Let’s look at happiness from a different perspective. Most people see happiness as a response to good things happening; a natural assumption to make, considering that when good things happen, it makes us happy. But the evidence is piling up that happiness is also a cause of good things happening. And by ‘good thing’, I don’t mean that people smile at you more because you’re cheerful, or some other pleasant but ultimately feebly benefit. I mean a better career, more chance of finding love, better resistance to disease, and many other things.
How is happiness supposed to bring success?
Happiness is a signal that things are going well. You’re safe, you have access to the resources you need, and you’re making progress towards your goals - life is good. When things are good, it makes little sense to put walls around you and carefully guard everything you have (a hallmark of ‘negative’ emotions). It’s a better time to expand, take on new goals and challenges.
Imagine you’re really rich. A multi-millionnaire if you like. Someone comes to you with a proposal for an investment. It’ll cost you £10k, and it’s risky, but the return could be pretty good. Do you do it? Probably! £10k is small change to you, you wouldn’t even notice the loss. That’s an extreme example, but basically it’s a similar principle with happiness. It encourages a person to expand, because the mind thinks opportunity is knocking. Therefore happy people should get more success, because their emotional state essentially makes trying to succeed more appealing.
Now the researchers in this field aren’t saying that the direction of causality is only from happiness to success. This wouldn’t even logically follow. If you got some success, your resources and abundance would increase, which according to this theory is one of the reasons you get happy in the first place! So if it’s true that happiness contributes to success, it can only be true that success contributes to happiness as well. So you could get a kind of upward spiral (though other things, like adaptation, complicate the matter - see this post for more details).
This series of posts is based on a huge analysis done in 2005 (1), see the footnotes for more information on the researchers. They pulled together a huge amount of evidence together to see if this perspective on happiness holds up, and find that it does in three areas: work, love and relationships, and health. Here we’ll look at work, but first let’s make sure we know what we’re talking about.
What do they mean by ‘happiness’?
The definition of happiness in this study was slightly different to the one normally used in studies (life satisfaction or subjective well-being, see what is happiness?). The definition here, is the experience of frequent positive emotions, and less frequent (though not completely absent) negative emotions.
Why this different definition? Because in this framework, it’s positive emotion that leads us to pursue new goals and opportunities in the moment - rather than how pleased we are with life generally.
So technically they are saying that success comes from from a happy state, not a happy disposition, but, a person with a happy disposition will be in a happy state more of the time.
What is success?
What do you think success is? You might see success as lots of money and a family. A man in the Mursi tribe of Ethiopia might see success as living to the age of thirty and marrying a woman with a 10″ ceramic plate in her lip. So success means to do well relative to the goals valued by the society you’re in.
As this study was done in the US, the researchers decided to use work, love and health as the markers of success.
Work
If you’re reading this from anywhere outside of a Western culture, let me assure you, we love to work! Well, most people complain about work, but they still get up at 7am every morning to do it. There’s very little I’d choose to get out of bed for at 7 in the morning, and yet I’ve woken up at that time and earlier, thousands of times, to go to work.
“Most people complain about work; but still get up at 7am every morning to do it!”
Work gets a bad rep, but it’s pretty normal human behaviour; even back in hunter/gatherer times we had to, well, hunt and gather. We assume we did anyway, based on the tools and other goodies we’ve dug up. I’ve never actually met a 40,000 year old person so I don’t really know for sure, but it’s a safe bet. Work is just the name given to activities which allow people and groups to build their resources. In modern life, we get tokens called ‘money’ in exchange for work, which we can exchange for the work of other people. Work also (potentially) allows us to do something meaningful, and produce the things our society needs.
Plus, as we live in a meritocracy, the better we are at work, the more we produce for society, the more money tokens you get and the more good stuff we can exchange them for. That’s one of the reasons we want to do well at work. So are happy people more successful at work than their unhappy colleagues, generally speaking?
