Positive Belief Changes Your Brain

A book that argues that God is good for your health is based on research that suggests that it is positive belief, regardless of whether it involves gods, that can be good for you.

Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman’s book is called How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist.

Newberg’s website begins with the dramatic assertion that “God is great for your mental, physical and spiritual health”. Now, you have to start with a punch, so we can read this as shorthand for “Belief in a god can be good for your health”. But even this claim should be tempered by the next paragraph.

This states that: “Newberg, therapist Mark Robert Waldman, and their research team have concluded that active and positive spiritual belief changes the human brain for the better. What’s more, actual faith isn’t always necessary: atheists who meditate on positive imagery can obtain similar neurological benefits.”

Wait a minute! Actual faith isn’t always necessary? Atheists can obtain similar benefits? From meditating on positive imagery? But meditation need not even be spiritual, never mind theistic. It can be approached quite rationally as a potentially transformative neurological experience.

Based on this, the result of Newberg and Waldman’s research could be more accurately presented like this: “Active and positive belief, including meditating on positive imagery, can change the human brain for the better. This is the case regardless of whether you believe yourself to be spiritual or believe in gods.”

The book could be more accurately retitled as: How Positive Belief Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist.

And none of this, of course, has any bearing on whether or not the beliefs are true.

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5 Literally Happy Songs

For an overdose of literally happy songs – that is, songs with happy or happiness in the title – here’s Happiness by Platinum Weird, Happy Days Toytown by the Small Faces, Endless Song of Happiness by Yael Naim, Happy Together by the Turtles, and Happiness by Orson.

Happiness – Platinum Weird, 2006

Happy Days Toytown – Small Faces, 1968

Endless Song of Happinesss – Yael Naim, 2007

Happy Together – The Turtles, 1967

Happiness – Orson, 2006

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Social Networks Spread Happiness

Happiness is infectious. It spreads through social networks, infecting people that you don’t even know. And it spreads more strongly than sadness does. That’s according to a recent study that examined the happiness of almost five thousand people over twenty years from 1983 to 2003.

The study was compiled by professors James Fowler of the University of California in San Diego and Nicholas Christakis of the Harvard Medical School. They examined records from a long-established heart study that included details of the emotional states of families and friends.

They found that, when you become happy, any friend of yours who lives within a mile becomes 25% more likely to also be happy. Amazingly, they also found that a friend of that friend becomes 10% more likely to happy, and a friend of that friend’s friend has a 5% increased chance of being happy.

They also found that people at the core of a local social network are more likely to be happy than people at the periphery. And they say that  the reason seems to be that being at the core of the social network increases your happiness. It is not that being happy brings you to the core of the network.

Social networks spread happiness

The study followed the social networks of almost five thousand people over twenty years, including connections at one, two, three or more levels of separation. It found that happy people tend to be connected to each other. The clusters of happy and unhappy people are much larger than could be explainable by chance.

This takes into account several possible associations between happy people: your happiness might cause someone else to be happy; you might become connected because you are both already happy; or you might both be experiencing the same social conditions that might make you happy.

On average, you are 15% more likely to be happy if a person directly connected to you is happy. The chances increase or decrease depending on how close you are to the person. Mutual friends who live nearby have the strongest effect, and distant friends who live more than a mile away have little or no direct effect. Interestingly, neither do co-workers.

Happiness spreads more strongly through same-sex relationships. This means that your friends and neighbours might influence your happiness more than your spouse does. And your impact on a friend’s happiness gradually wears off over time, unless of course you keep in touch and stay happy.

However, there is an indirect effect that does not even depend on knowing the person. You are almost 10% more likely to be happy if a person two removes from you is happy (a friend of a friend). And you are over 5% more likely to be happy if a person three removes from you is happy (a friend of a friend of a friend).

Also, people at the core of a local social network are more likely to be happy than people at the periphery. And Christakis and Fowler say that  the reason seems to be that being at the core of the social network increases your happiness. It is not that being happy brings you to the core of the network.

So, on average, having additional social contacts will help to make you happy – but only if your extra social contacts are happy themselves. Interestingly, happy people spread happiness much more strongly than unhappy people spread unhappiness.

However, the main effect on your happiness is your previous happiness: if you were happy the last time you were asked, you are three times more likely to be happy now than if you were unhappy the last time you were asked.

How the study was conducted

The Framingham Heart Study is an ongoing study, based in Massachusetts, that has examined 14,000 people spanning three generations of people, and their spouses. The three generations enrolled in 1948, 1971 and 2002.

