Category: Happiness

All personality types benefit from this type of conversation.

Having more meaningful or ‘deep’ conversations makes people happier, research finds.

Whether extravert or introvert, people who exchanged more meaningful information about relationships, politics or whatever, were happier.

At the other end of the scale, trivial chat or ‘small talk’ had no link to happiness, one way or the other.

Professor Matthias Mehl, who led the study, said:

“We do not think anymore that there is an inherent tension between having small talk and having substantive conversations.

Small didn’t positively contribute to happiness, and it didn’t negatively contribute to it.

With this study, we wanted to find out whether it is primarily the quantity or the quality of our social encounters that matter for one’s well-being.”

For the study, small recording devices were used to capture snippets of everyday conversation from 486 volunteers.

Professor Mehl explained the difference between small talk and a substantive conversation in their study:

“We define small talk as a conversation where the two conversation partners walk away still knowing equally as much — or little — about each other and nothing else.

In substantive conversation, there is real, meaningful information exchanged.

Importantly, it could be about any topic — politics, relationships, the weather — it just needs to be at a more than trivial level of depth.”

Personality had no effect on how much of a happiness boost people got from deep conversations, Professor Mehl said:

“We expected that personality might make a difference, for example that extroverts might benefit more from social interactions than introverts or that substantive conversations might be more closely linked to well-being for introverts than for extroverts, and were very surprised that this does not seem to be the case.”

Although small talk was not linked to happiness, it is still necessary, said Professor Mehl:

“I think of it like this: In every pill, there’s an inactive ingredient, and it’s a nice metaphor, because you cannot have the pill without the inactive ingredient.

We all understand that small talk is a necessary component to our social lives.

You cannot usually walk up to a stranger and jump right into a deep, existential conversation because of social norms.”

Perhaps, says Professor Mehl, people could be prescribed a deep conversation as a treatment:

“I would like to experimentally ‘prescribe’ people a few more substantive conversations and see whether that does something to their happiness.”

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Milek et al., 2018).

Our mood clearly affects how we walk, but how does our walking style affect our mood?

It’s well-known that when we’re in a good mood, our style of walking tends to reflect how we feel: we bounce along, shoulders back, swinging our arms in style.

Sometimes, just from our gait, it’s more obvious to other people how we feel than to ourselves.

Now, a study finds that it also works the other way around: people who imitate a happy style of walking, even without realising it, find themselves feeling happier

The study had participants walking on a treadmill after looking at a list of positive and negative words.

While on the treadmill each person’s gait and posture was continuously measured and fed back to them visually.

On the screen they had to try and move a bar either one way or the other by changing their walking style.

Although they didn’t realise it, walking in a happy way made the bar move in one direction and walking in a depressed way moved it the other.

Professor Nikolaus Troje, who co-authored the study, explained:

“They would learn very quickly to walk the way we wanted them to walk.”

Afterwards, they were asked to write down as many of the positive and negative words that they’d been shown earlier.

Those who’d been walking in a happy, upbeat way remembered more of the positive words, suggesting they were happier.

The study also found that those who walked in a slumped, round-shouldered, depressed way, remembered more of the negative words.

This ties in with research on people who are depressed: they have a strong tendency to remember negative events, rather than the positive.

A bias towards recalling negative events is part of the vicious cycle that perpetuates a depressed state of mind.

Professor Troje continued:

“If you can break that self-perpetuating cycle, you might have a strong therapeutic tool to work with depressive patients.”

So: shoulders back, swing those arms, and let’s see you bounce along!

Related

• Happiness Hacks: 20 Simple Strategies For A Brighter, Joy-Filled Life (P)

The study was published in the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry (Michalak et al., 2015).

People are most active in their search for meaning in life at these two ages.

People search most actively for meaning in life in their twenties and then again after reaching their sixties.

In their twenties, people are still finding themselves, searching out careers and relationships.

This can often be a relatively unhappy time for people, when feelings of depression and anxiety can peak.

Middle age typically (but not always) brings a period of stability in which the search for meaning decreases as people settle down and find their way in life.

People generally begin to feel happier through this middle period.

The search for meaning in life kicks in again after the age of 60 as retire looms and family and friends are starting to pass away.

The search for meaning is important for many reasons, explains Professor Dilip V. Jeste, study co-author:

“Many think about the meaning and purpose in life from a philosophical perspective, but meaning in life is associated with better health, wellness and perhaps longevity.

Those with meaning in life are happier and healthier than those without it.”

The conclusions come from a study of 1,042 people who were interviewed about the meaning they experienced in life along with other key measures.

The results revealed a U-shaped connection between the search for meaning in life and age.

Professor Jeste explained:

“When you are young, like in your twenties, you are unsure about your career, a life partner and who you are as a person.

You are searching for meaning in life.

As you start to get into your thirties, forties and fifties, you have more established relationships, maybe you are married and have a family and you’re settled in a career.

The search decreases and the meaning in life increases.

After age 60, things begin to change.

People retire from their job and start to lose their identity.

They start to develop health issues and some of their friends and family begin to pass away.

They start searching for the meaning in life again because the meaning they once had has changed.”

Related

• Live With Purpose: 15 Strategies For A More Meaningful Life (P)

The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (Aftab et al., 2019).