Thursday, 18 June 2015
Wednesday, 17 June 2015
Sunday, 14 June 2015
The Secret to Making Yourself Happier? Give Your Money Away
According to the World Bank’s most recent estimate, more than one billion people live on less than $1.25 per day. UNICEF estimates that an average of 18,000 children die every twenty-four hours from easily preventable causes. That’s equivalent to losing a young life every five seconds.
Faced with these figures, it’s easy to despair. But that’s a mistake. The world is steadily getting better. The percentage of people living in extreme poverty has declined dramatically over the past twenty-five years. Compared with 1990, 17,000 fewer children now die each day. What’s more, you and I can each make a significant contribution to improving the lives of the world’s poorest people.
Inspired by this idea, a growing number of people are choosing to donate a significant fraction of their income to the most effective developing world charities. I’m one of them. I am the assistant director of Giving What We Can, an international society whose members pledge to give at least ten percent of their earnings to whichever organizations do the most to help others. More than a thousand people have signed our pledge and our membership is growing every day.
Is giving really for me?
You might think this is admirable, but not for you. You’re a good person, but there are limits to what you can be asked to do for others. The idea of giving away as much as ten percent of your income might seem impossible. Wouldn’t this mean taking on a significant burden?
Well, would it? It’s worth thinking seriously about this question. After all, it would be extraordinary to be able to look back on your life and know that you had saved the lives of hundreds of people. What’s more, the answer to this question isn’t as obvious as it might seem.
How much you can afford to give depends ultimately on your personal circumstances. It’s something you have to decide on your own terms. However, it’s important that you be aware of the fallibility of your own intuitions. You are worse at making predictions about your own future happiness than you might think.
We don’t know what makes us happy
A significant body of work in social psychology shows that we systematically overestimate the impact that various life-changes will have on our sense of happiness, especially for those life-changes we expect to make us unhappy. Psychologists express this by saying that our affective forecasts (that is, our predictions about our future happiness) are subject to an 'impact bias'.
A person’s level of happiness is more stable and resilient than we expect. For this reason, people overestimate the unhappiness of individuals with disabilities, academics overestimate how bad it will feel to be denied tenure, and voters overestimate the negative impact of having their candidate lose the election. The impact bias works with money too. Studies show that people significantly underestimate the happiness of people earning lower levels of household income.
So if your gut tells you that giving a lot to charity would be a serious burden, it’s very likely that you’re wrong. It will cost you less than you think. Your expectations about the extent to which your happiness hinges on enjoying a certain level of income aren’t as trustworthy as they seem. Don’t let the impact bias fool you.
So does giving actually make us happy?
If we can’t trust our intuitions, how can we know what it would be like to give away a significant fraction of our earnings?
One thing we could do is to ask people earning different levels of income how happy they are, giving us a sense of how much income really matters for personal well-being.
Surveys of this kind have been carried out in many countries. They generally find that the richer you are, the more likely you are to report being happy or very happy. Even so, the differences between people earning different levels of income tend to be slight. The correlation between income and happiness is small and much smaller than most people expect. In his bestselling book Happiness:
Lessons from a New Science, economist Richard Layard estimates that lowering household income by one third means a fall in happiness of just two points when happiness is scored between ten and one hundred. It turns out that the effect of income on happiness is overshadowed by many other factors, such as health and personal relationships. These are the things that really matter.
When you give, you’re spending money, not losing it
Here’s something else to consider. Why assume that giving a significant fraction of your income to charity is like earning less? In reality, you won’t have a lower income, just one that’s spent differently. Otherwise you’d be just as happy (or sad) giving money to charity as you would be simply throwing that money away. But that doesn’t really make sense – if you’ve read this far, you presumably care about the welfare of people in developing countries and would be glad to know that their lives are being improved as a result of your actions.
So if your income doesn't affect your happiness all that much and we know you’ll gain some amount of life-satisfaction from the knowledge that your donations are improving people's lives, the key question is: how much?
