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Chapter-1 The Paradox of Happiness

(2010-09-12 12:11:47) 下一个

The Paradox of Happiness

1. It’s plain common sense—the most happiness you feel, the less

2. Unhappiness you experience. It’s plain common sense, but it’s not true.

3. Recent research reveals that happiness and unhappiness are not really flip

4. sides of the same emotion. They are two distinct feelings that, coexisting,

5. rise and fall independently.

6. “You’d think that the higher a person’s level of unhappiness, the lower

7.their level of happiness and vice versa ,” says Edward Diener, a University of

8. Illinois professor of psychology who has done much of the new work on

9. positive and negative emotions. But when Diener and other researchers

10. measure people’s average levels of happiness and unhappiness, they often

11. find little relationship between the two.

12. The recognition that feelings of happiness and unhappiness can

13. coexist much like love and hate in a close relationship may offer valuable

14. clues on how to lead a happier life. It suggests, for example, that changing or

15. avoiding things that make you miserable may well make you less miserable

16. but probably won’t make you any happier. That advice is backed up by an

17. extraordinary series of studies which indicate that a genetic predisposition

18. for unhappiness may run in certain families. On the other hand, researchers

19. have found, happiness doesn’t appear to be anyone’s heritage. The capacity

20. for joy is a talent you develop largely for yourself.

21. Psychologists have settled on a working definition of the feeling—

22. happiness is a sense of subjective well-being. They’ve also begun to find out

23. who’s happy, who isn’t and why. To date, the research hasn’t found a simple

24. recipe for a happy life, but it has discovered some of the actions and

25. attitudes that seem to bring people closer to that most desired of feelings.

26. In a number of studies of identical and fraternal twins, researchers

27. have examined the role genetics plays in happiness and unhappiness. The

28. work suggests that although no one is really born to be happy, sadness may

29. run in families.

30. In one University of Southern California study, psychologist Laura

31. Baker and colleagues compared 899 individuals who had taken several

32. commonly used tests for happiness and unhappiness. The men and women

33. included 105 pairs of identical and fraternal twins as well as grandparents.

34. parents and young adult offspring from more than 200 other families.

35. “Family members,” Baker reports, “resembled each other more in their

36. levels of unhappiness than in their levels of happiness.” Furthermore,

37. identical twins were much closer than fraternal twins in unhappiness, a

38. finding that implies a genetic component.

39. In a study at the University of Minnesota, twins (some raised

40. together and others who had grown up apart) were tested for a wide range

41. of personality traits. In terms of happiness-defined as the capacity to enjoy.

42. life-identical twins who were separated soon after birth were considerably

43. less alike than twins raised together. But when it came to unhappiness, the

44. twins raised apart-some without contact for as long as 64 years-were as

45.similar as those who’d grown up together.

46. Why is unhappiness less influenced by environment? When we’re

47. happy we more responsive to people and keep up connections better than

48. when we’re feeling sad.

49. This doesn’t mean, however, that some people are born to be sad and

50. that’s that. Genes may predispose one to unhappiness, but disposition can

51. be influenced by personal choice. You can increase your happiness through

52. your own actions.

53. In a series of experiments by psychologists John Reich and Alex

54. Zautra at Arizona State University, they asked students to select their

55. favorite activities from a list of everyday pleasure—things like going to a

56. movie, talking with friends and playing cards.

57. Then the researches instructed some of the subjects to increase the

58. number of favorite activities they participated in for one month (the other

59. participants in the study served as controls and did not vary their activity

60. level). Results: Those who did more of the things they enjoyed were happier

61. than those who didn’t. The conclusion, then, is that the pleasure we get from

62. Life is largely ours to control.

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