Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness (New York Magazine)

Some excerpts pulled from Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness by Jennifer Senior, New York Magazine:

One of the most interesting bits of American research to surface—repeatedly—in books about happiness is a study that shows depressives are far more likely to be realists, while happy people are more likely to walk around in a mild state of delusion.

Married people are happier than those who are not, while people who believe in God are happier than those who don’t.

Smarter people aren’t any happier, but those who drink in moderation are. Attractive people are slightly happier than unattractive people. Men aren’t happier than women, though women have more highs and more lows. Surprisingly, the young are not happier than the elderly; in fact, it’s the other way round, with older people reporting slightly higher levels of life satisfaction and fewer dark days.

Money doesn’t buy happiness — or even upgrade despair, as the playwright Richard Greenberg once wrote — once our basic needs are met. In one well-known survey, Ed Diener of the University of Illinois determined that those on the Forbes 100 list in 1995 were only slightly happier than the American public as a whole; in an even more famous study, in 1978, a group of researchers determined that 22 lottery winners were no happier than a control group (leading one of the authors, Philip Brickman, to coin the scarily precise phrase “hedonic treadmill,” the unending hunger for the next acquisition).

Follow the link for more information on Chris Peterson's Authentic Happiness Inventory test that was referenced in the article.

The book repeatedly referenced in the article is Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.