Christakis and Fowler study focused on the middle group, because there is information available on their relationships with both their parents and their children, as well as with their friends.

On average, each person was connected to ten family members, friends or coworkers, and an indeterminate number of neighbours. Also, because the study took place in the same area, many of the connected people were also part of the study themselves.

The study measured people’s happiness by asking them how often they experienced four specific feelings during the previous week: “I felt hopeful about the future,” “I was happy,” “I enjoyed life,” “I felt that I was just as good as other people.”

Other studies have shown that these four questions are a reliable way of measuring happiness, and that the answers to each question are highly correlated to each other. As well as examining people’s happiness, this study also examined by how much their happiness changed over time.

Conclusions of the Study

Fowler and Christakis conclude that the spread of happiness seems to reach up to three degrees of separation, just like the spread of obesity and smoking behaviour. They believe that this finding has relevance for public health. Human happiness is not merely the province of isolated individuals.

They outline the following as already being known before their study: 

• Previous work on happiness and wellbeing has focused on socioeconomic and genetic factors.
• Research on emotional contagion has shown that one person’s mood might fleetingly determine the mood of others.
• Whether happiness spreads broadly and more permanently across social networks is unknown.

They say that their study adds the following new information:

• Happiness is a network phenomenon, clustering in groups of people that extend up to three degrees of separation (for example, to one’s friends’ friends’ friends).
• Happiness spreads across a diverse array of social ties.
• Network characteristics independently predict which individuals will be happy years into the future.

Illustration

• The illustration shows happiness clusters in over a thousand people in the Framingham social network during 1996 and 2000.
• Each node represents one person. Node colour indicates mean happiness of each person and all directly connected (distance 1) people: yellow is most happy, blue is least happy and green is in between.

Sources

• The full text of the study: Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study
• Homepage of James Fowler of the University of California in San Diego
• Homepage of Nicholas Christakis at Harvard Medical School
• Happiness Is A Collective Phenomenon
• The Happiness Virus

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Filipino Happiness and Hunger

Four out of every five Filipinos are happy, and this level of happiness has remained relatively high over the past fifteen years. And poor Filipinos are only marginally less happy than average.

However, seven million Filipino families consider themselves to be poor in terms of food. And hunger causes more unhappiness than general poverty does.

The research was conducted by Social Weather Stations, a non-profit social research institution based in Quezon City in Metro Manila.

Its three aims are: (1) Education, so eyes may see social conditions; (2) Conscientization, so hearts may feel social problems; and (3) Analysis, so minds may understand their solutions.

Unhappiness and Hunger in the Philippines

In March 2008, 77% of poor Filipinos were happy, not too far below the 81% average for all Filipinos. However, compared to an average family, a hungry family was one and a half times as likely to be unhappy, and a very hungry family was twice as likely to be unhappy.

That fits in with studies from other countries that show that it is harder to be happy when you are below a certain basic level of income. However, when you go above that level of income, every extra amount of money that you earn has less and less impact on your happiness.

As well as the seven million Filipino families who are poor in terms of food, there are five million families on the borderline, and another five and a half million families who are not poor in terms of food.

Also, despite considerable inflation, Filipino families are not increasing the food budget that they need in order not to consider themselves poor in terms of food. This means that, in real terms, poor Filipino families are lowering their living standards.

Overall Happiness in the Philippines

The four out of five adult Filipinos who are happy break down roughly like this: 34 percent are very happy, and 46 percent are fairly happy. Meanwhile, 16 percent say that they are not very happy, and nearly 4 percent say that they are not at all happy.

Sources

• Photo: Philippines by Dharion (cc)
• Social Weather Stations Website
• Details of the First Quarter 2008 Survey
• Article about the Survey in Philippine Daily Inquirer

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What Makes Australians Happy?

The more money you earn, the less impact that your extra money has on your happiness. If you earn $15,000 a year, an extra $7,000 would make you one percent happier. But if you earn $250,000 a year, it would take an extra $625,000 to make you that same one percent happier. That’s one finding of a report that summarises seven years of research into what makes Australians happy.

The report is published by the health insurance company Australian Unity, in partnership with the Australian Centre on Quality of Life which is based at Deakin University. They also found that Australian women are more satisfied with their lives than men, and that the happiest Australians include those who are getting older, those who live with their partner, especially married people, and those who volunteer generally.

