Is there reliable evidence that people can learn to be happier?

There is plenty of evidence that people who use cognitive reappraisal strategies -  for example, changing the way they think about situations in order to reduce negative emotion – tend to have higher life satisfaction than those who try to suppress negative emotion. There is also a growing body of research findings that such skills can be learned and that some reappraisal strategies are more effective than others.

A recent study by Bryan Denny and Kevin Ochsner compared the effects of training using two common variants of reappraisal: distancing and reinterpretation. Distancing involves reappraisal of an emotional event by viewing it from the perspective of a third person observer or an objective, impartial observer. Reinterpretation involves reappraisal by changing the meaning of actions, context or outcomes e.g. by inventing a more positive story to interpret the event.

The 103 participants in the study were divided into three groups: on receiving training only in distancing; one receiving training only in reinterpretation and a third group that was asked to respond naturally to stimuli, but not trained in any form of reappraisal. The training was provided in four sessions separated by 2-5 days. Participants were presented with images and asked to let themselves respond naturally. Those who had been given reappraisal training were also asked to reappraise images.

Both distancing and reinterpretation led to drops in self-reported negative emotional responses over the four sessions. Participants in the distancing group also experienced drops in negative emotional response when they were asked to respond naturally. The results suggest that people can learn to make distancing a habitual response to emotional stimuli during a relatively short training course.

In another recent study Rachel Ranney, Emma Bruehlman-Senecal and Ozlem Ayduk compared the impact of three brief online cognitive reappraisal interventions: self-distancing (watching a personal negative experience as a fly on the wall); temporal distancing (considering the event from the perspective of their future selves); and positive reframing (identifying positive aspects of the experience). The results showed training in temporal distancing to be effective in raising well-being and positive reframing to be effective in reducing ill-being.

I went looking for evidence that people can learn to be happier to follow-up my preceding post about regret. I concluded that post by resisting the temptation to suggest that people who suffer from regrets that do not serve a useful purpose should learn cognitive retraining. At that stage I was not able to cite reliable evidence that such training was effective. Having found some evidence, however, I am not still not sure how effective it would be in dealing with regrets.

If someone regrets a bad choice made a long time ago, temporal distancing is unlikely to work. Viewing the choice as an impartial observer might not help either if it was a really bad choice. Positive reframing could help the person concerned to see something positive in the experience – for example, it could be seen as a learning experience, inducing positive changes in personality. Such reframing is likely to be difficult, however, if the person concerned believes that personality is fixed for life.

There is evidence that the implicit theories that people have about the extent to which attributes such as personality can change has important implications for their mental health. A recent study by Hans Schroder, Sindes Dawood, Matthew Yalch, Brent Donnellan and Jason Moser has shown that people who believe that their attributes can change report greater use of cognitive reappraisal and fewer mental health symptoms. This raises the question of whether people who currently believe that their attributes are set in stone are capable of learning to adopt a mind-set more conducive to improvement.

If your satisfaction with life is adversely affected by regret, what should you do about it?

The purpose of feelings of regret is presumably to help us to make better choices. That suggests that the best way to deal with regret is to make sure we make better choices in future. But regret can also put people into a frame of mind where they make poor choices and find it difficult to enjoy of life.

Regret does not feature prominently in conventional economic theory, even though everyone knows that sensible people take into account the potential for regret when they make decisions.  I suppose that is because Max U, the rational economic man of economic theory, does not let potential for regret prevent him from seeking to maximize utility. Even when economists allow for the possibility that Max might feel losses from the status quo to a greater extent than gains (as in prospect theory), the potential for disappointment and regret still does not come into consideration in the choices he makes.

It is normal for humans to feel disappointment when outcomes are worse than expected – for example when an investment fails even though we have good reasons to expect it to succeed. We feel regret about the opportunities we have foregone in making such investments. Regret is likely to be particularly intense if you mortgage your home to fund an unsuccessful investment.

