Onno C. Hamburger, 30 November 2005
Australia Sydney

Sustainable Happiness The website

Welcome at www.sustainablehappiness.com!

This is all the information about sustainable happiness on one (long) page. If you prefer it in different sections please go to the right column of this webpage with the heading "latest messages". If you click on "all messages" you will get an overview of all sections available on this website. Enjoy!

The reasons behind www.sustainablehappiness.com!

The last 50 years the real income in the western world has tripled but our level of happiness has stayed the same or went down. In many western countries unhappiness is growing. This is shown statistically by an increase in the use of medicine against depression, growing suicide rates, more alcoholism, etc.

Is this really what we want? Become richer but not happier? Well for sure this is not what I want.

Classic psychology had until recently no interest in happiness. Although self help gurus in this area are abundant it is never clear if their techniques accomplish any effect at all.

Luckily in the last 10 years a new movement has been growing within psychology called positive psychology. This fascinating new direction within psychology uses science to find ways to improve the well being and happiness of people.

This website shows you what I have learned so far about happiness and how to use evidenced based techniques to influence your own happiness.

I would be really pleased if you let me know what you think of this website and give me feedback. If you have new information on the subject of happiness, let me know. Please send your email to nno@schoolvoorgeluk.nl" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">onno@schoolvoorgeluk.nl

Enjoy!

Onno Hamburger
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

What is Happiness?

Intuitively we all have a sense of what happiness means. But before we start on this journey of "the search for happiness" it will be good to define it a little more precisely.

In general we can look at happiness from three levels.

The first level of happiness is the most direct one. For example when someone tells you, just after surfing a wave, that he feels really happy this describes the feeling he is having right at that moment. You can call this level one happiness.

When you ask someone whether he or she is happy in his life this person will make a kind of balance of all positive and negative feelings. You can call this level two happiness. It is more an evaluation of happiness over time.

Level three happiness is about a state that is not associated with emotions or bodily pleasures. It is all about the so called “good life” or Eudaimonia. According to Aristotle, one of the first people who researched happiness, it is a state that cannot be chemically induced or obtained by any shortcuts but just by doing activities with a noble purpose.

On this website we will focus mainly on how you can increase level II happiness. Most research is done on this level so we can use the increasing amount of scientific work done in this area. On this website we will also take a look at how to increase level I happiness. Level III happiness will not be the focus of this study.

Can you measure happiness?

Happiness seems to be such a fuzzy concept. Can we really take it seriously or is it a concept that can't be scientifically studied?

If you want to do use a concept in the social sciences it should be at least be reliable (it should not change to much over time) and valide. This means that it should measure what it suppose to measure and not something else like the influence of the weather on people e.g.

Luckily research shows that happiness can be measured. Although external influences like the weather or the sex of the interviewer does influence the score, people give a pretty stable response on their happiness over time. Self reported happiness scores also correlate heavily with other methods to measure happiness like asking other people how happy they think a person is, measuring the amounts of smiles of people or neutral observer assessments. (Nettle, 2005, 66). Finally there is a high correlation between high scores on (self-reported) happiness on the one hand and good physical and mental health and low scores on e.g. suicide on the other hand (Nettle, 2005, 67).

Why should you be happy?

Most people would agree that being happy just feels nice. There are however other positive characteristics that makes happiness attractive. In general happy people have better health habits, lower blood pressure and a stronger immune system than less happy people. Happy people tend to have lower levels of stress causing cortisol and when they are artificially exposed to the flu virus, they are less likely to contract the disease. They are also more likely to recover from major surgery. (Layard, 2005, 23-24). Happy people endure pain better and take more health and safety precautions when threatened. Happy people also are remarkably more satisfied with their jobs than less happy people. More happiness also causes more productivity and a higher income, better evaluations at work and a higher pay. People in a happy mood select higher goals, perform better and are better at remembering and persist longer on a variety of laboratory tasks. Over time happy people (controlling for smoking, food, income, drinking and disease) are half as likely to die or become disabled. Happy people also have a higher tendency for altruism. In laboratory tests it shows that adults who are made happy display more empathy and are willing to donate more money to others in need (Seligman, 2002, 36-45).