Seven Years of Research

Psychologist Bob Cummins, who wrote the report, says that wellbeing is a longer-lasting, deeper sense of contentment than momentary joy. The seven years of research have examined personal wellbeing elements like health, relationships, safety, standard of living, achievements, and national elements such as social, economic, political and environmental conditions.

Cummins says that the results demonstrate a theory called homeostasis – that wellbeing is maintained by an automatic internal system that enables us to keep feeling positive, even when things go wrong. This means that our wellbeing fluctuates a little, but it holds relatively steady over time. When this self-regulatory system fails, the result is what we know as depression.

Eight Ways to Be Happier

The report suggests eight ways to increase your happiness:

• Connect with family and friends. They’re your best source of support when you need it, and they have the strongest influence on your happiness.
• Watch your spending and save for the proverbial rainy day when money really counts. Happiness gained through buying new ‘things’ is fleeting.
• Engage in activities that give you a sense of achievement. Consider becoming a volunteer or taking up a hobby that challenges your mind or body.
• Review your home and personal security. Also avoid situations that make you feel unsafe, such as walking alone at night.
• Find a balance between work and leisure that is right for you. This balance is different for each person – there is no simple formula.
• Look after your health. Staying healthy is all about balance. Eat reasonably well, be active and have regular doctor checks.
• Get involved in your community. Get to feel connected by knowing your neighbours, volunteering, and being involved in local activities.
• Keep some of your life simple. Take some time out of your day for personal time. Try concentrating on your breathing for two minutes.

Sources:

• Photo: Botanic Gardens, Melbourne by Tim Parkinson (cc)
• The Report in PDF form
• Australian Unity website
• Australian Centre on Quality of Life
• Bob Cummins homepage

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Is this the World’s Happiest Man?

When Tibetan Buddhist monks meditate for many years, they gradually change the molecular structure of their brains.

MRI scans show they experience more activity in the left pre-frontal cortex, a part of the brain that is associated with happiness, and less activity in the right-hand side, which handles negative thoughts.

And Mathieu Ricard, the 62-year-old French interpreter for Tibet’s Dalai Lama, has happiness levels that are literally off the scale of the measuring instruments. That’s the conclusion of American neuroscientist Richard Davidson, who has spent over fifteen years testing these theories.

The idea that we gradually reshape our brains is not new – taxi drivers change the parts of their brains that deal with spatial awareness, and concert musicians the parts that deal with musical pitch – but Davidson was among the first to apply the tests scientifically to an area that seemed much more abstract and subjective.

Richard Davidson’s Tests

Davidson and his team began by travelling to India to study the brain activity of monks who practiced three different types of meditation:

• Focused attention, where the monks specifically train themselves to focus on a single object for long periods of time
• Cultivating compassion, where they envision negative events that cause anger or irritability, and then transform by applying compassion
• Open presence, where they are acutely and purely aware of whatever thought, emotion or sensation is present, without reacting to it.

They soon discovered that monks who had completed more than ten thousand hours of meditation had high levels of brain activity associated with positive emotions. Then some Asian monks traveled to Davidson’s lab in the University of Wisconsin in America, where their reactions were compared to those of volunteers who had only some limited training in meditation.

The MRI scans measured brain activity that is associated with happiness, on a scale of +0.3 at the negative end to -0.3 on the positive end. One monk, Mathieu Ricard, scored literally off the scale at -0.45. He may well be the happiest man in the world. So who is Mathieu Ricard and how did he reach this state?

Mathieu Ricard’s Life

Ricard was born in France in 1946. His father, Jean-François Revel, was a philosopher and mother, Yahne Le Toumelin, was a painter. Ricard studied classical music, ornithology and photography and in 1972 completed a Ph.D. in cellular genetics at the Institut Pasteur under Nobel Laureate François Jacob. He then moved to the Himalayas to study Tibetan Buddhism. He has lived since then as a Buddhist monk at the Shechen Monastery in Nepal, also acting as French interpreter for Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Ricard has written many books, including

• The Monk and the Philosopher, a best-seller that consisted of dialogues with his father Jean-François Revel
• The Quantum and the Lotus, a conversation with the astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan
• Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, written with Daniel Goleman
• Motionless Journey, a photographic record of a year-long retreat in the foothills of the Himalayas.

He gives the proceeds from his books to humanitarian projects in Tibet, Nepal, India, and Bhutan. Since 2000, he has been an active member of the Mind and Life Institute as well as participating in the scientific research on brain plasticity headed by Davidson.

