Does Happiness Lead to Success? part 3 – Are Happy People Successful?

Are Happy People Successful People?

What is Successful?

It means accomplishing those things that are valued by your culture, achieving goals as set out by your society.

Freud thought that to love and to work are what a normal person should be able to perform well. Health can be added to this list. (see positive health)

Work life

Work uses a large part of our time. It is important for us as it produces income, influences self esteem, is an opportunity for meaningful activity and produces goods and services for our society. Work is therefore a highly valued activity.

Employment and Quality of work

Happy people are:

• more likely to graduate from college
• more likely to get job interviews
• more likely to get better jobs with more autonomy, meaning and variety
• more likely to be evaluated more positively by superiors for work quality, productivity, dependability and creativity.
• more likely to have superior performance and productivity
• more likely to handle managerial jobs better
• less likely to have counterproductive behaviour and burnout.
• more satisfied with their jobs.

Work performance may be more related to wellbeing than job satisfaction.

People high in positive affect are more likely to be in the supervisory “in” group.

Happier cricket players had higher batting averages.

Service departments get higher ratings from customers if they have happier leaders and there are better customer satisfaction reports if the sales force has a more positive affective tone.

CEOs with high positive affect are more likely to have employees who rate them selves as happy, healthy and report a warm climate for performance, which in turn correlates to productivity and profitability.

Optimistic insurance agents sell more insurance and CEOs receive higher performance ratings by the Board.

Overall these patterns are bi-directional and are not found for negative affect.

Happy workers are likely to be high performers and are less likely to show job withdrawal – absenteeism, turnover, burnout, and retaliatory behaviour.

Income

One of the indicators of success in our society is income.

Happier people tend to earn higher incomes.

Organisational Citizenship

Positive affect on the job and chronic happiness predicts job satisfaction, which predicts organisational citizenship behaviour. Such behaviour includes acts that go beyond the requirements of the job. This is also known as organisational spontaneity eg spreading goodwill, aiding coworkers, protecting the organisation, making constructive suggestions, and developing ones ability within the organisation.

Community Involvement

Happy people volunteer at higher levels than unhappy people. This is for both charity and service groups including religious, political, educational, and health related groups. They also put in more hours volunteering. Happy people are more inclined to help others.

Social Relationships

Happy people have better social relationships and this is one of the most robust findings in the literature.

Friendship and Social support

There is an association between happiness and the actual number of friends or companions that happy people can rely on.

In the workplace happy people receive more emotional and other assistance from co-workers and supervisors.

Friendship has one of the highest correlations to happiness. The quantity and the quality of contacts is a strong predictor of wellbeing even more than contact with family. Happy people are satisfied with their friends and social activities, and are less jealous of others.  Loneliness is negatively correlated with happiness, and positively correlated with depression.

Marriage and Romance

Married people are happier than those who are single, divorced or widowed. Happy people have more fulfilling marriages, and are more satisfied with their marriage. Marital satisfaction and satisfaction with family life have the strongest correlations for happiness. In addition your own individual happiness is correlated with the marital satisfaction of your spouse.

Other romantic relationships have similar findings. Happy people are more likely to describe their partner as their great love than unhappy people.

Health

Mental Health

The happiest people have few symptoms of psychopathology such as depression, hypochondriasis, schizophrenia, social phobia and anxiety.

Similar findings occur for optimistic people. They have higher levels of vitality and mental health and lower levels of depression.

The use of substances may achieve an increase in positive affect but detrimental behaviours such as abuse and dependence are indicators of  poor mental health.

Evidence suggests that a positive mood is associated with a decreased probability of drug use.

Physical Health

Happy people have fewer physical symptoms and better health.

Positive affect relates to quality of life in cancer patients, smaller allergic reactions in healthy people, fewer emergency room and hospital visits, fewer calls to the doctor, less use of medication, and less work absences.

Conclusion

Happy people are more successful in the Work, Relationships and Health domains.

So plenty of reasons to be happy. Next time we will look at whether short term happiness is related to successful behaviours.

Enjoy and have a day filled with subjective well-being.