Optimism which is highly correlated with happiness shows other positive consequences. Optimists have a 19 percent longer lifespan. They test better on coping with misfortune. In a large group of elderly people (around 75 years) optimists for 95 percent were still able to chop wood, carry heavy furniture, etc. For pessimists this was only 53 percent. Pessimist have a eights times more likely to become depressed when bad events happen, they do worse at school, sports, and most jobs than their talents predict. (Seligman, 2002, 24).

What determines your happiness?

How happy you are is mainly shaped by who you are. Not by the amount of money you earn, the beauty of your partner, the work you have, the friends you have, etc.

So if you can change yourself, you can change your happiness? Yes, theoretically you can. The problem is that most of what you are is created by your personality structure and personality is hard to change.

One of the best theories of personality we have at this moment is the Big 5 (NEO PR). It states that personality of people around the planet consists of five main personality traits: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeability and consciousness (see for more on this test a separate section on The Big Five Test).

Research shows that especially neuroticism and extroversion are very important predictors for happiness. There predictive power is much higher than other factors like being married or being rich.

In this table you can see the different factors influencing your happiness (from very important factors to less important) (Nettle, 2005, 111).:

1. Neuroticism 17%
2. Extroversion 9%
3. Other personality factors like agreeability and consciousness 11%
4. Marital status 6%
5. Social class 4%
6. Income 3%
7. Age 1%
8. Sex 1%



So we know that personality is of major importance. The questions than is: can we influence it or do we just have to accept our personality (and with this our happiness score) with we were born with?

Genes and happiness

We know that roughly 50 percent of every personality trait turns out to be attributable to genetic inheritance (Seligman, 2002, 47). As we have seen earlier personality has a very important influence on your happiness. So this would mean that happiness is also largely genetically determined. And indeed it is. Research shows that genetics play a vital role in your happiness.

Ask yourself how happy you biological parents are (or were) and you have a pretty clear picture of your own happiness range. Think about how high you parents score on a scale of 1 to 10, ad their scores, divide it by two and roughly you have you own starting point of sustainable happiness.

For some people this means that they have a biological advance and will already score pretty high on happiness. Others will start of at a much lower level. For this last category the bad news is that they start of at a much lower level than others. The good news is that scientific research in the last ten years shows that your levels of happiness can be changed.

You can transform your happiness in the short term but also in the long term. So how does this work? What is the influence of your genes and what can you do yourself to have a long term impact on your happiness? It is time for a formula. A formula of happiness to help us see where we have room to manoeuvre and where there is none.

A formula of happiness

Take a look at the following formula of happiness. In this formula happiness consists of four separate factors:

H = S + T + D + C

H = enduring level of Happiness consists of
S = is your set range of happiness
T = the way we think
A = activities we do
C = circumstances of our life

H stands for our enduring level of happiness and it is influenced by four factors. (1) The first one is the set range. This is our genetic starting point we saw earlier. Some of you are born with a high starting point others start much lower. You are born with it and there is not a lot you can do about it apart from just accepting it.

The next factor (2) is all about the way you think and feel. Although we not always aware of it this is for a significant part under our voluntary control. It is also in this area where you can make the biggest difference.

The third factor (3) is about the things you do (activities) during the day. We will see later on how this relates to our happiness.

The fourth and last part of the definition (4) is about the circumstances you live in. Sometimes they can be changed sometimes it is something you have to live with (like your sex or whether you live in a democracy or not). It will also give you insight into which goals in life are worth pursuing when you are interested in increasing your happiness.

So what can you do to change your happiness?