It usually makes sense for people to take account of the potential for regret in making choices. It is also possible, however, for regret to lead people to make poor choices – choices they later regret. For example, when share prices slump, people who are unduly influenced by regret about the losses they have experienced may decide precipitously to reallocate funds to less risky investments, and later regret that they have sold at the bottom of the market. Alternatively, they may gamble to recover past losses (for example, by buying more shares) and come to regret that choice if the market falls even further. Some economic studies, for example theoretical and experimental work by Philip Strack and Paul Viefers, illustrates the potential for regret to influence decisions in this way.

There is some evidence that regret can have a large impact on life satisfaction. The results of a recent study by Olivia Pethel and Yiewei Chen seem particularly interesting, since these authors use a measure of the intensity of regret, in addition to indicators of negative decision outcomes and the tendency of people to feel regret. The study focuses on mature adults, people over age 35, who are old enough to have had opportunities to make decisions which they might regret. The findings of the study should probably be viewed with caution because of the small size of the sample (119 adults) sex composition (71% female) and the potential for bias in the informal sample selection process that was used.

The regret intensity variable used in the study was constructed by asking people how much they regretted having made wrong choices in various aspects of their life on a 5 point scale (1 = no regret; 5 = very strongly regret) and averaging across the scores. The results of the regression analysis suggest that “very strongly regretting” a wide range of choices in life would be likely to have a large impact on life satisfaction – reducing it by about 1.6 points on the 7 point scale used in the study.

The authors suggest that people who have lower levels of regret intensity may have developed effective emotional regulation strategies in dealing with life regrets. Unfortunately the study does not directly test the use of regulation strategies.  However, the regression results support previous findings that cognitive reappraisal - use of emotion regulation strategies that change the way situations that elicit negative emotions are viewed - has a positive impact on life satisfaction.

I will resist the temptation to conclude that everyone should be taught the bygones principle - much loved by economists - that decisions should focus only on future costs and benefits, leaving aside regrets about the past. In my experience, the bygones principle is much easier to apply to public policy than to one's private life. 

I will also resist the temptation to conclude that people who are allowing regrets to interfere with their enjoyment of life should learn cognitive reappraisal skills. It would be easy to draw upon my own personal experience to suggest ways people might be able to acquire such skills, but at this stage I can't cite reliable studies testing what works and what doesn't work.

Why are the French so unhappy?

It is well known that people in France tend to rate their happiness and life satisfaction lower than other people with comparable living standards. Until recently I thought that might just reflect a tendency to get pleasure out of pretending to be grumpy. After all, the French know all about joie de vivre, don’t they?

However, after reading an article on the topic by Claudia Senik I think there might be some deeper cultural factors at work.

The tendency for the French to be unhappy is not just superficial. It is associated with relatively high scores in negative dimensions of mental health and exceptionally high consumption of psychotropic drugs. And it has been observed at least since the early 1970s. 

The author attempted to disentangle the influence of circumstances (such as institutions, regulations and general living conditions) and the influence of mentality (attitudes, beliefs, ideals and ways of apprehending reality that individuals acquire during infancy and schooling). She did this by using survey data to examine differences between the happiness of different categories of migrants. Her main finding was that immigrants of the first generation who had attended school in France before the age of 10 were less happy, other things equal, than those who had not.

The results of the study seem to suggest that there is something associated with attending school in France that tends to make people less happy than they would otherwise be. The author has speculated that one factor that might be involved is the competitive nature of the education system in France.

I thought it might be interesting to take a look at World Values Survey data on desired child qualities on the grounds that the values inculcated via education systems might reflect the values of the broader population. The latest data available for France is from the 2005-09 round of surveys. The specific question is:

“Here is a list of qualities that children can be encouraged to learn at home. Which, if any, do you consider to be especially important? Please choose up to five”. Unfortunately, none of the qualities listed relate specifically to ambition or scholastic attainment.

Some of the qualities for which responses of French people seem differ substantially from those of people in other countries are shown in the following Figures.

The Figures do not shed a great deal of light on the issue. It is interesting, nevertheless, that the French tend to attach great importance to children learning the virtue of hard work and tend to give relatively low priority to independence and imagination. Perhaps there is something wrong with my perception that life in France is characterized by enjoyment of leisure, and free expression of individuality and creativity.