There is evidence to suggest that spending money on others can make us happier than spending on ourselves. To start, we can point to some striking correlational data. One recent study examined survey data gathered from one hundred and thirty-six countries. The authors wanted to see whether donating to charity was correlated with greater feelings of happiness, even when controlling for household income. They found that, in almost all countries, those who gave to charity were happier. If fact, donating to charity had a similar relationship to individual happiness as a doubling of household income.
Of itself, this doesn’t prove that spending money on others is what causes greater happiness. However, there are experiments which suggest that this is in fact the case.
Imagine the following scenario. You are given an envelope containing a small sum of money, which you are asked to spend within 24 hours. You can spend the money on yourself (paying a bill or buying yourself a treat) or you can spend the money on others, giving it to charity or buying a gift for a friend. Which would bring you greater happiness: spending the money on yourself or on others?
When a group of scientists carried out an experiment like this, most participants thought they’d be happier if they could spend the money on themselves. They were wrong. The people who were asked to spend their money on others ended up happier as a result.
This wasn’t an isolated result. The same researchers conducted a long-term study of employees at a Boston-based company who received a profit-sharing bonus. They found that those who devoted more of their bonus to prosocial spending experienced greater happiness later on.
Giving to others > spending on ourselves
We should obviously be cautious in trying to extrapolate from these results. Even so, these findings lend weight to the idea that giving our money to help others can be a source of personal satisfaction that outweighs whatever minor frustrations we might experience from having less money to spend on ourselves.
Anecdotally, that same idea is borne out when I talk to the members of Giving What We Can. Far from feeling like a sacrifice or a burden, most people say that joining Giving What We Can is an incredibly positive experience. Certainly, that’s been my own story. Given the evidence that income itself doesn’t matter all that much and that helping others often makes us happier, it wouldn’t be surprising if the same could hold true for you.
Ultimately, of course, it’s not about you or me. It’s about helping others who are malnourished, or suffering from terrible diseases like malaria, through no fault of their own. As it turns out, we can each afford to give a lot more than we might have thought. I can, and so can you. So let’s do it.
Written By: Andreas Mogensen
Source
Faced with these figures, it’s easy to despair. But that’s a mistake. The world is steadily getting better. The percentage of people living in extreme poverty has declined dramatically over the past twenty-five years. Compared with 1990, 17,000 fewer children now die each day. What’s more, you and I can each make a significant contribution to improving the lives of the world’s poorest people.
Inspired by this idea, a growing number of people are choosing to donate a significant fraction of their income to the most effective developing world charities. I’m one of them. I am the assistant director of Giving What We Can, an international society whose members pledge to give at least ten percent of their earnings to whichever organizations do the most to help others. More than a thousand people have signed our pledge and our membership is growing every day.
Is giving really for me?
You might think this is admirable, but not for you. You’re a good person, but there are limits to what you can be asked to do for others. The idea of giving away as much as ten percent of your income might seem impossible. Wouldn’t this mean taking on a significant burden?
Well, would it? It’s worth thinking seriously about this question. After all, it would be extraordinary to be able to look back on your life and know that you had saved the lives of hundreds of people. What’s more, the answer to this question isn’t as obvious as it might seem.
How much you can afford to give depends ultimately on your personal circumstances. It’s something you have to decide on your own terms. However, it’s important that you be aware of the fallibility of your own intuitions. You are worse at making predictions about your own future happiness than you might think.
We don’t know what makes us happy
A significant body of work in social psychology shows that we systematically overestimate the impact that various life-changes will have on our sense of happiness, especially for those life-changes we expect to make us unhappy. Psychologists express this by saying that our affective forecasts (that is, our predictions about our future happiness) are subject to an 'impact bias'.
A person’s level of happiness is more stable and resilient than we expect. For this reason, people overestimate the unhappiness of individuals with disabilities, academics overestimate how bad it will feel to be denied tenure, and voters overestimate the negative impact of having their candidate lose the election. The impact bias works with money too. Studies show that people significantly underestimate the happiness of people earning lower levels of household income.