1) Thinking differently

Become more optimistic
Happiness and an optimistic way of thinking go hand in hand. Train yourself to recognize beliefs and attitudes and beliefs that attribute to happiness. Try to be an optimist, look on the bright side. Seligman (2002, 93) designed a special method to train yourself to become more optimistic. The core of this technique is to start disputing your own pessimistic thoughts. The first step is to recognizing them as such. The next step is to treat them as if they were uttered by and external person, a rival whose mission it is to make your life miserable. At the end of this website you will find a special section devoted to this method. Research shows that practicing this daily has a long term positive effect on your happiness.

Program yourself positively
Rehearse positive statements (such as I feel good about myself, etc.) every morning for about ten minutes. Doing this exercise daily has a long term effect. Research shows that six weeks after the experiment the happiness scores are still better than the control group not using this exercise (Mccready, 2001, 214-215). See for a sample of positive statements (also called the Velten technique) at the end of this website..

Detach yourself from your own negativity
Use a dairy to write daily about your positive and negative experiences. Writing about your negative thoughts will help you to become more detached of them. Research shows that using a dairy will also enhance your immune system.

Exercise your gratitude
Keep a daily dairy and write down about things you feel grateful for. Research shows that it will increase your joy, happiness and life satisfaction. (Seligman 2002, 74-75).

Exercise your forgiveness
After bad things happening to us anger, sadness or fearfulness sometimes stays much longer that necessary. This is a good moment to exercise your forgiveness using the REACH method. This technique describes a five step method. The R stands for recall the hurt, in as objective a way as you can, E stands for empathize. Try to understand from the perpetrator’s point of view why this person did hurt you. A stands for altruistic gift of forgiveness. C stands for commit yourself publicly and H stands for hold onto forgiveness. This is not an easy or quick solution. See for more in-depth discussion of this method at the end of this website. Stanford researchers did a study to see the result of the forgiveness exercise using RESEACH. The effect was less anger, less stress, more optimism, better reported health and more forgiveness. Seligman (2002, p. 79).

Increase your feelings of Autonomy
In general people who earn more money or are in a higher social class are happier.
Why is that? Research shows this is not because of their extra spending power. Central is the feelings of autonomy they have. Rich people in a high social class but low on autonomy still score much lower on happiness than relatively poor people in the lowest social class but who score high on feelings of autonomy. Research shows that compared to your wealth your feelings of autonomy are 20 times more important for your happiness. (Nettle, 2005, 74).

So how do you enlarge your feelings of autonomy?

(A) Stop blaming others for your unhappiness. It is often tempting to blame others or the situation for your unhappiness. On the short term it sometimes feels better to do so. However, in the long run you are only de-empowering yourself. Every time you blame someone else or the situation you scratch something of the trust in yourself and move away from your feeling of autonomy.

(B) Stop blaming yourself! If it is not the world or someone else it should be you, right? Don’t fall in that trap. Stop blaming in general. This sounds easy but this is a real hard one. Try to accept the situation the way it is. Try to look at it from an objective way. That is the start. After that try to find out what can be done right now. You can do this by thinking differently about the situation or to take action to change things.

Take a break from this world
Our world has become increasingly complex. The amount of information we are daily confronted with has grown incredible over the years. Our brain gets constantly overloaded by visual, auditory and other stimuli. This causes stress and makes you anxious. Give your brain a break. Research shows that meditation is one of the most effective ways to reduce your stress. It will also increase your happiness and improves your immune system. A study done by the psychologist Jon Kabat-Zinn shows this clearly. Four months after a course in mindfulness meditation the employees who followed the course (compared to those who didn’t) were strikingly happier and had a much stronger immune system. (Layard, 2005, 187).

