Momentary Happiness Research Articles

Language sentiment predicts changes in depressive symptoms

The prevalence of depression is a major societal health concern, and there is an ongoing need to develop tools that predict who will become depressed. Past research suggests that depression changes the language we use, but it is unclear whether language is predictive of worsening symptoms. Here, we test whether the sentiment of brief written linguistic responses predicts changes in depression. Across two studies (N = 467), participants provided responses to neutral open-ended questions, narrating aspects of their lives relevant to depression (e.g., mood, motivation, sleep). Participants also completed the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) to assess depressive symptoms and a risky decision-making task with periodic measurements of momentary happiness to quantify mood dynamics. The sentiment of written responses was evaluated by human raters (N = 470), Large Language Models (LLMs; ChatGPT 3.5 and 4.0), and the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) tool. We found that language sentiment evaluated by human raters and LLMs, but not LIWC, predicted changes in depressive symptoms at a three-week follow-up. Using computational modeling, we found that language sentiment was associated with current mood, but language sentiment predicted symptom changes even after controlling for current mood. In summary, we demonstrate a scalable tool that combines brief written responses with sentiment analysis by AI tools that matches human performance in the prediction of future psychiatric symptoms.

Meneropong Fenomena Flexing dalam al-Qur’an: Analisis Semantik Ayat QS. Al-Ḥadīd: 20

Advancements in information technology and its central feature of global connectivity permit the exchange of information and interactions among diverse cultures and religions. Social media platforms have released the boundaries of geographical stretch and demographic regions that approve the infiltration of particular mindsets, lifestyles, and behavioral tendencies. The use of social media in the public sphere has led to a distinctive social behavior in the form of lifestyle dubbed flexing. The flexing lifestyle is a behavioral phenomenon to exhibit one's wealth and self-achievement to urge society to be wasteful. This study aims to examine the phenomenon of flexing from the perspective of the Qur'an; analyze the term al-ḥayāt al-dunyā in the verse of QS. al-Ḥadīd [57]: 20. This research employs interpretive-qualitative analysis using a semantic analysis approach designed by Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas in examining conceptual meanings in the Qur'an. The results of this study indicate that flexing is a nefarious consumption behavior in socio-economic theory refers as emulative consumption. This behavior has become a lifestyle and has impacted the community's mode of living. This lifestyle in the Qur'anic term is called al-ḥayāt al-dunyā, semantically a lowly lifestyle. This concept emerges from a semantic analysis of the phrase al-ḥayāt al-dunyā comprising the meanings la'ib (game), lahw (joking), zīnah (things that are dear to human lust), tafākhur (proud of one's achievements in facade of people), takāṡur (competing in the accumulation of wealth), farḥ (momentary happiness), matā' (temporary pleasure), and ghurūr (something that deceives). In the light of the Qur'an, this behavior is a demeanor mode of living, because it disregards the disobedient from remembering God and the afterlife.

AGE-RELATED DIFFERENCES IN DAILY EXPERIENCES OF HAPPINESS: THE ROLE OF THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE

Abstract We examined the role of future time perspective (thinking about the future) in shaping age-related differences in time-varying experiences of happiness. Older adults’ experience of happiness is more strongly associated with low-arousal than with high-arousal positive affect. Low-arousal positive affective states may be conducive to engaging in meaningful social interactions with close others (e.g., listening, adjusting to others) and therefore serve key socio-emotional goals that are prioritized when future time is perceived as limited. We hypothesized that thinking less about the future would be related to stronger associations between happiness and low-arousal positive states in older than younger adults. We used daily life assessments from 258 participants (M = 48.4 years; 68% female; 77% Asian; 73% post-secondary education), which comprised older (M = 63.4 years) and younger (M = 20.1 years) adult samples collected at two locations (Vancouver, Canada; Hong Kong). Participants reported on their momentary affective states and thinking about the future (0-100 scales) up to 30 times over 10 days. Results replicate previous findings by showing that momentary happiness was more strongly associated with momentary calmness and more weakly associated with momentary excitement among older as compared to younger adults. Younger adults reported thinking more about the future than older adults. Thinking less about the future was related to stronger happiness-calmness and weaker happiness-excitement associations in daily life for older participants, only; for younger participants, it was associated with weaker happiness-calmness associations. Age and future thinking-related contours of happiness are discussed in the context of emotional aging theories.