Does intention exist in the universe as an invisible field of energy?

I decided to revisit Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention after a friend made some enthusiastic comments to me about it. I told her that I didn’t share her enthusiasm, but I couldn’t remember why I had misgivings about the book.

The existence of intention as an invisible field of energy in the universe is, of course, not capable of being proved or disproved using conventional scientific methods. That is itself not a reason for rejecting such beliefs. If someone tells me that they feel empowered by the belief that they are serving God, I am inclined to feel happy for them. I certainly have no basis on which to claim that belief is wrong – even if I wanted to.

However, it is reasonable to question whether a person’s beliefs about intention are consistent with other beliefs that they hold.

Wayne Dyer acknowledges that his belief that intention is an all-pervasive universal force is not consistent with his belief that individuals have free will. He refers to this as a paradox and suggests that you can live with it, just as you live with the “paradox” that “you’re a body with beginnings and ends, with boundaries, and a definition in time and space, you’re also an invisible, formless, unlimited, thinking and feeling being”.

Is there a paradox involved in thinking of yourself as an entity with particular bodily characteristics, whilst also thinking of yourself as an entity which manifests a range of qualities such as kindness, boldness and wisdom? I don’t think so.

Moreover, it is difficult to see why a prior commitment to live with paradox would be necessary if intention is the all-pervasive universal force that Wayne Dyer claims it to be. Would such a force require us to disrespect the intellectual resources that it has bestowed upon us by making a prior commitment to live with inconsistencies in our belief systems? If we are seeking serve something more important than our own personal interests would Intention not be able to find a way to make itself known to us? Is it necessary to acknowledge the existence of a paradox, or mystery, before one’s intuitions can even begin to suggest that the sense of purpose one feels might be linked to a supernatural source?

The author claims that Intention has seven faces. His discussion of the first six of those intentional frames may be useful to people interested in developing a stronger sense of purpose:

1. Creativity: “Creative energy is a part of you …”. My interpretation is that being creative is a fundamental characteristic of humans. It makes sense to have an intention to use our creative energy to produce better outcomes in all that we do.
2. Kindness: “Kindness extended, received, or observed beneficially impacts the physical health and feelings of everyone involved”.
3. Love: “This face of intention … wishes only for us to flourish and grow, and become all that we are capable of becoming”. An intention to help others to flourish and grow makes sense if we want to experience the benefits of living in loving families and communities.
4. Beauty: “By choosing to hang on to one’s corner of freedom even in the worst situations, we can process our world with the energy of appreciation and beauty and create an opportunity to transcend our circumstances”. That statement was inspired by the example and views of Viktor Frankl.
5. Expansion: “The elemental nature of life is to increase and seek more and more expression”. I think that means that an intention to achieve personal growth can always be achieved through greater expression of creativity, kindness, love and appreciation of beauty.
6. Abundance: “there are no limits to our potential as people, as collective entities, and as individuals”. I don’t pretend to be a fan of “The Secret” or even “The Power of Positive Thinking”. It is my understanding of economics that suggests to me that the world offers abundance, provided that individuals are free to use their resources as they choose to take advantage of the opportunities available. A realistic optimist could be expected to have the intention to seek out opportunities and make good use of his or her personal resources.

According to Wayne Dyer, the seventh face of intention is receptivity.  He explains: “The receptive face of intention means to me that all of nature is waiting to be called into action. We only need to recognize and receive. … By being receptive, I’m in harmony with the power of intention of the universal creative force”.

I can understand why people are attracted to the idea that whatever seems wrong in their lives is the result of being out of alignment with Intention. It offers the promise of a remedy for all ills. As the author writes:

“Act as if anything you desire is already here. Believe that all you seek, you’ve already received, that it exists in spirit, and know you shall have your desires filled”.