Happy Workers are Successful Workers
Here are some interesting findings about happiness in the workplace. Happier people:
* Are more likely to get job interviews
* Are more likely to receive positive evaluations once on the job
* Are more productive
* Handle managerial roles better
* Have less ‘job burnout’
* Tend to be more satisfied with their jobs
* Earn more money
It seems clear that happiness and success go hand-in-hand at work. But these are all correlational studies, and you’ve probably heard the catchphrase “correlation does not mean causality.” In other words, they may go together but we don’t know which is the cause and which the effect, or whether both are an effect of something else altogether.
So more evidence is needed. The next step is longitudinal evidence. This is where something is measured at time 1, then something else (or the same thing) is measured at time 2. In this case, the researchers looked for studies that measured happiness first, then symptoms of success months or years down the line.
They found a few. For example. after a job interview, happier people are relatively more likely to get a second interview three months down the line. In another study, people with more positive emotion at age 18, were more likely to be financially independent, and generally doing well in their career. The researchers also found that doing well in their career made the participants happy too - so the link between happiness and career is a two-way street, as expected.
Happy people also earn more money tokens! One study found that happier Australians were more likely to receive an income increase in the near future, compared to their less happy mates. A similar result was found with a Russian study panel. Yet another study found that students who were more cheerful in their first year of study were earning more money some 16 years later.
In other words, more happiness now = more money and better career later.
So, in terms of career and money, it seems that happiness is not just a consequence, but also a cause. The idea that happiness causes success gets some support from the workplace. Next time, we’ll look into love and relationships.
讓我們從不同的角度來看看快樂。大多數人認為快樂是一種人們對有好的事情發生的反應。作一個很自然的設定，有美好的事情時，我們會覺得快樂，但是許多證據顯示，感到快樂有時候也是好事發生的原因呢。這里所謂的“好事”呢，我指的不是說人們因為高興而對你多微笑幾次，或者是其他讓人快樂但不會帶來利益的事情。我所指的是例如一份更好的職業，更多的找到愛的機會，更強的對抗疾病的抵抗力，等等。
