GIC Events
[Review]-Flourishing in Good and Bad Times: What Mental Health Science Tells Us-July 07
- Name
- 웬티레화
- Date
- 2012-07-26
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- 1108 회
Flourishing in Good and Bad Times:
What Mental Health Science Tells Us
Speaker: Daniel Olympia (PhD, University of Utah)
Date: July 21, 2012
Review writer: Hyun-kyu Chae
Proof-reader: Samuel Winters
The speaker initially focused on the United States and South Korea, comparing them in terms of education, technology, economics, leadership, etc. With this comparative analytic framework in mind, the speaker transitioned to the question, “What makes people happy?” To answer this, the speaker introduced the concept of Subjective Well-Being (SWB), which is people’s evaluation of their own life satisfaction. According to the speaker, some of the things influencing SWB are personality, temperament, income, social comparison, universal needs, adaptation to circumstances and person-environment fit.
Interestingly, we learn that a significant amount of our SWB, half in fact, is influenced by the genes we inherit from our parents, while approximately 40% or our SWB is under our own control. For the most part, changing personality and temperament would be like trying to change your height. But external influences are important as well. In addition to personality and temperament, there is also the issue of income and SWB. While income does correlate positively with SWB, there eventually comes a point where we experience diminishing returns on SWB for more income earned, which suggests that money, while being important for SWB, becomes less important the more one has. Another significant influence on SWB comes from social comparison, for example, evaluating one’s status relative to neighbors, family and friends. Television and the internet have also changed how we evaluate ourselves relative to others by eliminating distance. The speaker also included Maslow’s concept of universal needs, which are food and shelter, having others to count on, learning new things, using one’s abilities and feeling respected. Adaptability in one’s environment also has a significant influence on SWB, as did the person-environment fit, which brings people more happiness the more their values and personalities fit those of the people around them.
Rather than argue that there was any particular route to happiness, the idea behind the talk was that the way to better social relationships, better health and longevity, higher incomes, greater job satisfaction and better quality of life was through happiness itself.