I know that this kind of positive thinking can sometimes be helpful. The problem is not so much that we are likely to act as though we can fly by flapping our arms, or live without food – although some do – it is in knowing how to deal with the negative thoughts that intrude when positive thinking fails to produce the outcomes we hope for. Wayne Dyer suggests:

“Even when nothing seems to indicate that you’re accomplishing what you desire in your life, refuse to entertain doubt. Remember, the trolley strap of intention is waiting for you to float up and be carried along”.

Visual imagery can help to remind us of commitments that we have made to ourselves. The  message is clear enough. If you don’t achieve the outcome you hope for, you have not been trying hard enough to align yourself to Intention. Keep your thinking under constant surveillance. If that makes you feel unhappy, try even harder to align yourself to Intention. If you think you are going crazy, try even harder to align yourself to Intention.

I now remember why I had misgivings about the book.

It seems to me that the important ingredient missing from Wayne Dyer’s book is self- acceptance. In order to transcend something it is necessary to accept it. It is difficult to see how anyone can sustain intentions consistent with creativity, kindness, love, beauty, personal growth and abundance if they reject the sensations and emotions they experience. Rather than seeking to call nature into action to serve our intentions, we should be seeking to live in harmony with the natural world, including our natural selves.

Is the incidence of depression higher where people are experiencing more negative emotion and suffering?

It would be difficult to be interested in human flourishing without having some interest in understanding the differences in incidence of “suffering”, negative emotion, and depression in different parts of the world.

I have written a few posts about negative emotion recently, but it is now a few years since I looked explicitly for a relationship between “suffering” and depression at an international level. The last time I looked, I couldn’t see any relationship. I concluded that “the data … suggest there is no simple relationship”.

There is now some new data available, so I have taken another look. But I don’t want you to get too excited, because you might end up feeling disappointed.

A data set on depressive disorders in 2010 has been compiled by Alize Ferrari and others as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study. The researchers collected data on the depressive disorders from published articles and pooled the data using a statistical technique (Bayesian meta-regression). The data used below relates to major depressive disorder (MDD) which is also known as clinical depression. It involves at least one major depressive episode in which the affected individual experiences a depressed mood almost all day, every day for at least 2 weeks.

The negative emotion data is sourced from the Gallup World Poll. Respondents were asked if they experienced worry, anger, sadness or depression yesterday. The data used is based on country averages of yes/no answers (yes = 1).

The data on suffering is from the new Gallup-Healthways Global Well-being index. The index covers 5 dimensions of well-being: purpose (liking what you do and learning or doing something interesting); social (having supportive relationships); financial (having enough money to do what you want and not being worried about money); community (liking where you live and having pride in your community) and physical (feeling active and productive, and in good health). People are classed as suffering in a particular element if their well-being in that element is low and inconsistent.

For the purpose of this exercise I have estimated the percentage suffering in each country as the average of the percentages suffering in each dimension.

After the three data sets were combined I had data for 114 countries. At the country level, there is a modest degree of correlation between the three variables:

Struggling and MDD:                          0.24

Struggling and negative emotion:        0.20

Negative emotion and MDD:              0.06 .

The graph presented below provides a basis to compare averages for the relevant variables in 10 regions of the world.

All three indicators tell an unambiguous story of misery in the Middle East and North Africa. Suffering seems somewhat higher in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the incidence of negative emotion is apparently lower in that part of the world than in the Middle East and North Africa.

Central and Eastern Europe seems to have a fairly high incidence of all three indicators of misery. The incidence of depression and suffering is similarly high in the former Soviet countries, but the incidence of negative emotion is similarly lower.

East Asia stands out as having a relatively low incidence of negative emotion and depression, but a higher incidence of suffering than Latin America. According to the Gallup-Healthways data, the incidence of suffering in Latin America is not much greater than in Europe.

It is possible to speculate on reasons why the three indicators tell different stories in several regions of the world. Cultural factors probably explain the relatively low incidence of negative emotion in East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Cultural factors might also explain why the incidence of suffering has been assessed to be relatively low in Latin America. (As discussed in an earlier post, cultural factors might also explain why the Gallup-Healthways index shows a high percentage of the population in Latin America to be thriving). There may also be potential for the estimates of depression to be biased by such factors as differences in availability of trained mental health professionals.