Increase your positive emotions
Negative emotions have a stronger impact, last longer and have a tendency to become more generalized than positive emotions. To offset this evolutionary twist we are all born with we should pay more attention to your positive experiences by doing the following exercises. (Seligman, 2002, 10:

1) Write down which activities you really enjoy and do them more often. Sounds simple doesn't it? You can also take a more scientific approach and log during a few weeks how you feel. After a few weeks you can analyse which activities are associated with better moods. Often this will be seeing friends, do sports, go to cultural activities and visit new places.
2) Share your positive experiences with others (strongest effect)
3) Try to find optimal spacing to keep habituation of your pleasures at bay.
4) Congratulate yourself regularly. Be proud of what you accomplish.
5) Sharp your perceptions of positive experiences by focusing on details
6) Absorb your self in positive experiences. Don’t remind yourself of other things you should be doing, wonder what come next, or in what ways it could be improved.
7) Create memories of positive experiences by taking pictures, etc



2) Act differently

Become more active
Thousands of years ago we used to run around a lot to get our food. In that way we got plenty of exercise chasing our prey and looking for vegetables and herbs. We no longer exercise automatically. Most of us travel by car or bus, buy our food in shops and sit on a chair all day.
But our brains and bodies are not yet accustomed to this new way of life. That why it is important to exercise daily to keep your body and mid in shape.
Research shows that only a ten minutes brisk walk produces positive moods that last over two hours. Sport and exercise have been found to have a strong reduction in depression, and to a lesser extent anxiety. Forms of leisure that have a lasting effect on happiness includes: commitment to exercise or sports, belonging to social clubs, doing voluntary work, and attending church services. (Mccready, 2001, 213).

Become more cooperative and trustworthy
The last 100 years we have became increasingly individualistic. But humans are social beings. Genetically we are programmed to live and enjoy being with other persons. Having good friends and being able to trust each other at home and in the workplace makes a clear difference to our happiness. Be a good friend, partner and be trustful yourself is a first step. Find an environment where you can find good friends and where trust among people is high. (Layard, 2005, 69).

Focus more on pleasant activities
One of the most simple (and fun) things to do is to increase your happiness by pleasant activity training. Determine for yourself which activities you enjoy during the day and do them more often. You can also take the more scientific approach and log daily what you do all day and separately log your mood during the day. After few weeks you can see what is associated with better moods. This method is sometimes used for relieving depression, but research shows that when it is applied to non-depressed people for some weeks it improves their ratings of happiness. (Nettle, 2005, 151).

Be kind to others instead of only searching for pleasure
Happiness is closely related to positive feelings. So it is tempted to think that going after pleasures will enhance your overall happiness. Research shows that the positive afterglow of a pleasurable activity is gone soon. Experiments demonstrate that the afterglow of philanthropic acts that were spontaneous and called upon personal strengths last all day. So although acts of kindness are often not accompanied by positive emotion like joy but rather total engagement and loss of self-consciousness the positive afterglow will be much stronger (Seligman, 2002, 9).

Throw out the TV
Often we are so focused on what we want that we forget to go and do what we enjoy. Do you recognize this? Part of this is created by our evolutionary heritage. We are not programmed to become happy. We are programmed to survive. We do this by comparing ourselves to other people and try to keep up with the others (The Joneses). Try to reverse this by focusing on the good life in stead of materialism. Start by throwing out the television (or use it very selectively). Television is very good at making you less happy with who you are or what you have. Advertisers use this very cleverly to push their products. In general try to focus on acquiring non-positional goods versus positional goods. E.g. focus on getting a better relationship with your partner or more freedom at work versus focusing on betting a bigger car or a promotion. (Layard, 2005, 89).

Focus on your meaning and purpose in life
Research shows that people who achieve a sense of meaning in their lives are happier than those who life from one pleasure to the other. (Layard, 2005, 22).
For our forefathers it used to be very clear what their purpose in life was; survive! As we have moved away from our daily fight for survival our purpose and meaning in life became less clear. Work used to be meaningful by it self because it was always directed and closely connected to the survival of the group or the individual. No longer is this the case. What is the relationship between you sitting behind your desk and the survival of the group or yourself? When work becomes meaningless, life becomes meaningless.

To bring more meaning and purpose in your work and life goals have a very important role to play. Especially if they are:

1] Freely chosen
2] Realistic and likely to be achieved
3] Consistent with one another
4] People can spend a lot of time in goal-related activities. (Mccready, 2001).