Ricard’s Views on Happiness

In the video below, you can listen to Ricard discussing happiness at TED (an annual four-day conference on Technology, Entertainment and Design, that takes place in Monteray in California).

Sources:

• Results of the study: Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice, PNAS, November 16, 2004, vol. 101 no. 46 16369-16373
• Mathieu Ricard Website
• Richard Davidson Homepage
• The Happiest Man in the World? Anthony Barnes, The Independent, 21 January 2007
• Is Buddhism Good for Your Health? Stephen Hall, New York Times, 14 Sep 2003

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But Will It Make You Happy?

Why do people believe that living in California would make them feel happier than people who do live in California actually are?

And why do people, who are afraid of being rejected, want more drugs than people who have actually been rejected?

There are several reasons.

If you are a typical human being, you are bad at remembering why you felt happy in the past, good at knowing how happy you feel now, okay at predicting roughly what will make you feel happy in the future, but bad at predicting how happy you will feel if specific events happen. That’s the conclusion of scientists who have researched this fascinating area.

Past, Present and Future

How happy were you last year? That’s too much detail to calculate, so your mind takes a short cut. You focus mainly on your highest highs, your lowest lows, and the most recent events. However, if I had asked you, at random times during the past year, how you actually felt at that moment, and I combined your answers, they would be different – and more accurate. This has been tested by using randomly-timed buzzers to alert people to write down how they are feeling, then checking later what they remember about their feelings.

Are you happy now with your life in general? Again, your mind takes a short cut: if you’re in a good mood, you’re more likely to say yes. Nevertheless, your answer is likely to match with external ways of checking how happy you are, such as physiological signs and how happy your family and friends think you are. Are you satisfied with your work? Hobby? Marriage? Now that’s more specific. Regardless of your mood, your mind compares how things are with how things could be. Again, pretty accurately.

What will make you happy next year? You can predict most things fairly accurately. However, you are also influenced by your mistaken beliefs about what made you happy last year. And your mind over-predicts the impact that changes will bring. Lottery winners are less happy than we expect, and crippled accident victims less unhappy. When we think of these events, we focus on the change of becoming a lottery winner or accident victim, not on the ongoing reality of being one. Over time, we adapt to most changes. Millionaires face new problems. Disabled people develop new interests.

Impact Bias

Three psychologists and an economist pioneered much of the research on how we predict our feelings, and how accurate our predictions are. They are Daniel Gilbert in Harvard, Tim Wilson in Virginia, Daniel Kahneman in Princeton and George Lowenstein in Carnegie-Melon. They call this ‘affective forecasting’ (in psychology, the word ‘affect’ means feeling or emotion). Here’s some of what they found.

Broadly speaking, you can accurately predict that winning the lottery or seeing your sports team win a trophy will make you feel happy. However, you mistakenly believe that these events will make you feel happier, and for longer, than they actually do. That’s why Daniel Kahneman and others found that people believe that living in California would make them happier than people who do live in California actually are.

Also, broadly speaking, you can accurately predict that a serious illness or a death in the family will make you feel unhappy. However, you mistakenly believe that these events will make you feel unhappier, and for longer, than they actually do. That’s why Tim Wilson and others found that people, who are facing possible rejection, want more mood-enhancing drugs than people who have actually been rejected.

Daniel Gilbert calls this ‘impact bias’ or ‘miswanting’. And it gets worse. Because, when you do get the new trinket you have coveted for ages, and when it gradually dawns you that you are not as happy as you thought you would be, you often react by ‘miswanting’ something else instead, and the cycle continues. The same thing happens with bad events. When something bad happens to you, and when it gradually dawns you that you are not as unhappy as you feared you would be, you often start instead to fear a different bad event more than you should do.

Empathy Gap

Your mood when you decide what you want is also a factor. When you are calm, reflective and rational, you cannot accurately predict what you will want when you are aroused, anxious or fearful. That’s why it can be a bad idea to go food shopping when you are hungry, or to go on a date without a condom. George Lowenstein calls this ‘the empathy gap’ between being in a ‘cold state’ or a ‘hot state’.

There are many other examples of this empathy gap in action. Some are summarised by Elizabeth Dunn and others of New South Wales in their 2007 paper on what they call ‘Emotional Time Travel’.

Once you own something, you can become more attached to it than you thought that you would before you owned it. That’s why buyers (who don’t yet own an object) often think that the seller is demanding too much money, and sellers (who do own the object) often think that the buyer should be prepared to pay more.