DOES WORKER WELL‐BEING ADAPT TO A PANDEMIC? AN EVENT STUDY BASED ON HIGH‐FREQUENCY PANEL DATA

AbstractWe estimate the dynamic impact of two waves of the COVID‐19 pandemic on an exceptionally broad range of indicators of worker well‐being. Our analyses are based on high‐frequency panel data from an app‐based survey of German workers and employ an event‐study design with individual‐specific fixed effects. We find that workers' mental health decreased substantially during the first wave of the pandemic. To a smaller extent, this is also true for life satisfaction and momentary happiness. Most well‐being indicators converged to prepandemic levels when infection rates declined. During the second wave of the pandemic, overall worker well‐being decreased less than that during the first wave. Life satisfaction does not seem to have changed at all. We conclude that worker well‐being adapts to the pandemic. Moreover, subgroup analyses indicate that, in terms of well‐being, workers who took part in a job retention scheme fared less well during the pandemic than other employees.

Happiness in the Daily Socio-Cultural Integration Process: A day Reconstruction Study among American Immigrants in Germany

Many immigrants struggle to integrate into host societies, despite the frequent long-term benefits of integration for immigrants and host societies. This article aims to increase understandings of immigrants’ experiences and obstacles in the daily socio-cultural integration process by examining the understudied impact of daily integration behaviors on momentary happiness. The daily experiences of 213 immigrants from the United States in Germany were captured, using a day reconstruction method. Our panel fixed-effects estimates show that immigrants who were not fluent in the host country's majority language generally felt happier when communicating in their mother tongue, as opposed to the majority language. Moreover, interacting with majority group members negatively affected the momentary happiness of less culturally integrated immigrants. By contrast, socio-cultural integration related positively to immigrants’ enduring happiness. Our results suggest that socio-cultural integration is an investment involving short-term costs to happiness, with important daily obstacles being the cost to momentary happiness of speaking the majority language and, to a lesser extent, interacting with majority group members. We argue that integration behaviors’ short-term costs also occur in many other migration contexts. The revealed short-term costs can increase understandings of immigrants’ integration struggles and related outcomes, including segregation and loneliness, and decreasing the costs may improve socio-cultural integration trajectories.

IMPACT OF MINDFULNESS: A PERSPECTIVE OF TEACHERS OF DOE

The department of education (DoE) of the government of NCT of Delhi (GNCT of Delhi) introduced Happiness Curriculum and Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum (EMC) in all government schools in 2019 for classes Nursery to VIII, and IX to XII respectively. Both curriculums have a strong component, Mindfulness; the state of being conscious or aware of the present moment. This is an ancient technique of meditation that somewhat differs from meditation and was discovered by Gautam Buddha more than 2500 years ago. The sole purpose of this component in both the curriculum is to teach the students to ensure harmony within their inner self, discover their self in the process of learning, and grow their self to achieve sustainable happiness from momentary happiness. To know the impact of mindfulness in students’ lives in the offline and online mode of teaching, an online survey was conducted by the State Council of Education Research and Teaching (SCERT), New Delhi among the students, teachers, and parents of DoE. This study presents the analysis with the help of statistical techniques such as mean, median, and mode of the teachers’ observations through the questionnaire on the impact of mindfulness on the students’ behavior and their learning process. More than 1400 teachers who are teaching approximately 70 thousand students participated in this survey. The insights drawn from this analysis are discussed in detail in the result section of the study which shows the positive and effective impact of mindfulness on students’ behavior and their learning process.

Modeling dynamic personality theories in a continuous-time framework: An illustration.

Personality psychology has traditionally focused on stable between-person differences. Yet, recent theoretical developments and empirical insights have led to a new conceptualization of personality as a dynamic system (e.g., Cybernetic Big Five Theory). Such dynamic systems comprise several components that need to be conceptually distinguished and mapped to a statistical model for estimation. In the current work, we illustrate how common components from these new dynamic personality theories may be implemented in a continuous time-modeling framework. As an empirical example, we reanalyze experience sampling data with N=180 persons (with on average T=40 [SD=8] measurement occasions) to investigate four different effects between momentary happiness, momentary extraverted behavior, and the perception of a situation as social: (1) between-person effects, (2) contemporaneous effects, (3) autoregressive effects, and (4) cross-lagged effects. We highlight that these four effects must not necessarily point in the same direction, which is in line with assumptions from dynamic personality theories.