快樂如何給人們帶來成功呢？
快樂就是一切順利的標志。你很安全，你能得到你所需呀的東西，而且你正一步一步地邁向你的理想--生活很美好！當一切都很順利的時候，用負面情緒把自己全面武裝保護起來根本就不合理。這正是繼續大展宏圖，設定新的目標和挑戰的時候！
假設你是一位大富翁，如果你愿意的話，可以擁有數百萬資產。有人向你提出一項投資建議。需要1萬英鎊，而且很有風險，但相對應的收益也會相當可觀。你會采納嗎？很可能！1萬英鎊對你來說只是零頭而已，甚至損失了你都不會去注意它。這是一個極端的例子，但這也是和快樂類似的一個基本法則。當人們認為機會在敲門時，他就會被鼓舞而尋求發展。所以快樂的人應該得到更多的成功，因為他們的情緒狀況最終使得為成功而付出努力更誘人。
當前在此領域的研究并沒有表明成功是快樂的必然結果，甚至也沒有說它們之間有邏輯聯系。如果你獲得了某種程度的成功，那么你擁有的資源會更豐富，根據這套理論這也就是你最初得到快樂的原因之一！所以如果快樂會導致成功的話，那么成功也會帶來快樂。從而你就進入了良性循環。
這一系列的文章基于2005年的大量分析資料，從本文的最后可以得到更多的研究信息。他們把海量的證據集中在一起，想要看這一快樂觀是否站得住腳，并且發現在工作，愛情和人際關系和健康方面，它確實是正確的。下面，我們來看看工作，但首先，讓我們先搞清楚我們到底是在討論什么。
何謂他們口中的“快樂”？
在這里，快樂的定義和平時研究的快樂稍微有點不一樣（生活的滿足或是主觀幸福感，請看《什么是快樂？》）我們的定義是：積極正面的情緒更多，而負面情緒更少（雖然不是完全消失）。
為什么定義不同？因為在這樣的定義里，正面的情緒會促使我們追求新的目標和當前的機會而不是我們有多么為生命而快樂。
所以從學術上來說，他們認為一個快樂的狀態是成功之母，這不是指一種快樂的性情，當然，一個擁有快樂性情的人是可以在大部分時間讓自己處于快樂的狀態的。
什么是成功？
你認為何謂成功呢？也許你會把有家庭并且富足看作成功。一個在埃塞俄比亞摩西部落的男人也許活到三十歲并且能和一個嘴唇上有一個“十毫的陶瓷片”的女人結婚就算是很大的成功。因此，一個人能實現其所在社會價值觀所看重的目標，那么，他就成功了。
因為這項研究是在美國進行的，研究者決定用工作，愛情和健康作為成功的標簽。
工作
如果你不是從《西方文化》讀到的這篇文章，那么我敢保證，我們都愛工作。大部分人都抱怨工作，但他們仍然會在早晨七點起來去工作。我無數次地在這個點起床然后上班，然而很少是我自己選擇這樣做的。
“大部分人都對工作有諸多抱怨，然而他們仍會在早上七點起床然后去上班”
工作似乎“臭名遠揚”，但其實，它確實很平常的人類的行為，甚至在人們以狩獵、采集種子為生的時代，人們得去勞動（狩獵、采集）才能得以生存。我猜應該是這樣的，從我們考古挖出來的工具來看，我當然從來沒有見過四萬歲的人，所以我不能說非常確定，但如果打賭，這一定是個必勝之局。在現在社會，我們用工作來換取一種代幣—錢，同時用錢又可以換來其他人的勞動成果。工作讓我們干了一些有意義的事情，并產出我們的社會所需要的產品。
而且，因我們是在一個精英領導的社會，我們工作越出色，我們為社會貢獻的就越多，從而我們拿到的報酬就會越多，那么可以拿錢換到的好東西也就越多。所以，總而言之，我們是不是可以說快樂的人們比他們不快樂的同事們要更成功呢？
快樂的勞動者是成功的勞動者
下面列出一些在工作場所發現的有關快樂的趣事：
快樂的人們：
· 更有可能獲得面試的機會；
· 更有可能在工作崗位上獲得積極的評價；
· 效率更高；
· 更能勝任管理的角色；
· 更少出現工作倦怠；
· 更容易對工作滿意；
· 能賺更多的錢
這樣，我們就可以很清楚地看到：成功和快樂在工作上是息息相關的。但是這僅是相關性的研究，你也許聽過這樣的話-“相關性并不等于因果關系。”或者說，它們是有關系的，但我們并不知道哪個是因哪個是果，又或者它們都僅是由第三者而引起的。
我們需要更多的證據來論證這一點。下面就是縱向的論據了。也就是說，我們先測量某事物在時間點1的狀態，然后側量另一事物（或者同一事物）在時間點2的狀態。在這個案例中，研究者先對快樂進行衡量，然后研究隨著時間的推移成功的表現。
研究者們發現了一些證據。比如，在面試之后，相對樂觀的人更有可能在接下來的三個月內獲得第二次面試的忌諱。而在另外一項研究中，帶積極情緒的人更可能在進入成年期后經濟上自力更生，并且在職業生涯中干得不錯。并且，研究者也發現：工作出色也反過來給人帶來快樂。因此，正如我們所想的那樣，快樂與職業之間的關系是雙向的。快樂的人總是能贏得更多的報酬！一項研究表明：在澳大利亞人中，比起其他同事來，過得更快樂的人經常更可能短期內獲得加薪。俄羅斯一個研究專家組也得出同樣的結論。而另外一個研究表明，在入學第一年過得很快樂的學生很可能獲得更高的報酬，當然是在大約十六年之后（大學畢業之后）。
也就是說，更快樂=更多的錢以及更好的工作。
所以，從職業和薪酬這方面來說，快樂似乎不僅僅是其結果，也是原因。在職場，快樂使人成功的觀點是有據可依的。下面，我們來探討愛情和人際關系。
更多信息請查看英語美文寫作
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