If our goals are too low, we get bored. If they are too high, we get frustrated. The secret is to have goals that are stretching enough, but not too stretching. Unattainable goals are a well known cause for depression. And so is boredom. (Layard, 2005, 73).

Apart form selecting the right goals in your life try to find out what your strengths and qualities are and choose change your work and leisure time in such a way that you can use your personal strengths and qualities more.

3) Conditions and happiness

Research shows that the conditions you live in do have some influence on your happiness although it is the weakest of the three factors. Perhaps you think that winning the lottery, getting a promotion, having children, or buying a brand new sports car will have a big influence on your happiness. Research shows in doesn’t. Although it might give you a positive boost for a few weeks, after three months your level of happiness will be back where it was before. Humans have a tremendous capacity to adapt themselves to new circumstances. This goes for negative and unfortunately also for positive circumstances. Studies show the following circumstances do not have great influence on our happiness. (Seligman, 2002, 49):

• Make more money. Money has no effect once you are comfortable enough to effort the basics.
• Major life events such as getting fired or getting promoted. In less than three months major events lose their impact on happiness levels.
• Objective physical health, perhaps the most valuable of all resources, is barely correlated with happiness.
• Get as much education as possible.
• Change your race or move to a sunnier climate.
• Good and bad fortune only has a slight influence on happiness.
• Wealth has a surprisingly low correlation with happiness. Rich people are on average only slightly happier than poor people.
• Physical attractiveness does not have much effect at all on happiness.

There are however limits to our capacity for adaptation. Studies show that some extremely negative circumstances do have a lasting negative effect on your happiness.

• Extreme poor people report much lower levels of happiness.
• People who experienced a death of a child or spouse in a car crash.
• Direct family taking care of Alzheimer patients.

On the other hand some circumstances do have a long lasting positive effect on your happiness. Interestingly enough they are not the one that cost you a lot of money.

• Get married (robust effect, but only if you stay married).
• Avoid negative events and negative emotions (moderate effect).
• Acquire a rich social network (robust effect).
• Live in a wealthy democracy not in an impoverished dictatorship (strong effect).
• Get a religion (a moderate effect).


Why sustainable happiness so hard to reach?

So we have a formula of happiness. We have a pretty good idea of what makes us happy and what is not making us happy. Sounds easy not? Just go and do it I would say. But in the real world it often seems so much more difficult (is my experience). Why is it often so difficult to become happier? That’s got everything to do with our innate human tendency to be somewhat pessimistic and unhappy. This again follows from our genetic wiring. Let’s take a closer look how this works. As we saw earlier our genetic makeup has a very important influence on our levels of happiness. We depend on the way our brains are wired. Our brains have evolved through millions of years until the very complex organ it is at this moment. The last hundreds of years, only a few mini seconds on the evolutionary clock, our surroundings and the way we live has changed so dramatically and so fast that our brains simply didn’t have the (evolutionary) time to adjust. We are symbolically speaking driving around in a Stone Age Flintstone car on an ultra modern super highway. To create more happiness in our life it is vital to be aware and adjust for the Stone Age brain we all still have inside us.

During the evolution of our brain happiness was never the main goal. Evolution is about survival, positive feelings are just means to continue our existence. Although people in general are lured by becoming happier (that is also biologically “baked” into our genes) we are often naive in really getting there. Using our ancient survival mode we keep focusing on getting more money, a bigger car, a better or more prestige job, etc. only feeling cheated or burned out when in the end it doesn’t bring us any closer to happiness.

Stone Age man in a modern world
For millions of years humans and his forefathers lived in an extremely dangerous and a potentially lethal world. Fear of death was constantly around us. Predators were roaming around trying to kill you. If you couldn’t find food, starvation was near. People lived together in small groups depending on each other for survival. Social isolation meant certain death. Bad weather and sickness could easily be fatal.

