46,380 ARTICLES INDEXED IN PSYCHOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS MENTIONED DEP...

1994, 46,380 articles indexed in Psychological Abstracts mentioned depression, 36,851 anxiety, and 5,099

anger. Only 2,389 spoke of happiness, 2,340 life satisfaction, and 405 joy.

Recently we and other researchers have begun a systematic study of happiness. During the past two decades,

dozens of investigators throughout the world have asked several hundred thousand Representative sampled

people to reflect on their happiness and satisfaction with life or what psychologists call "subjective well-

being". In the US the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago has surveyed a

representative sample of roughly 1,500 people a year since 1957; the Institute for Social Research at the

University of Michigan has carried out similar studies on a less regular basis, as has the Gallup

Organization. Government-funded efforts have also probed the moods of European countries.

We have uncovered some surprising findings. People are happier than one might expect, and happiness

does not appear to depend significantly on external circumstances. Although viewing life as a tragedy has

a long and honorable history, the responses of random samples of people around the world about their

happiness paints a much rosier picture. In the University of Chicago surveys, three in 10 Americans say

they are very happy, for example. Only one in 10 chooses the most negative description "not too happy".

The majority describe themselves as "pretty happy",.

How can social scientists measure something as hard to pin down as happiness? Most researchers simply

ask people to report their feelings of happiness or unhappiness and to assess how satisfying their lives are.

Such self-reported well-being is moderately consistent over years of retesting. Furthermore, those who say

they are happy and satisfied seem happy to their close friends and family members and to a psychologist-

interviewer. Their daily mood ratings reveal more positive emotions, and they smile more than those who

call themselves unhappy. Self-reported happiness also predicts other indicators of well-being. Compared

with the depressed, happy people are less self-focused, less hostile and abusive, and less susceptible to

disease.

We have found that the even distribution of happiness cuts across almost all demographic classifications of

age, economic class, race and educational level. In addition, almost all strategies for assessing subjective

well-being - including those that sample people's experience by polling them at random times with beepers

- turn up similar findings. Interviews with representative samples of people of all ages, for example, reveal

that no time of life is notably happier or unhappier. Similarly, men and women are equally likely to declare

themselves "very happy" and "satisfied" with life, according to a statistical digest of 146 studies by Marilyn

J, Haring, William Stock and Morris A, Okun, all then at Arizona State University.

Wealth is also a poor predictor of happiness. People have not become happier over time as their cultures

have become more affluent. Even though Americans earn twice as much in today's dollars as they did in