DECISIONS AND EMOTIONSargued, is that these emotions are expressed slightly differently in East
Asian cultures from how they are in Western cultures, thus causing the
differences in recognition ability.
A neat compromise position on this debate was published by Matsumo-
to’s group in 2009. Carefully re-examining the photos taken of the Olympic
judo competitors, they discovered that for at least one to two seconds after
losing a bout, competitors’ emotional expressions were the same across all
the different nationalities. However, after those initial revealing moments,
cultural differences emerged, with judokas from collectivist cultures like
China tending to mask their initial emotional expressions more than
competitors from individualistic cultures like the UK.
psychologists Malte Klar and Tim Kasser surveyed hundreds of
undergraduate students, and found that those who self-identified as
activists were happier than those who didn’t. It’s not just that happier
people are more likely to be activists. Klar and Kasser also encour-
aged a separate group of students to campaign for more ethical
food-sourcing at their university cafeteria. These students subse-
quently reported feeling more energized compared with a control
group who campaigned for tastier food and more choice.- Seek out repeatedly enjoyable activities Our tendency to adapt
and adjust to those rare, profound changes, good and bad, that
come our way – such as winning the lottery or becoming seriously
ill – has led some experts to suggest that we’re all stuck with a
baseline level of happiness to which we will always return. However,
Daniel Mochon and his co-workers challenged this in 2008 when
they showed that repeated visits to religious services or to the gym
left people feeling happier. They concluded that “the key for long
lasting changes to wellbeing is to engage in activities that provide
small and frequent boosts”. - Mix with happy people A social networking study, involving over
12,000 people in Massachusetts, showed that happiness spreads
through social groups like a smiley virus. A person’s happiness isn’t
influenced merely by their friends’ levels of happiness, the study
found, but also by the friends of friends, and the friends of friends
of friends. Using data collected over time, the researchers James
Fowler and Nicholas Christakis were able to show that it isn’t merely
that happy people tend to congregate together. If a participant’s
friend was recorded as being happy at one time-point, the chance
of that participant being happy when asked at a second, later time-
point was increased, thus suggesting the friend’s happiness really
had played a causal role.