So if your gut tells you that giving a lot to charity would be a serious burden, it’s very likely that you’re wrong. It will cost you less than you think. Your expectations about the extent to which your happiness hinges on enjoying a certain level of income aren’t as trustworthy as they seem. Don’t let the impact bias fool you.
So does giving actually make us happy?
If we can’t trust our intuitions, how can we know what it would be like to give away a significant fraction of our earnings?
One thing we could do is to ask people earning different levels of income how happy they are, giving us a sense of how much income really matters for personal well-being.
Surveys of this kind have been carried out in many countries. They generally find that the richer you are, the more likely you are to report being happy or very happy. Even so, the differences between people earning different levels of income tend to be slight. The correlation between income and happiness is small and much smaller than most people expect. In his bestselling book Happiness:
Lessons from a New Science, economist Richard Layard estimates that lowering household income by one third means a fall in happiness of just two points when happiness is scored between ten and one hundred. It turns out that the effect of income on happiness is overshadowed by many other factors, such as health and personal relationships. These are the things that really matter.
When you give, you’re spending money, not losing it
Here’s something else to consider. Why assume that giving a significant fraction of your income to charity is like earning less? In reality, you won’t have a lower income, just one that’s spent differently. Otherwise you’d be just as happy (or sad) giving money to charity as you would be simply throwing that money away. But that doesn’t really make sense – if you’ve read this far, you presumably care about the welfare of people in developing countries and would be glad to know that their lives are being improved as a result of your actions.
So if your income doesn't affect your happiness all that much and we know you’ll gain some amount of life-satisfaction from the knowledge that your donations are improving people's lives, the key question is: how much?
There is evidence to suggest that spending money on others can make us happier than spending on ourselves. To start, we can point to some striking correlational data. One recent study examined survey data gathered from one hundred and thirty-six countries. The authors wanted to see whether donating to charity was correlated with greater feelings of happiness, even when controlling for household income. They found that, in almost all countries, those who gave to charity were happier. If fact, donating to charity had a similar relationship to individual happiness as a doubling of household income.
Of itself, this doesn’t prove that spending money on others is what causes greater happiness. However, there are experiments which suggest that this is in fact the case.
Imagine the following scenario. You are given an envelope containing a small sum of money, which you are asked to spend within 24 hours. You can spend the money on yourself (paying a bill or buying yourself a treat) or you can spend the money on others, giving it to charity or buying a gift for a friend. Which would bring you greater happiness: spending the money on yourself or on others?
When a group of scientists carried out an experiment like this, most participants thought they’d be happier if they could spend the money on themselves. They were wrong. The people who were asked to spend their money on others ended up happier as a result.
This wasn’t an isolated result. The same researchers conducted a long-term study of employees at a Boston-based company who received a profit-sharing bonus. They found that those who devoted more of their bonus to prosocial spending experienced greater happiness later on.
Giving to others > spending on ourselves
We should obviously be cautious in trying to extrapolate from these results. Even so, these findings lend weight to the idea that giving our money to help others can be a source of personal satisfaction that outweighs whatever minor frustrations we might experience from having less money to spend on ourselves.
Anecdotally, that same idea is borne out when I talk to the members of Giving What We Can. Far from feeling like a sacrifice or a burden, most people say that joining Giving What We Can is an incredibly positive experience. Certainly, that’s been my own story. Given the evidence that income itself doesn’t matter all that much and that helping others often makes us happier, it wouldn’t be surprising if the same could hold true for you.
Ultimately, of course, it’s not about you or me. It’s about helping others who are malnourished, or suffering from terrible diseases like malaria, through no fault of their own. As it turns out, we can each afford to give a lot more than we might have thought. I can, and so can you. So let’s do it.