I this evolutionary context is becomes very clear why negative emotions have such a much a stronger impact on us than positive emotions do. Image yourself being a Stone Age person and being chassed by a Stone Age predator like a sabre-toothed tiger. Surely your fear of this animal should (from an evolutionary perspective) override all other systems. Even if this means exhausting yourself or even hurting yourself badly. On the other hand if you are enjoying yourself while playing a Stone Age game with others, an emergency should immediately stop the joy and change your emotion into anger (attack), fear (run away) or sadness (go into hiding). So fear, anger and sadness often stay longer and have a tendency to generalize to other areas than the object, person or situation causing this negative emotion. Positive emotions like joy, pleasure and desire often are shorter taken advantage of.

Of course we know consciously that the world has drastically changed over the last hundred of years. Especially in the western world the changes have been enormous. Modern western humans do not have to be fear deadly predators anymore. Death by starvation is as good as gone. People can easily move from social group to social group without being afraid of demise by isolation. Out of work no longer means loss of life. Our world has changed drastically but our brains have not. Negative emotions still override the positive emotions. Our brain and body still react as if the world hasn’t changed and all those deadly threats are still out there. We can see this in the stress people experience in their daily life and the unhappiness that is out there. So what can we do? How can we update our brain to bring it back in sink with the world we are living in now?

Luckily science can give us a hand here. Over the last 10 years positively psychology has created tools to offset our Stone Age brain programming. You can’t change your hardware but we can change the software. Research shows that using these methods as described earlier can drastically change your life. Because the old hardware is still there only regular practice of the proposed techniques will be effective. It is similar to our habit of brushing our teeth. Stone Age humans didn’t need to brush their teeth because of a completely different diet. We need to brush our teeth daily to keep carries at bay. Similarly you will need to use the methods described before regularly to keep your brain updated. A higher enduring level of happiness and less stress will be the fruits you can pick daily. But it will need some brain brushing a few times a day. It is yours to choose.


Happiness; where do you start?

Where to start when you want to influence your own level of happiness? This depends mainly on who you are! Personality goes a long way also in this case. So depending on your specific personality you can fine-tune and choose between the different happiness tools available to you. You can ask expert advice by a psychologist specialised in the positive psychology or just start on your own journey of happiness. Perhaps you already have an idea which of the exercises described earlier will benefit you most. Go and do them regularly. Make them part of your daily routine. Evaluate after a few months what the effects are. Tell other people what you are doing, make them part of your journey towards more happiness in your life. Lots of people will be enthusiastic to hear what you have to tell them. They might even join you on your journey! My experience is that working with a group of likewise people can be very effective. Create a group of people who have similar desires. Meet regularly and discuss progress. Share homework assignments for the next meeting. It can be both good fun and very constructive.

The advantage of Positive Psychology above normal self help books and gurus

The good thing about using scientific methods to improve your happiness is that you know they will be effective. Lots of books on happiness are written with the best intentions but you never know if they are really effective. Probably you have heard about the placebo effect. Doctors use this when they give patients a fake pill with no active substance in it. Often it works very well. Just the suggestion and the expert image of the doctor in his white uniform will cure many a patient. The placebo effect is a wonderful phenomenon but when you are serious about doing something that will change your life you better look for something more worthy.

The scientific method prescribes the use of control groups to be sure the actual effect of the exercise works better than just a placebo effect. In that way you know that the things you are putting so much energy in is really worth it.



Happiness and personality

Happiness and selfishness


Still unhappy?

Perhaps the best medicine against unhappiness is to realize yourself that you and will not be happy all the time. It is just not the way we are biologically and evolutionary programmed.

However if you are unhappy for a long period of time you can get professional help!

A combination of therapy (cognitive behavioural therapy appears to be really effective) and medicine (e.g. Prozac or other) will help you to get out of the vicious circle sometimes you can get stuck in.

Resources used

Books
Layard, Richard (2005). Happiness: Lessons from a new science.

Nettle, Daniel (2005). Happiness: The science behind your smile.

