If Tolstoy was correct in his famous statement that happy families
are essentially "happy in the same way," researchers have yet to find
that common denominator. When it came to analyzing extremely happy
college students, researchers were reduced to triangulation: The very
happy are not more religious, nor do they exercise or sleep more than the
rest of us. True, they spend more time socializing and receive the
highest self and peer ratings on the quality of their
relationships.
But some unhappy students were equally social and boasted
satisfactory relationships, according to Martin Seligman, Ph.D., a
professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and Edward
Diener, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, who compared college students in the top 10 percent on
bliss indices to those whose moods were average to miserable. The
researchers liken happiness to "symphonic music necessitating many
instruments, without any one being sufficient for the beautiful
quality."
Diener describes the top-rated students as "happy most of the time,
rather than intensely happy a lot." Interestingly, 6 of the 22 extremely
happy students exhibited a degree of hypomania indicative of "active,
energetic people who are very self-confident."
While optimism is not tantamount to happiness, optimists and the
very happy both have strong social networks. This support system, as well
as coping mechanisms such as the "every cloud has a silver lining"
mentality, known as "positive reinterpretation and growth," enables
optimists to better weather stress and depression.
"Most personality psychologists examine the benefits of optimism in
terms of what optimists do for themselves," explains Ian Brissette,
Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University, who
studied 89 college freshmen during their first semester at school. But
"benefits may also stem from the ability to develop social support," says
Brissette. "Optimists experience better mental health not only because of
what they do but because of what others do for them." The results were
published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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