The U-Curve of Happiness Revisited: Correlations and Differences in Life Satisfaction Over the Span of Life—An Empirical Evaluation Based on Data From 1,597 Individuals Aged 12–94 in Germany

BackgroundSubjective wellbeing (SWB) is a research topic of growing interest for different disciplines. Based on a cross-sectional survey with 1,597 participants aged 12–94, this study investigated life satisfaction and momentary happiness, two important dimensions of SWB. We examined their relationship, shape, and correlates across individuals of different ages and interpreted the results in the light of a neurobiological model of motivation systems.MethodsStatistical analyses were performed using multiple linear regression. First, we examined how life satisfaction is associated with selected socio-demographic variables across four age groups. Second, we analyzed the association between life satisfaction and age, and lastly, we examined the extent to which happiness is a prerequisite for life satisfaction in each age group.ResultsOur analyses show that life satisfaction correlates negatively with poor health and financial worries, and positively with partnership, grandchildren, and religiosity. However, the inverse relationship with poor health is stronger in younger than in older individuals, while the inverse association with financial worries is strongest in late midlife (50–69 years). We identified gender-specific differences concerning the relationship between life satisfaction and age, with males displaying a U-shape trend with its lowest point between the ages of 30 and 49, whereas females’ life satisfaction increases stepwise with age. Although momentary happiness correlates strongly with life satisfaction, this relationship decreases with age.ConclusionThe results suggest that individuals adjust or even grow beyond their perceptions of a “good life” over time. Neurobiological processes of adaptation and personal growth could play an important role in these developments.

The duration of daily activities has no impact on measures of overall wellbeing

It is widely assumed that the longer we spend in happier activities the happier we will be. In an intensive study of momentary happiness, we show that, in fact, longer time spent in happier activities does not lead to higher levels of reported happiness overall. This finding is replicated with different samples (student and diverse, multi-national panel), measures and methods of analysis. We explore different explanations for this seemingly paradoxical finding, providing fresh insight into the factors that do and do not affect the relationship between how happy we report feeling as a function of how long it lasts. This work calls into question the assumption that spending more time doing what we like will show up in making us happier, presenting a fundamental challenge to the validity of current tools used to measure happiness.

The Predictive Dynamics of Happiness and Well-Being

We offer an account of mental health and well-being using the predictive processing framework (PPF). According to this framework, the difference between mental health and psychopathology can be located in the goodness of the predictive model as a regulator of action. What is crucial for avoiding the rigid patterns of thinking, feeling and acting associated with psychopathology is the regulation of action based on the valence of affective states. In PPF, valence is modelled as error dynamics—the change in prediction errors over time . Our aim in this paper is to show how error dynamics can account for both momentary happiness and longer term well-being. What will emerge is a new neurocomputational framework for making sense of human flourishing.

"Just not knowing" can make life sweeter (and saltier): Reward uncertainty alters the sensory experience and consumption of palatable food and drinks.

Reward uncertainty can prompt exploration and learning, strengthening approach and consummatory behaviors. For humans, these phenomena are exploited in marketing promotions and gambling products, sometimes spurring hedonic consumption. Here, in four experiments, we sought to identify whether reward uncertainty-as a state of "not knowing" that exists between an action and a positively valanced outcome-enhances the in-the-moment consumption and experience of other palatable food and drink rewards. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that reward uncertainty can increase consumption of commercial alcoholic drinks and energy-dense savory snacks. In Experiment 2, we show that reward uncertainty is unlikely to promote consumption through gross increases in impulsivity (expressed as higher discounting rates) or risk tolerance (expressed as lower probability discounting rates). In Experiment 3, we find that reward uncertainty intensifies the taste of, and hedonic responses to, sucrose solutions in a concentration-dependent manner among individuals with heightened preferences for sweet tastes. Finally, in Experiment 4, we replicate and extend these findings by showing that reward uncertainty intensifies the taste of palatable foods and drinks in ways that are independent of individuals' discounting rates, motor control, reflection impulsivity, and momentary happiness but are strongly moderated by recent depressive symptoms. These data suggest a working hypothesis that (incidental) reward uncertainty, as a state of not knowing, operates as a mood-dependent "taste intensifier" of palatable food and drink rewards, possibly sustaining reward seeking and consumption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The momentary benefits of positive events for individuals with elevated social anxiety.

Understanding how individuals with varying levels of social anxiety respond to daily positive events is important. Psychological processes that increase positive emotions are being widely used as strategies to not only enhance well-being but also reduce the symptoms and impairment tied to negative emotional dispositions and conditions, including excessive social anxiety. At present, it is unclear whether and how levels of social anxiety impact the psychological benefits derived from momentary positive events. We used ecological momentary assessment to examine the impact of trait social anxiety on momentary changes in emotions, sense of belonging, and social approach versus avoidance motivation following positive events in daily life. Over the course of a week, people with elevated social anxiety experienced greater momentary anxiety and social avoidance motivation and lower momentary happiness and sense of belonging on average. Despite these impairments, individuals with elevated social anxiety experienced greater psychological benefits-in the form of reduced anxiety and motivation to avoid social situations, and an increased sense of belonging-following positive events during the past hour that were rated as particularly intense. This pattern of findings was not specific to social anxiety, with evidence of similar effects for other forms of internalizing psychopathology (general anxiety and depression). These observations detail circumstances in which individuals with social anxiety, and other emotional disturbances, can thrive-creating potentially important targets for intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Testing Buddha: Is Acute Desire Associated with Lower Momentary Happiness?

