Uplifting
Heads or Tails: The Impact of a Coin Toss on Major Life Decisions and Subsequent Happiness
Steven Levitt
NBER Working Paper, August 2016
Abstract:
Little is known about whether people make good choices when facing important decisions. This paper reports on a large-scale randomized field experiment in which research subjects having difficulty making a decision flipped a coin to help determine their choice. For important decisions (e.g. quitting a job or ending a relationship), those who make a change (regardless of the outcome of the coin toss) report being substantially happier two months and six months later. This correlation, however, need not reflect a causal impact. To assess causality, I use the outcome of a coin toss. Individuals who are told by the coin toss to make a change are much more likely to make a change and are happier six months later than those who were told by the coin to maintain the status quo. The results of this paper suggest that people may be excessively cautious when facing life-changing choices.
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Emma Onraet et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the present study, we investigated the much debated “happiness gap” between conservatives and liberals, approaching the issue from a multilevel person × context perspective. More specifically, we investigated whether this relationship depends on country-level threat. We used individual-level data for right-wing attitudes and psychological well-being from 94 large, representative samples collected worldwide (total N = 137,890) and objective indicators of country-level threat as the contextual variable. Our results suggest that, especially in countries characterized by high levels of threat, individuals with right-wing attitudes experienced greater well-being than individuals with left-wing attitudes. In countries with a low level of threat, this relationship was considerably weaker or even absent. Our findings corroborate the view that right-wing attitudes may serve a self-protective function, helping individuals to manage and cope with threat.
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New Evidence on Trust and Well-being
John Helliwell, Haifang Huang & Shun Wang
NBER Working Paper, July 2016
Abstract:
This paper first uses data from three large international surveys – the Gallup World Poll, the World Values Survey and the European Social Survey – to estimate income-equivalent values for social trust, with a likely lower bound equivalent to a doubling of household income. Second, the more detailed and precisely measured trust data in the European Social Survey (ESS) show that social trust is only a part of the overall climate of trust. While social trust and trust in police are the most important elements, there are significant additional benefits from trust in three aspects of the institutional environment: the legal system, parliament and politicians. Thus estimates of the total well-being value of a trustworthy environment are larger than those based on social trust alone. Third, the ESS data show that living in a high-trust environment makes people more resilient to adversity. Being subject to discrimination, ill-health or unemployment, although always damaging to subjective well-being, is much less damaging to those living in trustworthy environments. These results suggest a fresh set of links between trust and inequality. Individuals who are subject to discrimination, ill-health or unemployment are typically concentrated towards the lower end of any national distribution of happiness. Thus the resilience-increasing feature of social trust reduces well-being inequality by channeling the largest benefits to those at the low end of the well-being distribution.
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Katherine Ann Morris & Nicole Deterding
Social Science & Medicine, September 2016, Pages 56–65
Methods: We use longitudinal, mixed-methods data from the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) Project to capture the long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina on low-income mothers from New Orleans. Baseline surveys occurred approximately one year before the storm and follow-up surveys and in-depth interviews were conducted five years later. We use a sequential explanatory analytic design. With logistic regression, we estimate the association of geographic network dispersion with the likelihood of post-traumatic stress. With linear regressions, we estimate the association of network dispersion with the three post-traumatic stress sub-scales. Using maximal variation sampling, we use qualitative interview data to elaborate identified statistical associations.
Results: We find network dispersion is positively associated with the likelihood of post-traumatic stress, controlling for individual-level socio-demographic characteristics, exposure to hurricane-related trauma, perceived social support, and New Orleans residency. We identify two social-psychological mechanisms present in qualitative data: respondents with distant network members report a lack of deep belonging and a lack of mattering as they are unable to fulfill obligations to important distant ties.
Conclusion: Results indicate the importance of physical proximity to emotionally-intimate network ties for long-term psychological recovery.
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Smartphone Applications Utilizing Biofeedback Can Aid Stress Reduction
Alison Dillon et al.
Frontiers in Psychology, June 2016
Methods: We compared a control game to gaming-style smartphone applications combined with a skin conductance biofeedback device (the Pip). Fifty participants aged between 18 and 35 completed the Trier Social Stress Test. They were then randomly assigned to the intervention (biofeedback game) or control group (a non-biofeedback game) for thirty minutes. Perceived stress, heart rate and mood were measured before and after participants had played the games.
Results: A mixed factorial ANOVA showed a significant interaction between time and game type in predicting perceived stress [F(1,48) = 14.19, p < 0.001]. Participants in the biofeedback intervention had significantly reduced stress compared to the control group. There was also a significant interaction between time and game in predicting heart rate [F(1,48) = 6.41, p < 0.05]. Participants in the biofeedback intervention showed significant reductions in heart rate compared to the control group.
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Do Our Facebook Friends Make Us Feel Worse? A Study of Social Comparison and Emotion
Jiangmeng Liu et al.
Human Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
People often compare themselves to others to gain a better understanding of the self in a process known as social comparison. The current study discusses how people engage in a social comparison process on Facebook, and how observing content from their Facebook friends may affect their emotions. A 2 (comparison direction) × 2 (relational closeness) × 2 (self-esteem) between-subjects experiment was conducted with 163 adult participants. The results revealed a significant 3-way interaction such that people with high self-esteem would be happier receiving positive information than negative information from their close friends, but the effect would be the opposite if the information was from a distant friend. There was no such difference for people with low self-esteem.
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The Relationship between Facebook Use and Well-Being depends on Communication Type and Tie Strength
Moira Burke & Robert Kraut
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, July 2016, Pages 265–281
Abstract:
An extensive literature shows that social relationships influence psychological well-being, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. We test predictions about online interactions and well-being made by theories of belongingness, relationship maintenance, relational investment, social support, and social comparison. An opt-in panel study of 1,910 Facebook users linked self-reported measures of well-being to counts of respondents' Facebook activities from server logs. Specific uses of the site were associated with improvements in well-being: Receiving targeted, composed communication from strong ties was associated with improvements in well-being while viewing friends' wide-audience broadcasts and receiving one-click feedback were not. These results suggest that people derive benefits from online communication, as long it comes from people they care about and has been tailored for them.
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Stress and Subjective Age: Those With Greater Financial Stress Look Older
Stefan Agrigoroaei, Angela Lee-Attardo & Margie Lachman
Research on Aging, forthcoming
Abstract:
Subjective indicators of age add to our understanding of the aging process beyond the role of chronological age. We examined whether financial stress contributes to subjective age as rated by others and the self. The participants (N = 228), aged 26–75, were from a Boston area satellite of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) longitudinal study. Participants reported how old they felt and how old they thought they looked, and observers assessed the participants’ age based on photographs (other-look age), at two occasions, an average of 10 years apart. Financial stress was measured at Time 1. Controlling for income, general stress, health, and attractiveness, participants who reported higher levels of financial stress were perceived as older than their actual age to a greater extent and showed larger increases in other-look age over time. We consider the results on accelerated aging of appearance with regard to their implications for interpersonal interactions and in relation to health.