How of Happiness

I just discover your book. Fantastic work. (I love Amazon recommendations!)

I have a little comment about marriage and happiness. Critics say that the previous studies on marriage are flawed, in which they define "single" rather loosely. Divorcée, widows and never married all fall into the "single" group. Some data shows that the never married people are just as content as the married people. (Bella DePaulo of Living Single blog think so.) Do you have a reliable study on this topic?

Thanks! Great book, great blog!

Thanks for you note. You are absolutely right about the critique of the marriage/happiness literature, and Bella DePaulo has been making this point brilliantly lately. In many of the studies, one cannot disentangle a “marriage” effect from a “not being divorced or widowed” effect and there are other problems too, including the fact that the married people surveyed happen to be the ones who have stayed (reasonably) happily married, which injects a huge bias into the data. Futhermore, studies examining a large longitudinal data set in Germany show that the average boost that one derives from marriage lasts 2 years, so that is certainly evidence that marriage does not have a permanent well-being effect. Having said that, lots of research shows that close interpersonal relationships and social support contribute a great deal to a happy life; the point I make in my book, The How of Happiness, is that those relationships don’t have to be marital ones.

I really think there should be a compulsory school course based on your books - for this planet to become a much happier place.

This blog entry of mine immediately reminded me of the poignantly delightful effect that Joe Dassin's "Et si tu n'existais pas" - "What if you never existed" song never fails to have on me. Now I kundertand the psychological mechanism behind it! Thanks!