That leaves me concluding that caution is required in comparing suffering, negative emotion and depression in different parts of the world. I know that is a fairly lame conclusion, but I did warn you not to get too excited.

Do international comparisons show that people in countries with low average life satisfaction tend to have a high incidence of negative emotion?

It seems intuitively reasonable that people in countries with low average life satisfaction levels would tend to have a higher incidence of negative emotion. The theory of subjective well-being homeostasis, discussed in my last post, provides a theoretical basis to predict that will happen. Adaptation and resilience normally keep life satisfaction within a set-point range, but if resilience is weak, life satisfaction can fail to recover from negative experiences. On that basis we would expect low average life satisfaction to be associated with a relatively high incidence of homeostatic breakdown.

At first sight, Figure 1 appears to provide very limited support for the homeostasis theory. There are no countries in which high average life satisfaction is accompanied by a high incidence of negative emotion. At the other end of the scale, however, there are many countries in which low average life satisfaction is accompanied by a relatively low incidence of negative emotion.

The data is sourced from the Gallup World Poll (via World Happiness Report 2013). The negative emotion data for each country is the average of yes/no answers (yes = 1) to the question of whether respondents experienced worry, anger, sadness, anger and depression yesterday. The life satisfaction data is based on the Cantril ladder which involves survey respondents being asked to rate their lives against an 11 point scale in which the top rung of the ladder (rating of 10) corresponds to the best possible life and the bottom rung of the ladder (rating of 0) corresponds to the worst possible life.

Figure 2 shows the expected relationship after controlling for a range of socio-economic and cultural factors. This involved adjusting the data on incidence of negative emotion using the results of a regression analysis. The adjusted data are estimates of what the incidence of negative emotion might have been in the absence of variation in the socio-economic and cultural factors (i.e. with the socio-economic variables equal to the average over all countries and European/American culture).

The regression analysis suggests that at a national level an increase of 1 unit in average life satisfaction reduces the incidence of negative emotion by about 0.02 (SE = 0.007) i.e. by about 10% at the world average level of negative affect. The regression explained about 45% of international variation in the incidence of negative emotion.

The socio-economic variables included in the regression were per capita GDP, social support (relatives and friends to count on), freedom (proportion satisfied with freedom to choose what they do) and corruption (proportion saying corruption is widespread in business or government). The estimated coefficients for those variables were all significantly different from zero, with a negative estimated coefficient on income. It isn’t surprising that high average incomes could be associated with a high incidence of negative emotion if not accompanied by high average life satisfaction and social support.

The cultural influence has been accounted for by using regional dummy variables. The estimates suggest that cultural factors reduce the reported incidence of negative emotion by the following amounts:

East Asia:                                 0.134 (SE 0.025)

Africa:                                      0.104 (SE 0.017)

South Asia:                              0.103 (SE 0.027)

Former Soviet Union:              0.092 (SE 0.020)

Central and Eastern Europe:    0.055 (SE 0.018)

South East Asia:                       0.050 (SE 0.022)

The low incidence of reported negative emotion in East Asia is consistent with previous research on cross-cultural difference in subjective wellbeing. (See, for example a recent article by Lufanna Lai, Robert Cummins and Anna Lau – abstract here.)

One of the most interesting findings of the regression analysis reported above is that the coefficient for Latin America was not significantly different from zero. This is in contrast to the findings of studies relating to positive emotion (including those reported on this blog here and here) which suggests that Latin American culture has a strong positive impact. It seems that the positivity of Latin Americans does not translate to a lower incidence of negative emotion in that part of the world. 

Does homeostasis explain the stability of life satisfaction in high income countries?

The theory of subjective well-being homeostasis proposes that life satisfaction is controlled by automatic neurological processes in a manner analogous to the maintenance of body temperature. The theory has been proposed by Professor Robert Cummins of the Australian Centre on Quality of Life (ACQOL), Deakin University. The basic idea is that positive and negative experiences can cause temporary changes in life satisfaction, but homeostasis normally brings it back within a set-point range. The exception occurs where chronic failure of the homeostatic system results in depression.

