Men Who Like Culture Are Happier

The Louvre. From Brock's Renaissance Art.

Hey gang. Today's story is again brought to you by Julia of The Thank You Project. It seems whenever I have trouble finding new stories, there she is with a good one. Any help is always welcome!

As for the story itself, LiveScience reports that men who enjoy cultural outings, like visits to art museums or the ballet, tend to be happier with their lives than those who don't. The researchers call this "receptive culture," which is separate from "creative culture," wherein a person actually takes a hands-on approach by painting, singing, or writing.

Study author Koenraad Cuypers and his colleagues looked at data on the activities, life satisfaction, perceived health, anxiety, and depression of 50,797 adult residents of Nord-Trondelag County in central Norway. Even after controlling for income and education, participating in receptive culture has a positive effect on the wellbeing of both genders, but the effect is not equal. Cuypers says, "Men seemed to get more of a percieved health benefit from being involved in different receptive cultural activities than women did."

Since this study did not examine people's happiness over time, it can make no assertions on whether receptive culture causes happiness or if the two just happen to go together. Cuypers wants to expand the research to answer that question, and also to find out if the correlation is true in European countries other than Norway.

You can read the actual study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Big Government is Best for Happiness?

From Visiting DC.

Today's story is brought to you by Julia over at the Thank You Project. It's always great receiving story submissions from people, so be sure to check out her blog. It's all about the power of gratitude, which should interest a lot of you.

Anyway, in a post that will probably be controversial, LiveScience reports that citizens of bigger governments tend to be happier than those of smaller governments. The actual study, published in the April issue of Politics & Policy, says that the United States ranks 10th out of 15 industrialized nations in life satisfaction. The countries with more social welfare programs rank higher on the list.

Patrick Flavin of Baylor University conducted the study by looking at data from the 2005 to 2008 World Values Survey, which asks citizens of various countries how satisfied they are with their lives. The researchers then measured the size of their governments by looking at tax revenue, gross domestic product (GDP), government consumption, average unemployment benefits, and social welfare expenditures.

After controlling for health, age, individualism, and other factors, government size proved to be the biggest influence on average happiness. Flavin says, "The jump in happiness in going from a country that's low on the government intervention scale to one that is high on the government intervention scale is about the same as the effect of getting married."

Suffice it to say, not everyone agrees with the study's conclusions. Critics point out that the study's sample of 15 countries is not big enough, while the researchers say they limited their sample size to draw more reliable comparisons between similar countries. The story itself goes into much more detail than I could summarize here, so read that if you want to learn more.

Patriotism Makes for Happier People

Captain America:  happy man, or happiest man?
(Probably not, except if he's poor.)
Portrait by Alex Ross. From Fox News.

Today LiveScience reports on a new 128-country study that shows the more patriotic a population is, the happier they feel in general. This especially applies to poor and non-Western nations. The survey, conducted by Gallup, asked people about their income, job satisfaction, and opinions about their country.

This month's Psychological Science journal published the analysis of the data by Mike Morrison and Ed Diener.  As Morrison says, "You can hear politicians in any country declare, 'We live in the best country in the world!' and people cheer." The researchers hypothesize that people with low income find patriotism to be consoling in rough times, while wealthier and Western respondents attribute their happiness to the individual factors of health, job satisfaction, and standard of living.

The study implies that societal characteristics may influence happiness more than people realize. Ed Diener says, "What is more, societal characteristics become even more important to happiness when one's life is not going well. This might explain why nationalism, the loyalty of sports fans, and religiosity can be very strong in the toughest of times."