Findings: This article looked at subjective well being in association with self-reported leisure time physical activity (LTPA) and leisure time sedentary behavior (LTSB). Participants that engaged in higher frequency of leisure activities reported a higher subjective well being, especially in leisure activities related to walking, gardening, group exercise, TV watching, and social chatting. It is reported in the discussion section that this research should be replicated for greater analysis.
Link to article or resource: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/docview/1793529767/647146291E4540E9PQ/1?accountid=1557
Your name: Paul Leonetti
Topic of research: Life Events and Happiness
Summary of findings: "Evolution of Well-Being and Happiness After Increases in Consumption of Fruit and Vegetables" This research found that, "increase fruit and vegetable consumption was predictive of increased happiness, life satisfaction, and well-being." Results from the study found that the participants, "were up to 0.24 life-satisfaction (for an increase of 8 portions a day), which is equal in size to the psychological condition gain of moving from unemployment to employment. Improvements occurred within 24 months." Eat your fruits and veggies people!
Link to article or resource: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/docview/1813031803/fulltextPDF/665E9E987335433CPQ/1?accountid=1557
Your name: Paul Leonetti
Topic of research: Happiness and Income
Summary of findings: Results from this study found and reaffirm that a person's happiness increases when their income becomes larger than the average income of other individuals in a group (a reference group). And a person's happiness decreases when the average income of a reference group increases in comparison to theirs. Comparison income can have a negative effect on an individuals happiness.
Link to article or resource: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/docview/1810721588/AB2A446429264C8BPQ/1?accountid=1557
Your name: Paul Leonetti
Topic of research: Size of Government and Happiness
Summary of findings: This article includes research about how government size and efficiency relate to individuals life satisfaction. The research shows that there was higher life satisfaction in nations with high quality small governments. The research suggests that this is because neoliberals find welfare spending wasteful and excessive regulations are harmful to citizens. Government size was “measured by general government consumption spending as a percentage of GDP” (Bjornskov). The article also includes research results from trying to find the optimal government size. One study found that per capita government consumption expenditure against GDP should be between $1,105 to $3,650, or 5.6 and 18.6%.
Link to article or resource: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=948dbc30-e4c6-466b-bd4b-4bd0d6a4d6a4%40sessionmgr120
Your name: Lauren Olson
Topic of research: Leisure(yoga) and Happiness
Summary of findings: This compares yoga practitioners and college students self reported results from a BMS instrument that included 44 questions split into three sections, body, mind, and spirit. ”In summary, more yoga practitioners than college students reported that they had a strong sense of morals/values and that they more often expressed their feelings with others. However, college students were more likely than yoga practitioners to report that they often/always maintained stability in their life in a healthy way, or that they were tolerant of others.”
Link to article: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/docview/850724107?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:primo&accountid=1557
Your name: Lauren Olson
Topic of research: Religion and Happiness
Summary of findings: This article looks into happiness and religious attendance. It also looks at stress buffering effect of religious attendance. The research found that “although the effect size is relatively small, religious attendance is associated with a higher level of happiness in South Korea. However, this positive effect holds only for women and only for Protestants.” (Jung)
Link to Article: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.foley.gonzaga.edu/docview/1550071538?accountid=1557&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo
Your name: Lauren Olson
Topic of research: Income and happiness
Summary of findings: This study was a reexamination on previous findings that suggest money buys little happiness. The study showed that there are many other variables that need to be factored, including: extraversion, relative income, adaptation, working hours, and time spent away from home. The premise was that there is not a causal relationship between income and happiness because of all the variables.
Link to article or resource: https://www.york.ac.uk/media/economics/documents/discussionpapers/2009/0902.pdf
Your name: Audrey Murray
Topic of research: Wealth and happiness
Summary of findings: This study looks at whether increasing the wealth of all improves happiness. They predicted that the short-term effect of happiness will be much higher than the long term effect. They also found that correlations between income and happiness are greater in poor nations and almost nonexistent in rich nations.
Link to article or resource: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024790530822
Your name: Audrey Murray
Topic of research: Self-esteem and happiness
Summary of findings: The study looked at whether self-esteem has a strong relationship with happiness. They found that people with low self-esteem are more likely to be depressed. They also found that the only way to measure happiness is from self-report and that people with high self-esteem report being happier. High self-esteem is the strongest predictor of life satisfaction.
Link to article or resource: http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/selfesteembaumeister.pdf
Your name: Audrey Murray
Topic of research: Religion and Happiness
Summary of findings: The study seemed to have a similar conclusion to Argyle's. The greater the participation in church and religious activities, the higher the rate of self proclaimed happiness. It suggests the positive correlation between religion and happiness stemming from the companionship, values, and goals that come from religious interaction.
Link to article or resource: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=f421b9ee-f777-45c1-9924-79bb3ec5f3d1%40sessionmgr4006
Your name: Colton Cavey

Topic of Research: Age and Happiness Summary of Findings: The in depth study came to the general consensus that different ages do experience different levels of happiness. On a general level, the correlation is that the older you are the happier you are. However, there seems to be a spike in happiness near your 20's and decrease in your happiness around your 80's. The article provides very specific data on the correlation. Link to article or resource: http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=f421b9ee-f777-45c1-9924-79bb3ec5f3d1%40sessionmgr4006 Your name: Colton Cavey

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