Written By: Andreas Mogensen
Source
Sunday, 7 June 2015
Happiness Should Be a Verb
Flourishing should be the new happiness. What most pursue now ignores old wisdom and the logic of our biology. A verb capturing the required recurring effort is better than a noun describing the desired static state--by nature, not a thing we can be or get but that we do. It is perhaps better harvested than pursued. Many see their main goal as maximizing pleasure. But even the ancient hedonists took pains to distinguish between types of pleasure and happiness. They typically thought pleasure was necessary but not sufficient.
Enlightenment thinkers believed that humans were "intended by nature to achieve happiness," as Darrin McMahon notes, requiring only knowledge to overcome ignorance. But Jeremy Bentham increased ignorance by blurring once useful distinctions. In probably the Enlightenment's saddest sin of synonymy, he equated happiness with pleasure for the sake of easier calculations. Many psychologists today remain confused.
Daniel Kahneman writes: "it is logical to describe...life... as a series of moments, each with a value" of positive or negative feeling, and to evaluate an experience by the "sum of the values for its moments." He complains that our brains are illogical in not working that way. But it's futile to wish our physiology was different. We'd be better served by adapting our reason to fit how our biology works.
The field of positive psychology is less confused. Mihly Cskszentmihlyi says "we do not understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did." His studies of "optimal experience" led to the idea of "an active state of flow," in which a challenging skilled activity, with clear goals and unambiguous feedback, enables concentration to the point of loss of consciousness of self and time.
Such autotelic (done for their own sake) activities are common in sports, music and the arts, but rare when we're passive. Similarly, Martin Seligman distinguishes the raw feelings of easy pleasures from earned "gratifications," which are the longer-lasting rewards of flow-like activities.
This emphasis on effort and skill is more logically consistent with our biology than Bentham and Kahneman's focus on felt pleasure. Our survival has long depended on using second-nature skills. Yeats rightly claimed, "all skill is joyful." Many such joys are adaptive.
As Aristotle knew, life's goals required exercising natural virtues, which now would be better called life skills. Nouns like "happiness" and "well-being" seem too static. Verbs reflecting the required cyclical activity would fit better. Sadly the verb "happies," used in Shakespeare's sixth sonnet, is obsolete. "Well-doing" is more precise than "well-being". And "flourishing" is fitter than "being happy." Victor Frankel believed "happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue."
However difficult to pursue, effective happiness can be harvested. By skilled activity, we can be flourishing.
Source
Enlightenment thinkers believed that humans were "intended by nature to achieve happiness," as Darrin McMahon notes, requiring only knowledge to overcome ignorance. But Jeremy Bentham increased ignorance by blurring once useful distinctions. In probably the Enlightenment's saddest sin of synonymy, he equated happiness with pleasure for the sake of easier calculations. Many psychologists today remain confused.
Daniel Kahneman writes: "it is logical to describe...life... as a series of moments, each with a value" of positive or negative feeling, and to evaluate an experience by the "sum of the values for its moments." He complains that our brains are illogical in not working that way. But it's futile to wish our physiology was different. We'd be better served by adapting our reason to fit how our biology works.
The field of positive psychology is less confused. Mihly Cskszentmihlyi says "we do not understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did." His studies of "optimal experience" led to the idea of "an active state of flow," in which a challenging skilled activity, with clear goals and unambiguous feedback, enables concentration to the point of loss of consciousness of self and time.
Such autotelic (done for their own sake) activities are common in sports, music and the arts, but rare when we're passive. Similarly, Martin Seligman distinguishes the raw feelings of easy pleasures from earned "gratifications," which are the longer-lasting rewards of flow-like activities.
This emphasis on effort and skill is more logically consistent with our biology than Bentham and Kahneman's focus on felt pleasure. Our survival has long depended on using second-nature skills. Yeats rightly claimed, "all skill is joyful." Many such joys are adaptive.