Seligman, Martin (2002). Authentic Happiness.

Mccready, Stuart (ed.) (2001). The discovery of happiness.

Sharp, Timothy (2005). The Happiness Handbook: Strategies for a happy life.
, 2002.
Websites

www.authentichappiness.com
The website of Martin Seligman

www.thehappinessinstitute.com
The website of Timothy Sharp

www.sustainablehappiness.com




From pessimism to optimism: The ABCDE method

The key to disputing your own pessimistic thoughts is first recognize them and then treat the as if they were uttered by an external person, a rival whose mission it is to make your life miserable (Seligman, 2002, 95).

Use ABCDE method consists of 5 steps.

Adversity

Beliefs

Consequence of the belief

Disputation by using Evidence, Alternatives, Implications and usefulness

Energization

The Big Five Personality Test

At this moment more and more psychologists within the psychological community agree that the best theory of measuring personality is the Big 5 (NEO-PR). (See e.g. http://www.centacs.com/quickstart.htm#Backgr ound).

This well researched and cross cultural tested theory states that there are 5 main factors making up your personality: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

You can test how you score on these factors on different websites on the internet e.g.: http://users.wmin.ac.uk/~buchant/wwwffi/.

Although these online tests are simplification of the official (and more extensive) test they will still give you an idea of how you score on each factor.

Research shows that higher scores on neuroticism, lower scores on extraversion, lower scores on agreeableness and lower scores on conscientiousness are all correlated with lower scores on happiness.

More on neuroticism and happiness
Neuroticism scores are one of the strongest predictors of self reported happiness. People scoring in the lowest quarter of neuroticism score around 4-5 on happiness score (on a 5 point scale). People who score in the top quarter of neuroticism score on average just above midpoint. (Nettle, 2005, 99).
In some more sophisticated studies they have separated happiness out into two sub-components: negative happiness and positive happiness. These ratings are pretty independent. Neuroticism seems to be a good predictor of negative happiness rating, but not of a positive rating. This means that people who score high on neuroticism can have plenty of joy between lots of fear and worry. (Nettle, 2005, 101).

More on extroversion and happiness
People scoring high on the extroversion dimension (extroverts) tend to be happier. Extroverts seem to have more positive emotion, but can have just as much negative emotion as others. Extroverts seem to be doing more things that make them happy. But their restlessness can make family life unstable, increased risk of accidents and hospitalizations. (Nettle, 2005, 103-104).

More on Agreeableness, consciousness and happiness
As we saw earlier people who score higher on agreeableness and conscientiousness also score higher on happiness. The high scores on happiness for people scoring higher on agreeableness can be explained that because they are nice to others they are being rewarded with reciprocal and felicific favours. Higher scores on happiness for people scoring higher on conscientiousness can be explained by their feelings of contentment because they get things done. (Nettle, 2005, 105).

A short definition of the dimensions involved:

Neuroticism / Emotional Stability:
- High on Neuroticism: Anxious, nervous, worrying, insecure, emotional, excessive carvings or urges, unrealistic ideas
- Low on Neuroticism: Relaxed, calm, secure, unemotional, even-tempered

Extraversion:
- High on Extraversion: Talkative, optimistic, sociable, friendly, high in need for stimulation.
- Low on Extraversion: Inartistic, quite, conventional, less assertive and aloof.

Openness to Experience / Intellect:
- High on Openness: Imaginative, curious, creative, adventurous, original and artistic.
- Low on Openness: Conventional, avoiding the unfamiliar, inartistic, lack of imagination.

Agreeableness:
- High on Agreeableness: Compassionate, good-natured, trusting, helpful
- Low on Agreeableness: Irritable, rude, uncooperative, unsympathetic.

Conscientiousness:
- High on Conscientiousness: Caution, disciplined, organized, neat, ambitious and goal-oriented, high on need for structure.
- Low on Conscientiousness: Unreliable, lazy, careless, negligent, low on need for achievement.