A central Buddhist claim is that having desires causes suffering. While this tenet draws from the belief that an acute desire state is more momentarily aversive than a no-desire state, the efficacy of this belief has yet to be comprehensively examined. To empirically investigate this claim, we furnished data from two experience sampling studies across USA/Canadian (N = 101; 3224 observations) and Japanese cultures (N = 237; 8497 observations). We compared states of acute desire with states of no desire regarding momentary happiness. We then tested, in an additional step, whether acute desires at greater conflict with personal goals were associated with even lower levels of momentary happiness. Findings were consistent across studies, with participants experiencing greater momentary happiness when not experiencing a desire compared to experiencing acute desire. Also, the greater the desire conflicted with important goals the lower the momentary happiness. The present findings support a key basis of the Buddhist belief that having desires causes suffering, showing acute desire states on average to be more aversive than no desire states.

The role of extraordinary sensory experiences in shaping destination brand love: an empirical study

ABSTRACT This study investigates the contribution of extraordinary positive sensory experiences to the development of destination brand love utilizing two studies. Study 1, based on online reviews, finds that destination brand love stems from extraordinary sensory experiences. A survey collecting longitudinal data in Study 2 further examines that common sensory experiences do not influence destination brand love significantly and reveals that momentary happiness and retrospective happiness are serial mediators between the extraordinary sensory experiences and destination brand love. Thus, these findings suggest that providing extraordinary positive sensory experiences is an effective way to facilitate destination brand love.

The impact of immediate urban environments on people’s momentary happiness

The research interest of urban researchers and geographers in the relationship between urban environments and happiness has been increasing. Previous studies have mostly focused on people’s long-term overall wellbeing. However, there is limited evidence that momentary happiness is associated with immediate urban environments. This study provides new evidence on this issue. 144 participants living in Guangzhou, China, were asked to repeatedly self-report their momentary happiness through ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and the day reconstruction method (DRM). The microenvironment variables were captured by portable sensors, while the built environment variables were captured by associating the GPS response locations with objective spatial data. The results indicate that momentary happiness is influenced by immediate microenvironment variables and built environment characteristics including temperature, noise, PM2.5, population, POI density, POI types and street intersections. On the other hand, the use of different sizes of contextual units affects the results. The built environment in 100 m buffers and the microenvironment has higher explanatory power for momentary happiness recorded by EMA than the built environment in 500 m buffers. Similarly, the temporality of the contextual influences also affects the results. Urban environment features have higher explanatory power for real-time momentary happiness recorded by EMA than recalled momentary happiness recorded by DRM. These results also strongly corroborate the results of recent studies on the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP) and partly explain the inconsistency in the results of past research.

The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Mental Health and Subjective Well-Being of Workers: An Event Study Based on High-Frequency Panel Data

Using individual monthly panel data from December 2018 to December 2020, we estimate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and two lockdowns on the mental health and subjective well-being of German workers. Employing an event-study design using individual-specific fixed effects, we find that the first and the second wave of the pandemic reduced workers' mental health substantially. Momentary happiness and life satisfaction also decline in response to Covid-19, but to a smaller extent. We observe adapation in our study outcomes between waves of the pandemic. This applies to a lesser extent to indicators of well-being in certain areas of life, such as satisfaction with the job and with leisure, which are negatively affected, too. Women do not seem to suffer greater well-being losses than men. However, workers in the German short-time work scheme are particularly negatively affected. Our results imply that increased anxiety about the future and restricted personal freedoms are among the drivers of the well-being impact of the pandemic.

Time use and happiness: Evidence across three decades

We use diary data from representative samples of Americans to examine historical trends in happiness at both the individual activity-level and aggregate-level. At the activity-level, domestic work and social care produce more happiness today compared to 1985. Watching TV produces less happiness than it used to. At the aggregate level, we combine information on happiness and time allocation to construct a measure of ‘time-weighted happiness’. Over the last 35 years, women’s time-weighted happiness has improved significantly relative to men’s. This observation is in stark contrast to previous work which showed a decline in women’s relative wellbeing. To explain this, we compare the determinants of life satisfaction – a more global measure on which most previous work is built – with our measure of time-weighted happiness. Time-weighted happiness and life satisfaction turn out to only be weakly correlated. Moreover, although we obtain strong associations of income and employment status with life satisfaction, no such associations can be observed for time-weighted happiness. Thus, the determinants and historical patterns of momentary happiness and more global measures fail to coincide. This highlights the importance of distinguishing and striking a balance between these wellbeing measures when analysing and designing policy.