As Aristotle knew, life's goals required exercising natural virtues, which now would be better called life skills. Nouns like "happiness" and "well-being" seem too static. Verbs reflecting the required cyclical activity would fit better. Sadly the verb "happies," used in Shakespeare's sixth sonnet, is obsolete. "Well-doing" is more precise than "well-being". And "flourishing" is fitter than "being happy." Victor Frankel believed "happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue."
However difficult to pursue, effective happiness can be harvested. By skilled activity, we can be flourishing.
Source
Friday, 5 June 2015
Science Shows What Meditation Really Does to Your Brain
Meditation, according to its spiritual gurus, is a universal panacea. Enthusiasts have long preached its benefits, which include its ability to lower anxiety, improve concentration, help treat those with HIV and even extend one's life expectancy.
While it's undeniable meditation contributes to a sense of inner piece, its physiological benefits remain less certain. That is, until a team of researchers confirmed them. What they uncovered is more than surprising.
"We found several brain regions that had changed," Sara Lazar, an associate research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Mic. Lazar conducted a major study on meditation in 2011 and was one of the earliest scientists to take a serious look at the practice, according to the Washington Post.
Some of the changes she saw took place in the posterior cingulate cortex, which helps control one's ability to focus on the task at hand, the left hippocampus, which helps in learning, cognition and memory and the temporo parietal junction, which helps manage empathy and compassion. Brain scans of people who meditate reveal they have more gray matter than non-meditators.
Increased gray matter in areas of the brain often correlates to heightened abilities in a range of skills. "Musicians," said Lazar as an example "have more gray matter in music areas than non-musicians." The logical conclusion, therefore, is that skills touched by areas of the brain that benefit from meditation will undergo a similar improvement.
Meditation is like a super-vitamin for your brain. It targets and boosts the parts that are already strong, and improves their functionality to make them even stronger.
Lazar said when people began meditating, their amygdala got smaller. That is the area of the brain most closely associated with fear and aggression.
Of course, meditating is not a universal panacea, but there are distinctive benefits to the practice. "There is something more to meditation than just sitting," Lazar said.
Nationally, 50% of Americans report working more than 40 hours a week. Unsurprisingly, all the added time at the office has come amid shrinking vacation for employees as well. A 2013 study by the global forecasting agency Oxford Economics found workers have taken less vacation than at any time in four decades.
Given all the unique challenges faced today by young and old, anything safe that helps people chill out is worth a look. Given how easy meditation can be, it's something everyone should give serious consideration.
Source
While it's undeniable meditation contributes to a sense of inner piece, its physiological benefits remain less certain. That is, until a team of researchers confirmed them. What they uncovered is more than surprising.
"We found several brain regions that had changed," Sara Lazar, an associate research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Mic. Lazar conducted a major study on meditation in 2011 and was one of the earliest scientists to take a serious look at the practice, according to the Washington Post.
Some of the changes she saw took place in the posterior cingulate cortex, which helps control one's ability to focus on the task at hand, the left hippocampus, which helps in learning, cognition and memory and the temporo parietal junction, which helps manage empathy and compassion. Brain scans of people who meditate reveal they have more gray matter than non-meditators.
Increased gray matter in areas of the brain often correlates to heightened abilities in a range of skills. "Musicians," said Lazar as an example "have more gray matter in music areas than non-musicians." The logical conclusion, therefore, is that skills touched by areas of the brain that benefit from meditation will undergo a similar improvement.
Meditation is like a super-vitamin for your brain. It targets and boosts the parts that are already strong, and improves their functionality to make them even stronger.
Lazar said when people began meditating, their amygdala got smaller. That is the area of the brain most closely associated with fear and aggression.
Of course, meditating is not a universal panacea, but there are distinctive benefits to the practice. "There is something more to meditation than just sitting," Lazar said.
Nationally, 50% of Americans report working more than 40 hours a week. Unsurprisingly, all the added time at the office has come amid shrinking vacation for employees as well. A 2013 study by the global forecasting agency Oxford Economics found workers have taken less vacation than at any time in four decades.
