View Single Post
Old 04-26-2019, 06:20 AM   #1229
charley
Timed Out - Permanent

How Do You Identify?:
gentle stonebutch [vanilla]
Relationship Status:
single
 
charley's Avatar
 

Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: canada
Posts: 497
Thanks: 906
Thanked 1,204 Times in 422 Posts
Rep Power: 0
charley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputationcharley Has the BEST Reputation
Cool Gallup Poll

World is angry and stressed, Gallup report says

"People around the world are becoming more angry, stressed and worried, according to a new global survey.

"Of some 150,000 people interviewed in over 140 countries, a third said they suffered stress, while at least one in five experienced sadness or anger.

"The annual Gallup Global Emotions Report asked people about their positive and negative experiences.

https://www.gallup.com/analytics/248...port-2019.aspx

"The most negative country was Chad, followed by Niger. The most positive country was Paraguay, the report said.

"Researchers focused on the experiences of participants the day before the survey took place.

"Interviewees were asked questions such as "did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?" and "were you treated with respect?" in a bid to gain an insight into people's daily experiences.

Finland 'world's happiest place' in 2018
Can we be as happy as Scandinavians?


"Around 71% of people said they experienced a considerable amount of enjoyment the day before the survey.

"The poll found that levels of stress were at a new high, while levels of worry and sadness also increased. Some 39% of those polled said they had been worried the day before the survey, and 35% were stressed."

More in line with the thread topic, there is something called The World Happiness Report "which measures 'subjective well-being' - how happy people feel they are, and why."

"Nordic countries regularly appear in the top five, while war-hit countries and a number in sub-Saharan Africa regularly appear in the bottom five."

The report is available to see in its entirety at:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-r...18/WHR_web.pdf

The interesting thing is while the 1st 4 rankings are of Scandinavian countries, Canada ranks 7th and the U.S. ranks 18th...

https://s3.amazonaws.com/happiness-r...eb.pdf#page=23

The factors used for this study were:
  • Explained by GDP per capita
  • Explained by social support
  • Explained by healthy life expectancy
  • Explained by freedom to make life choices
  • Explained by generosity
  • Explained by perception of corruption
  • Dystopia (192) + residual (a hypothetical country, used as a benchmark)

"It's not the economy, stupid

"To begin with, you need to understand what we're measuring.

"The World Happiness Report, which compiles the rankings, is completely subjective. It asks people from every nation how happy they feel - there's no solid science to it.

"The authors then try and analyse other data - like life expectancy and the economy - to figure out how much each factor contributes to being happy.

"That might sound a little fluffy for a UN agency report but it's a deliberate attempt to get away from hard numbers.

"For decades, we've measured prosperity and success through economic measures like gross domestic product. But that doesn't mean the people in those countries feel happy.

"In the United States, for example, income has gone up since the 1960s, but happiness has not. In recent years, GDP has grown - but how happy people are is actually falling.

"A job is essential for happiness, but wealth has diminishing returns.

"A 2010 American study, analysing surveys of 450,000 people between 2008 and 2009, came to the remarkable conclusion that money does make you happier - but only up to a salary of $75,000. After that, extra income makes no difference to your day-to-day happiness (although it can make people feel they're achieving a lot in life).

"The authors - who have both separately won the Nobel Prize in economics - suggested: "Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals' ability to do what matters most, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure."

"But if it's nothing to do with economic power, just what are those Nords doing so much better than the UK or US?

"Researchers at the University of Warwick think that all the mystery surrounding Nordic - specifically Danish - happiness has less to do with socialism and cosy candlelight and more to do with good hard science.

"Andrew Oswald and Eugenio Proto think they have found the answer in Denmark's DNA: that "the closer a nation is to the genetic makeup of Denmark, the happier that country is."

"The research is far from certain, but the pair found that Denmark has a particularly high prevalence of one gene variant which is associated with good mood, and a resistance to depression.

Michael Booth, author of "The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia" thinks that Danes might simply have low expectations.

"Over the years I have asked many Danes about these happiness surveys - whether they really believe that they are the global happiness champions - and I have yet to meet a single one of them who seriously believes it's true," he wrote in The Atlantic.

"Danes do typically expect less than the rest of us, and when their low expectations are fulfilled, so are they."

"It's the same conclusion reached by a tongue-in-cheek paper in the British Medical Journal back in 2006, which noticed the existence of European statistical data on low Danish expectations.

"So, although no-one is quite sure what the key to Nordic happiness is, citizens of other nations can content themselves with the knowledge that it's possibly cultural, genetic, or just made-up nonsense.

"That kind of dismissal is unlikely to bother the people there - they're rather happy with how things are, after all."

from:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-39331314

Personally, my own happiness is mainly related to having my real needs being met... But, of course, this happiness might be partly due to my Viking genes, the fact I live in Canada, and was able to fulfill my 3 passions, prior to retiring...
charley is offline   Reply With Quote