Life satisfaction and happiness in patients shielding from the COVID-19 global pandemic: A randomised controlled study of the 'mood as information' theory.

To extrapolate the 'mood as information' theory to the unique and ecologically relevant setting of the COVID-19 pandemic; the specific aim was to inform health care providers of the impact of bringing the pandemic to salience during life satisfaction evaluations, assessing whether this 'prime' results in increased or decreased reports of satisfaction which are derived unconsciously. Prospective Randomised Interventional Study. Renal Transplant Department in a tertiary centre in the United Kingdom. 200 Renal transplant patients aged between 20 and 88 years. Telephone interviews were undertaken between 1st May, 2020 and 29th May, 2020, at the height of 'shielding' from COVID-19. Participants were randomised into 2 groups, with 1 group receiving a simple 'priming question' regarding the COVID pandemic and the other group having no prior contact. Individuals were then asked to rate their own overall lifetime happiness; desire to change; overall life satisfaction and momentary happiness on a scale of 1 to 10 for each measure. Independent sample t-tests were used to compare results between the two groups, with a type 1 error rate below 5% considered statistically significant. Participants' overall happiness with their life as a whole revealed that individuals who were primed with a question about COVID-19 reported increased overall happiness with their life compared to individuals who had not been primed (+0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.42 to 1.35, p = 0.0002). In addition, participants in the primed group reported less desire to change their life when compared to the non-primed group (-1.35, 95% confidence interval -2.06 to -0.65, p = 0.0002). Participants who were primed with the COVID-19 question also reported a higher overall satisfaction with their life than individuals who had not been primed (+1.01, 95% confidence interval 0.50 to 1.52, p = 0.0001). Finally, the participants who received the priming question demonstrated increased reported momentary happiness (+0.64, 95% confidence interval 0.03 to 1.24, p = 0.04). The results demonstrated that bringing salience to the COVID-19 pandemic with a simple question leads to positive changes in both momentary happiness and other components of global life satisfaction, thereby extrapolating evidence for the application of the mood-as-information theory to more extreme life circumstances. Given the importance of patient-reported evaluations, these findings have implications for how, when and where accurate and reproducible measurements of life satisfaction should be obtained.

Momentary subjective well-being depends on learning and not reward.

Subjective well-being or happiness is often associated with wealth. Recent studies suggest that momentary happiness is associated with reward prediction error, the difference between experienced and predicted reward, a key component of adaptive behaviour. We tested subjects in a reinforcement learning task in which reward size and probability were uncorrelated, allowing us to dissociate between the contributions of reward and learning to happiness. Using computational modelling, we found convergent evidence across stable and volatile learning tasks that happiness, like behaviour, is sensitive to learning-relevant variables (i.e. probability prediction error). Unlike behaviour, happiness is not sensitive to learning-irrelevant variables (i.e. reward prediction error). Increasing volatility reduces how many past trials influence behaviour but not happiness. Finally, depressive symptoms reduce happiness more in volatile than stable environments. Our results suggest that how we learn about our world may be more important for how we feel than the rewards we actually receive.

In which natural environments are people happiest? Large-scale experience sampling in the Netherlands

Previous studies have shown that people feel happier in more natural environments than in predominantly built-up environments; however, it is less clear whether the type of natural environment matters. In a large-scale experience sampling study in the Netherlands, we explored whether happiness differs by the type of natural environment experienced. We also investigated to what extent scenic beauty, peacefulness or fascinatingness are associated with momentary happiness. Smartphone apps were developed for both iOS and Android smartphones, and made freely available in both app stores. The app, named HappyHier, sent requests to fill in a short questionnaire, starting with how happy the participant feels. The requests were programmed to oversample experiences in natural environments. Location data were provided by the GPS of the smartphone, and the type of environment was determined based on a land-use map incorporated in the app. HappyHier was launched with a media campaign starting on 1st May 2016. In the following few months, over 4000 people participated, generating over 100,000 experience samples. Multi-level analyses were conducted, controlling for, among other things, being inside or outside, type of activity, type of company and weather conditions. The participants generally felt happier in natural environments, especially at the coast and in areas with low-lying natural vegetation, such as heathlands. Whether the environment is thought to be peaceful and fascinating appears to be more important for happiness than its scenic beauty. The representativeness of the data gathered by this relatively new method was explored from several angles: people, time and location.