The theory proposes that homeostatic buffers enable humans to function normally:

• adaptation restores life satisfaction to the set-point range following positive changes in circumstances, such as an increase in income;
• resilience tends to restore life satisfaction to the set-point range following strong negative challenges.

Resilience depends on external resources, particularly intimate relationships and wealth, and internal buffers designed to minimise the impact of personal failure on positive feelings about the self. The internal buffers can operate at an unconscious level - e.g. assisting an individual to cope by enabling positive emotions to become accessible. They also operate at a conscious level by altering the way individuals see themselves in relation to the challenge (e.g. denying personal responsibility or viewing the failure as unimportant).

The distinguishing feature of the homeostasis theory is not the existence of adaptation and resilience – which are widely acknowledged in the happiness research literature – but the idea that these processes tend to restore emotional systems to unique set-points for each individual.

When I first read about homeostasis theory, a few years ago, evidence that some individuals experience long-term changes in life satisfaction seemed inconsistent with the idea of constant individual set-points. However, as Bob Cummins has pointed out, changes in life satisfaction do not necessarily imply change in an individual’s set-point (or homeostatically protected mood). If initial measurements of life satisfaction are higher than, or lower than, the set-point, then subsequent measurements can be expected to show a return to the set-point range.

My remaining doubts about homeostasis theory centre mainly around the question of how it can be reconciled with the international evidence of lower average life satisfaction in low-income countries. I find it hard to accept that a high proportion of the people in low-income countries who claim to have relatively low levels of satisfaction with their lives are suffering failure of their homeostatic systems. In some low-income countries, e.g. China, relatively low average life satisfaction seems to be accompanied by relatively high positive affect and relatively low negative affect.

Perhaps set-point ranges remain constant – if we think in terms of hypothetical neural correlates – but the relationship between set-point ranges and life satisfaction scales may change with changes in perceptions of what might be possible. As discussed in a recent post, individuals who move from a remote village to a major city might feel that their lives have improved, even though they become less contented with their living standards after moving to the new location. Does that mean they have become more vulnerable to homeostatic breakdown? I am not qualified to make informed predictions in relation to such matters, but my guess is that there would not be an increased risk of breakdown if the people concerned remain optimistic about their prospects in the city and retain the option to return to the village for family support if they need it.

The predictions of homeostasis theory seem to stand up well to tests that have been conducted so far. For example, homeostasis theory predicts that there will be greater variation in subjective well-being among people with low incomes than among people with high incomes. This is because people with low incomes (or low wealth) are more vulnerable to changes in circumstances. Analysis using data from the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index indicates that the standard deviation of subjective well-being is indeed substantially higher for people with relatively incomes, and declines as household incomes rise to around $100,000.

Homeostasis theory seems to provide a more plausible explanation for the stability of average life satisfaction in high-income countries than a rival theory, advanced by some economists, that this stability reflects evaluative judgements of life by the people in those countries. Evidence that life satisfaction is influenced by genes, and strongly related to self-esteem, optimism and feelings of being in control of one’s life, suggests that it is more appropriately interpreted as reflecting the moods (or frames of mind) of respondents than evaluative judgements. 

Researchers who want subjective well-being measures to reflect evaluative judgements that individuals make about the quality of their lives should consider an approach which requires greater cognitive inputs e.g. the ACSA question which asks people to assess their current well-being relative to the best and worst periods of their lives.

Should researchers recognize that emotional states are influenced by life evaluations?

There is nothing novel about the idea that people who have a positive frame of mind about the opportunities and challenges that life offers tend to experience positive emotions as they go about their daily lives. 

We are not surprised that people who smile and laugh a lot, obtain enjoyment from whatever they are doing, feel they are learning or doing something interesting and feel that they are treated with respect tend to rate their lives highly. If such people don’t consider their current lives as close to the best possible, it is likely to be because they are optimistic about the potential for their lives to get even better. It might be reasonable to suppose that their positive emotions reflect frames of mind stemming from their dispositions and their evaluations of their lives as well as from their current experiences.