Given all the unique challenges faced today by young and old, anything safe that helps people chill out is worth a look. Given how easy meditation can be, it's something everyone should give serious consideration.
Source
Wednesday, 3 June 2015
More Stress Means Less Eating
Here's a pop quiz. What do speeches, fires and first dates have in common?
Hmm, well, they all tend to cause stress that suppresses our appetite. The last thing on our mind as we run from a burning building is that yummy donut we left on the counter.
Our anxiety is connected to hormones in the brain called corticotropin-releasing factors or CRFs, which regulate stress and appetite.
Recently the drug industry, desperate to uncover a solution to obesity, say they found a type of this hormone called CRF2 that cuts hunger without added stress. Sounds like a dream huh?
Well it was, until a group of scientists took a closer look. Their study in the Journal of Neuroscience concludes that activating CRF2 in rats cut their appetites in half, no doubt - BUT the rats ate less is because they were totally stressed out. They nervously self-groomed, licking so much they often knocked themselves over.
Seems stress and appetite is a ying yang combo. Not surprising, ask anyone who's suffered a broken heart they’ll say the only good thing about being dumped is that easy 10 pounds we lose.
Source
Hmm, well, they all tend to cause stress that suppresses our appetite. The last thing on our mind as we run from a burning building is that yummy donut we left on the counter.
Our anxiety is connected to hormones in the brain called corticotropin-releasing factors or CRFs, which regulate stress and appetite.
Recently the drug industry, desperate to uncover a solution to obesity, say they found a type of this hormone called CRF2 that cuts hunger without added stress. Sounds like a dream huh?
Well it was, until a group of scientists took a closer look. Their study in the Journal of Neuroscience concludes that activating CRF2 in rats cut their appetites in half, no doubt - BUT the rats ate less is because they were totally stressed out. They nervously self-groomed, licking so much they often knocked themselves over.
Seems stress and appetite is a ying yang combo. Not surprising, ask anyone who's suffered a broken heart they’ll say the only good thing about being dumped is that easy 10 pounds we lose.
Source
Tuesday, 2 June 2015
Age Brings Happiness
Do people get happier or crankier as they age? Stereotypes of crotchety neighbors aside, scientists have been trying to answer this question for decades, and the results have been conflicting. Now a study of several thousand Americans born between 1885 and 1980 reveals that well-being indeed increases with age—but overall happiness depends on when a person was born.
Previous studies that have compared older adults with the middle-aged and young have sometimes found that older adults are not as happy. But these studies could not discern whether their discontent was because of their age or because of their different life experience. The new study, published online January 24 in Psychological Science, teased out the answer by examining 30 years of data on thousands of Americans, including psychological measures of mood and well-being, reports of job and relationship success, and objective measures of health.
The researchers found, after controlling for variables such as health, wealth, gender, ethnicity and education, that well-being increases over everyone's lifetime. But people who have lived through extreme hardship, such as the Great Depression, start off much less happy than those who have had more comfortable lives.
This finding helps to explain why past studies have found conflicting results—experience matters, and tough times can influence an entire generation's happiness for the rest of their lives. The good news is, no matter what we've lived through, we can all look forward to feeling more content as we age.
Source
Previous studies that have compared older adults with the middle-aged and young have sometimes found that older adults are not as happy. But these studies could not discern whether their discontent was because of their age or because of their different life experience. The new study, published online January 24 in Psychological Science, teased out the answer by examining 30 years of data on thousands of Americans, including psychological measures of mood and well-being, reports of job and relationship success, and objective measures of health.
The researchers found, after controlling for variables such as health, wealth, gender, ethnicity and education, that well-being increases over everyone's lifetime. But people who have lived through extreme hardship, such as the Great Depression, start off much less happy than those who have had more comfortable lives.
This finding helps to explain why past studies have found conflicting results—experience matters, and tough times can influence an entire generation's happiness for the rest of their lives. The good news is, no matter what we've lived through, we can all look forward to feeling more content as we age.
Source
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