Carlos Solis
Money and status don’t tell the whole story. The authors looked beyond material factors (income, personal achievements) to behavioral tendencies — how patient people are, how willing they are to take risks, and how responsible they are in relationships with others.
The sample included about 80,000 people in 76 countries; researchers compared self-reports of and with measurements of five behavioral traits.
Five traits linked to happiness
- Patience — people who said they were more patient generally reported higher life satisfaction.
- Willingness to take risks — risk-taking behavior correlated with life satisfaction at roughly the same strength as patience.
- Willingness to respond to others’ actions — people who reward good deeds and punish unfairness scored higher on well-being measures.
- Altruism — generosity and a readiness to help others showed a strong link to well-being.
- Trust — the degree to which people trust others also correlated with how satisfied they were with their lives.
The authors say the correlation coefficients looked similar across regions, suggesting these links are fairly universal.
When do people feel their best
A separate survey commissioned by TePe found that Britons report peak health and happiness at about . Psychologists link this shift to a move from focusing on appearance to focusing on internal health and how you feel: “As people age, they begin to understand that health is not just how you look but how you feel and how your body functions.”
Does generosity really make you happier?
A 2017 study offers neuroscientific support for the idea that boosts happiness. A Swiss team worked with 50 volunteers; each person received $25 per week for four weeks. Participants completed decision-making tasks during functional MRI scans, where they could choose to spend more or less of the money on others.
The researchers found that participants who committed to spending money on others behaved more generously in the experimental task and reported a larger increase in feelings of happiness compared with the control group.
Given these results, the team suggests that raising overall well-being may depend not only on efforts aimed at material welfare but also on developing behavioral qualities — patience, trust, reciprocity, and altruism.
Based on reporting in the Daily Mail.
