Pollyanna days

Being happy is not just about how we're wired - we also have a choice. Claire Keeton reports

Love not loot unexpectedly brings happiness to the villain of the animated movie Despicable Me, while exploring the world and its meaning proves more rewarding to the wanderer in Eat, Pray, Love than her conventional marriage and career did.

This seems obvious: the choices we make will influence how happy we feel about life. In the '90s, the dominant theory was that genes and personality played a determining role in life satisfaction. But now, after analysing thousands of Germans in a national survey over 25 years, researchers have proof to the contrary.

"We've found that choices do make a difference," says the lead author of the study, Professor Bruce Headey from Melbourne University. Picking the right partner, family and altruistic commitments, body size and religion all make an impact, the research shows. "If you choose a neurotic partner who is emotionally unstable, tense and overreacts, you are in for a hard time."

Long-term religious attendance, associated with altruism, also seems to bring earthly rewards since they are linked to greater satisfaction. "It seems true that altruistic people are happier and there is other evidence to suggest volunteerism is good for you," says Headey.

Circumstances limit people's choices but those that appear relatively under our control are identified in the article as: partner personality traits; life goals and priorities; the work-leisure trade-off; social participation; and healthy lifestyle.

Life events such as involuntary unemployment are the hardest to cope with, and are much worse than being overworked or underworked. Underweight men and obese women appear to be less satisfied with life, the research suggests.

When it comes to happiness and life goals, Headey suggests that researchers have a "chicken-and-egg" challenge - in his view it is not clear whether success, career and family impact most on happiness, or the other way round. What's beyond doubt is the positive role that friends, family and pets play in wellbeing.

"Most people enjoy spending time with their friends, doing something reasonably active, for example, playing golf or being outdoors, not just watching TV. They are less happy with their spouses and (often) miserable with their bosses," says Headey.

His tip for finding out what makes you happy is a "happiness diary", which will reveal what you most enjoy doing in the week.

Our choices are mostly guided by what we think will make us happy, says Dr Nick Powdthavee, author of The Happiness Equation and a behavioural economist. But here's the catch, we are "very bad at forecasting what will make us happy in the future".

Powdthavee suggests that people focus on one side of the equation and ignore the other when making decisions.

For example, people picture smiling children when thinking about kids, or a nice day on the beach when thinking about moving to a sunny place. "However, the things that we do not think about also have emotional consequences - things like losing our freedom from having children or that the sunny place is far away from home."

Traditionally, children are thought to bring happiness but a recent study in the US challenges this. "No group of parents - married, single, step or even empty nest - reported significantly greater emotional wellbeing than the people who had never had children," reported Professor Robin Simon this year.

The sociologist from Florida State University analysed data from 13000 Americans. This result reinforces the view that people cannot "always trust conventional wisdom or even their own imagination" in the pursuit of happiness.

This suggests that a Pollyanna attitude to life, being grateful every day for what you have, will conjure up greater happiness.

Powdthavee says: "By allocating more of our attention towards the 'good' things in our life more often - or, in layman's terms, to be more thankful - our lives would be much happier. Studies have shown that around 50% of our happiness is explained by our personality traits, around 30% is explained by circumstances, whilst the other 20% is explained by our attitudes."

He recognises that unemployment and poverty "matter a great deal but their impacts may also be moderated by how we and the society perceive them".

Perception appears to be the hidden key to happiness - perhaps even more than the benefits of wealth, beauty and power.