Yesterday, I made the mistake of posting the bottom graph of this post with the title: "Being In Control Of Your Happiness Makes You 32% Happier".
In hindsight, this was a bad title, as the title implied causation which the data didn't support. The post was removed after a couple of hours. In the meantime, the post sparked quite some interesting discussions which I learned a lot from. That's why I'm reposting this data again, now with a title that doesn't make any conclusions. In addition, I added 2 data visualizations that show the raw data better. This hopefully sheds some light on the nature of the data, and some of the great feedback the original post received.
We recently surveyed 1,155 of people around the world, and asked them two questions:
Is happiness something that you can control?
If you look back at the last year of your life, how would you rate your happiness on a scale from 1 to 10?
89% of the respondents think that happiness can be controlled. The average (self-reported) happiness rating of this group was much higher than the people who felt like happiness cannot be controlled. People who believe happiness can be controlled are 32% happier (7.39 vs 5.61 average rating).
Is this a result of happier people feeling more responsible for their happiness vs unhappy people blaming something out of their control? Or can your personal happiness level really be controlled?
This reminds me of how rich people tend to think the biggest factor in financial success is hard work, whereas poor people tend to think the biggest factor is luck.
"I'm happy. I want to be happy. Therefore my wanting to be happy must be causing my happiness."
"I'm unhappy. I want to be happy. Therefore my wanting to be happy must not have an effect on my happiness."
![image showing Controlling Happiness: A Study of 1,155 Respondents [OC]](bf5fcda4-8859-569a-b128-76d242a949f6.jpg)
TrackingHappiness on July 23rd, 2020 at 07:48 UTC »
Yesterday, I made the mistake of posting the bottom graph of this post with the title: "Being In Control Of Your Happiness Makes You 32% Happier".
In hindsight, this was a bad title, as the title implied causation which the data didn't support. The post was removed after a couple of hours. In the meantime, the post sparked quite some interesting discussions which I learned a lot from. That's why I'm reposting this data again, now with a title that doesn't make any conclusions. In addition, I added 2 data visualizations that show the raw data better. This hopefully sheds some light on the nature of the data, and some of the great feedback the original post received.
We recently surveyed 1,155 of people around the world, and asked them two questions:
Is happiness something that you can control?
If you look back at the last year of your life, how would you rate your happiness on a scale from 1 to 10?
89% of the respondents think that happiness can be controlled. The average (self-reported) happiness rating of this group was much higher than the people who felt like happiness cannot be controlled. People who believe happiness can be controlled are 32% happier (7.39 vs 5.61 average rating).
Is this a result of happier people feeling more responsible for their happiness vs unhappy people blaming something out of their control? Or can your personal happiness level really be controlled?
Source: our survey and study results
Tools: Powerpoint, Excel and Google Sheets
SoupGoblinArt on July 23rd, 2020 at 10:04 UTC »
Wouldn't the people with a higher happiness average more biased in thinking that they have control over it?
Baby_Rhino on July 23rd, 2020 at 10:18 UTC »
This reminds me of how rich people tend to think the biggest factor in financial success is hard work, whereas poor people tend to think the biggest factor is luck.
"I'm happy. I want to be happy. Therefore my wanting to be happy must be causing my happiness."
"I'm unhappy. I want to be happy. Therefore my wanting to be happy must not have an effect on my happiness."