Saker i livet som påverkar din lycka

Det har tydigen varit populärt inom den tämligen nystartade lyckoforskningen att påstå att varje individ har sitt normalläge för lycka, och att varje individ varierar kring den mer eller mindre oberoende av vad som händer i livet. Så verkar det nu dock inte vara fallet. Att gifta sig ger en lyckokänsla ett kortare tag, men ger ingen effekt på längre sikt, vilket ju stämmer med lyckopunkten. Att bli änka eller änkeman kommer man visserligen över, men det tar i typ sju år. Att bli frånskild, arbetslös och att lida kroppsskada ger effekt under lång tid.

Intressant är att de som förblir gifta är lyckligare - men det var de även före de gifte sig!

Som alltid med sådana här undersökningar får man ta resultaten med en stor nypa salt.

Lucas found that not all of life’s slings and arrows are created equal. On average, most people adapt quickly to marriage, for example — within just a couple of years, the peak in subjective well-being experienced around the time of getting married returns to its previous levels. People mostly adapt to the sorrows of losing a spouse too, but this takes longer — about 7 years. People who get divorced and people who become unemployed, however, do not, on average, return to the level of happiness they were at previously. The same can be said about physical debilitation. Numerous recent studies have demonstrated that major illnesses and injury result in significant, lasting decreases in subjective-well being. But Lucas also found that individual differences play an important role. There’s a lot of individual variation in the degree to which people adapt to what life throws at them. What’s more, individuals destined to experience certain life events actually differ in their subjective well-being from those not so fated — even well before the occurrence of those events. People who eventually marry and stay married, for example, tend to be happier even 5 years before their marriage than those who are destined to marry and get divorced.

Läs mer: New study reports on the state of human happiness