Apparently Working Long Hours Makes Americans Happier?

From Static.

Yeah, this one's just crazy enough that it might be true. The Daily Mail reports that Americans who work long hours are happier than those who don't, while in Europe, that trend is reversed. This information comes from a study at the University of Texas at Dallas. The study's authors could not conclude whether work actually CAUSES happiness in America, but they speculate that the results have more to do with worker expectations and the pursuit of income than with their actions.

American and European survey respondents were asked to rate themselves as "Very Happy," "Pretty Happy," or "Not too Happy." Results showed that "Very Happy" Europeans dropped from around 28% to 23% as work hours increased from under 17 a week to more than 60. American happiness, on the other hand, stayed the same as work hours increased, while their sense of "bliss" increased. This holds true despite other factors, such as age, marital status, and income.

Economics professor Richard Easterlin, who was not involved in the study, but comments on it anyway, theorizes that Americans believe more in the rewards of hard work. "It's not really that hard work brings more success in the U.S. than in Europe; it's what people believe in," he says.

You can read the actual study in the April issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies.

Daily Mail Reporter Tests Her Own Blood for Happiness

Suzanne Taylor doing research. From the Daily Mail.

Can a blood test determine someone's happiness? I don't know, but that's what Suzanne Taylor of the Daily Mail tried to find out. She let researchers sample her blood and examine its oxytocin levels. Oxytocin--sometimes called the "love hormone"--is released into the blood when someone touches another human being. The chemical helps create feelings of trust, security, and possibly sexual arousal in the brain, with more oxytocin creating more positive feelings.

So what actions release the most oxytocin? That's what Suzanne Taylor wanted to find out, so in a rather unscientific test, she did four different activities on four separate days and had blood tests after each one. She went on a date, spent time with her daughter, went shopping, and spent time with a female friend.

Here are the results, in descending order of the amount of oxytocin from each activity (the theory is that the higher the number, the more actual happiness she felt):

1. Time with daughter:  115 picograms of oxytocin per mL of blood.
2. Time with female friend:  94 picograms/mL.
3. Shopping:  88 picograms/mL.
4. Date:  62 picograms/mL.

So there it is. No real surprises, except maybe that shopping scored higher than actual contact with a human being (the date, even though it apparently went well). Of course these results mean very little, seeing as this is an uncontrolled test with too many variables (maybe the date scored lowest because it was the first day tested, and she wasn't used to the needle yet). Also, everyone's oxytocin levels are probably different, making these results almost meaningless for other people.

This is an interesting course of study, however, so if anyone could do a similar test with a control group and a large sample size, the results would probably be quite helpful to everyone. Of course, you would need to find a lot of test subjects willing to be pricked by needles every day, or at least find a better way to check oxytocin.

Divorce or Separation May Be Worse for Child Happiness Than Poverty

Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage.
From An opinion on film.

Today The Daily Mail reports on something that you may already suspect:  divorce or separation of parents has a more negative effect on children's life satisfaction than poverty. This information comes from a new survey by the Understanding Society, a British government-funded organization.

Initial findings show that British children rank lower in overall life satisfaction than children in other developed countries. Parental happiness plays a big role in how happy they feel. They also experience a higher prevalence of bullying than children in the United States.

The researchers interviewed 34,500 people, including 2,000 children between 10 and 15 years old. The organization hopes to survey around 100,000 people every year to gain a deeper understanding of issues such as health, crime, finances, and work.

Professor Nick Buck, the director of Understanding Society, says, "We are collecting a much richer set of data than the national census, for instance, and I think this is going to lead to a major change in the way social research is performed, to understand how individual wellbeing and happiness is developed, and how behavior impacts on later outcomes."