The Keys of Happiness for New Year 2009 !

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(elpais.com) If you are a skeptic who does not believe in magic formulas for happiness, if the crisis leaves no money for gifts, but with time to devote to others if its goals for 2009 is to achieve a desired good material ... what follows might interest you. It turns out that the pursuit of happiness, well-being subjective sense of personal satisfaction, it is no longer a matter of gurus who give advice, but has entered fully into the sciences if not exact, but experimental. And some of their findings are surprising. Show, for example, that there is more happiness in altruism (welfare of others) that hedonism (egoist pleasure), and sleep more every day that bought a new car. We also know that each of us has a basal happiness dependent genes themselves but they marked a fire, you can manipulate ... provided that proper controls are discovered. What's nice is that those who seek happiness for the diseccionan ingredients are economists, sociologists and psychologists who publish their work in scientific journals with the greatest impact internationally. Yes, there is a scientific pursuit of happiness.

The results of surveys paint roughly the following picture. In rich countries are happier than the poor. Well. But beyond a minimum level of wealth, money and happiness are decoupled: while the purchasing power multiply the feeling of well being just varies. And pointed out the paradox in the seventies economist Richard Easterlin, and corroborated through the years. Abascal Fernandez put it well: "My children have all the game and are not happier than it was my father, who played with a string and a cardboard box on the street: they had less, but the levels of happiness were appear. WVS (World Values Survey) also show that the level of happiness remains more or less stable over the years, as well as differences between countries. In the Nordic countries and in Latin America declared happier than in Asia (Denmark, Colombia, Nigeria and Puerto Rico are usually in the lead). However, after recent data, in July, Ron Inglehart, the head of WVS, drew attention to the fact that since 1981, happiness seems to have increased in 45 of the 52 countries studied. Inglehart and others attribute it to the best quality of life in countries that are beginning to emerge from poverty and the spread of democracy, allegedly linked to more personal freedom. But in any case, the picture provided by the major surveys for many is too blurred, so we try to refine more detailed investigations with a smaller scale. Give some results on age and sex.

In general, there is agreement that young people are happier and retirees. A recent study by the French National Statistics Institute (INSEE) in 1975 after surveys showed that after a pothole on the forty years, the happiness back and reaches its peak during the sixty, "regardless of marital status or income level. And last July, U.S. researchers, including Easterlin analyzed decades of data before concluding that young women are happier state, but 48 years to turn things round and change are the ones who are more satisfied with their lives. In general, we agree that this work shows that happiness is correlated with "tangible benefits in many areas of life," writes Sonja Lyubomirsky, of Stanford University. Among them: more likely to be married than to divorce, more friends and more social support, more creativity and productivity in higher quality work and well paid, more active and vital energy, better mental and physical health, ability to self; and even more longevity. Moreover, "people happy is not selfish, and the literature suggests that they tend to be relatively more cooperative, charitable and focused on others," said Lyubomirsky Review of General Psychology.

But this is not enough to draw conclusions about the welfare formula vital to begin with because it is not possible to know if you're happier to be married, for example, or the reverse. That is, we need to dissect the most happiness and better in the laboratory. The researchers are doing, with curious results. They have sharpened their weapons, ie, have developed new methods to measure happiness, apart from the survey stated. Kahneman is the author of one of them. Several studies suggest that happiness that individuals declare when asked on how they feel overall is very influenced by irrelevant factors such as the formulation of questions or to just have a good or bad experience, a classic example: patients who undergo a test to pass it off saying less wrong if the last few minutes are pleasant, even at the cost of extending the review.

Thus, Kahneman asked subjects of the experiment to assign a degree of happiness to each of their daily actions, reliving, not only giving an overall value. With this method, conducted and published in Science in 2004 with almost one thousand women who reported how successful their efforts were: sex, going out with friends and relax before television appeared high on the list, while little sleep a very busy work schedule was very unpleasant. Again, family and friends reveal important but not the money (covered the basics). And this is not the only anti-intuitive result on happiness. There is more like that of cancer surgery patients may feel happier than healthy people, that victims of serious accidents declare high levels of happiness, or that, by contrast, people who have not won the lottery, soon after the shock, happier than ordinary mortals. The explanation might be in the genes.

Several studies in twins indicate that there is a kind of permanent staff level of happiness, who spent time around the world tends to come back no matter what happens, or almost. In 1996 a 4,000 pairs of twins suggested that the sense of well-being with one's life is genetic in at least 50%. And this year, British and Australian researchers have returned to obtain a similar result. Another anti-intuitive result: it generates more happiness spend money on others than in ourselves. He has shown work by Elizabeth W. Dunn (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada) in Science last March, which gave money to volunteers, they were instructed on how to spend it and then measured their levels of satisfaction. This result coincides with the greatest happiness which correlates with actions to help others and to promote virtue. Altruism, the researchers conclude, puts on the track of happiness much more than the pursuit of pleasure. "Given that people seem to overlook the benefits, policies to promote it could be a good way to translate into more national wealth more national happiness," writes Dunn.

But then, if money is not the happiness and personal pleasure nor why today's society seems to focus on these factors? Is there a general blurring? The cause could be an illusory phenomenon that Kahneman described in Science and other publications in 2006. "When people consider the impact of a single factor in their welfare, such as income, but not only, is prone to exaggerate its importance, we call this trend illusion focus (...). This illusion can be a source of errors in making important decisions, "the expert wrote. This also helps to estimate the happiness of others. "Everyone was surprised at what can be happy that paraplegics," Kahneman said. "The reason is that there are paraplegics all the time. They enjoy their meals, their friends. Read the news. It has to do with where the focus is." All these experiments have one ultimate goal: to help improve the degree of personal happiness. It is not a utopia, say the researchers. Genes, after all, leave a space of 50% to autoexperimentación. You can start with this Christmas: ask for less and Kings, however, more generous ... It produces more sleep every day to buy a car The women say happier than men to 48 years Welfare depends on genetics, but the manipulation is possible Creativity, energy and activity and the vital importance of quality work "People are not happy selfish, tending to be more cooperative and charitable"

Altruism outweighs hedonism in getting satisfaction - equally well-being depends on the genes and our performance - a 40 hole, with the peak 60.