However, when I looked up “positive emotion”, “frame of mind” and “research” on Google I found a lot of references to research on cognitive approaches to improving well-being, but I didn’t see any on life evaluations as a determinant of positive emotion. Researchers do not seem to have perceived life evaluations – for example, responses to survey questions asking people to rate their lives between best possible and worst possible – as frames of mind. Emotional state variables (positive emotion and negative emotion) are sometimes included in analyses which seek to explain life evaluations, but I am not aware of studies which view life evaluations as a potential explanatory variable.

The question posed in this post is linked to the finding in my last post that average positive emotion ratings in countries in the former Soviet Union are lower, while those in Latin American countries are higher, than might be expected on the basis of negative emotion ratings in those regions. I suggested that the most likely reason for this was the development of shared frames of mind by people in those regions. That poses the question of whether these shared frames reflect life evaluations or something more profound.

Which variables should be included in a regression model to assess the influence of frames of mind on positive emotions at a national level? The most obvious measure of positive emotions to use is the Gallup measure which reflects the extent to which people are well-rested, smile and laugh a lot, obtain enjoyment from what they are doing, are learning or doing something interesting and feel that they are treated with respect. It seemed appropriate to include the Gallup measure of negative emotion (reflecting pain, worry, sadness, stress or anger) as an explanatory variable to take account of experience that might lead people to have a negative frame of mind. Regional variables were included for reasons just discussed. Gallup data was used to reflect average life evaluations at a national level (Cantril ladder).

Three other frame of mind variables were included because they have previously been found to be significant determinants of both life evaluation and positive emotion ratings. (See, for example, the research by John Helliwell and Shun Wang presented in Table 2.1 of Chapter 2 of World Happiness Report 2013.) These variables were satisfaction with freedom, perceptions of social support and generosity. All data was obtained from the online appendix to Chapter 2 of the World Happiness Report.

Separate regional variables were included in the initial regressions but only Latin America, the Former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East and North Africa were found to be significant. The final regression model explains about 70 percent of the variation in positive emotion at a national level. The results of the analysis are reflected in the Figure below. (All estimated coefficients were significantly different from zero at the 95% level. Further information can be made available on request.)

Two important points are evident from the Figure:

• The relatively low positive emotion ratings of people in the former Soviet Union and the positive ratings of people in Latin America are still evident after controlling for several other variables. These anomalies cannot be explained in terms of life evaluations or the other frame of mind variables considered.
• The influence of life evaluations on positive emotion involves more than just satisfaction with freedom, perceptions of social support and generosity.

Postscript 1:

I acknowledged above that frames of mind can stem from dispositions as well as from life evaluations. In retrospect, I should also have noted that dispositions can affect life evaluations.

A paper just published by Eugenio Proto and Andrew Oswald explores the role of genetics in influencing average life evaluations at a national level (“National Happiness and Genetic Distance: A cautious exploration”, July 2014, IZA DP 8300). The paper suggests that genetic distance from Denmark is a significant determinant of life satisfaction.

If the genetic influence on disposition had an impact on positive affect in addition to its influence on life evaluations (and other variables including negative affect and regional variables) that should be reflected in the residuals of the regression described above. However, the residuals for Denmark and countries that are genetically close to Denmark (Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland) are small and mainly negative.

Postscript 2:

Inclusion of genetic distance from Denmark in the regression analysis made little difference to the results obtained. The coefficient on the genetic variable had the 'wrong' sign and was not significantly different from zero. The results suggest that any genetic influence on positive affect occurs via life evaluations and other variables.

Postscript 3:
Research by Gian Vittoria Caprara, Nancy Eisenberg and Guido Alessandri on the dispositional basis of happiness is relevant to this post. The authors note that life satisfaction, optimism and self-esteem have recently been traced to a common disposition, namely positivity. The authors' measure of positivity reflects all these factors. Their research suggests that positivity predicts future positive affectivity, rather than vice versa.