Women often predict that, if they were sexually harassed, they would feel angry and confront the harasser, whereas women who are actually sexually harassed are more likely to feel afraid and to avoid confrontation. That’s why female jurors often give less credibility than they should to the evidence of women who have been sexually harassed.

Also, you think differently about events that are further away in the future. If you are choosing a series of videos to watch later, you are more likely to include a serious high-brow movie, but if you are choosing just one video to watch now, you are more likely to choose a low-brow entertaining movie.

Possible Solutions

Here are four ways of becoming more accurate when you are predicting how future events will make you feel.

The first is very simple – just knowing that impact bias and empathy gaps exist, can help you to counter them.

Secondly, when remembering how past events made you feel, try to remember a series of events, not just one. If you just remember one event, it is likely to be an extreme, untypical example. If you do only remember one, at least remind yourself that it may be extreme and untypical.

Thirdly, when predicting how future events will make you feel, try to put the event in context. Think of the inevitability of change. Think of many different possible outcomes. Think of bad aspects of good outcomes, and good aspects of bad outcomes. And think of other things that will also be happening in your life that will distract you from the event in question. For example, your social relationships can help to counter career problems, and vice versa.

And finally, get older. Older people are less likely to over-predict how future events will make them feel, simply because they have been through so many similar events in their lives.

Sources

• Photo: California by Scott Klettke (cc)
• On Emotionally Intelligent Time Travel: Individual Differences in Affective Forecasting. Dunn et al. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2007; 33: 85-93
• When to Fire: Anticipatory versus Postevent Reconstrual of Uncontrollable Events. Wilson et al. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2004; 30, 1-12
• The Futile Pursuit of Happiness, by John Gertner, article in New York Times Magazine, Sep 7 2003
• Well-Being: the Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, Russell Sage, 1999
• Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction. Schkade and Kahneman, Psychological Science 1998; 9, 340-46

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Where to Live a Long Happy Life

The best six countries in which to live a long happy life are Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Austria, Sweden and Australia. If you live in one of these places, you can expect to have sixty or more ‘happy-years’ of life. ‘Happy-years’ are calculated by multiplying happiness levels by life expectancy.

Denmark, Switzerland and Austria have the happiest citizens, describing themselves as eight out of ten in satisfaction with their lives. Japanese citizens live longer than any other nation – almost 81 years on average – but have a low happiness score of six out of ten.

Top 25 Countries for Happy-Life Years

(happiness levels multiplied by life expectancy, 1995-2005)

• 63.9 Switzerland
• 62.7 Denmark
• 62.2 Iceland
• 61.0 Austria
• 60.8 Sweden
• 60.7 Australia
• 59.8 Canada, Finland
• 59.3 Norway
• 59.0 Luxembourg
• 58.7 Netherlands
• 58.3 Ireland
• 58.2 Malta
• 57.0 USA
• 56.5 Belgium
• 55.8 New Zealand
• 55.7 Germany
• 55.3 Mexico
• 55.2 Britain
• 54.2 Italy
• 54.1 Spain
• 53.7 Cyprus
• 53.0 Kuwait
• 52.9 Singapore
• 52.2 Israel

Top 25 Countries for Average Happiness

(satisfaction with life on a scale of one to ten, 1995-2005)

• 8.2 Denmark
• 8.1 Switzerland
• 8.0 Austria
• 7.8 Iceland
• 7.7 Australia, Finland, Sweden
• 7.6 Canada, Guatemala, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Norway
• 7.5 Malta, Netherlands
• 7.4 USA
• 7.3 Belgium
• 7.2 Germany, El Salvador, New Zealand
• 7.1 Britain, Honduras
• 7.0 Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
• 6.9 Italy, Spain, Cyprus

Top 25 Countries for Average Life Expectancy

(measured in years, 1995-2005)

• 80.8 Japan
• 79.5 Iceland
• 79.4 Sweden
• 79.2 Canada
• 79.0 Switzerland
• 78.9 Australia
• 78.6 Italy, France, Spain
• 78.5 Israel
• 78.4 Norway
• 78.1 Greece, Netherlands
• 78.0 Belgium, Cyprus
• 77.8 Austria, Malta
• 77.6 Britain, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore
• 77.4 Finland, Luxembourg
• 76.9 USA
• 76.6 Ireland

Sources:

• Photo: Switzerland by Francisco Antunes (cc)
• Report: Veenhoven, R., Happy Life Years in 95 nations 1995-2005, World Database of Happiness, Rank Report 2006-2b

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