Okay, I had to make another post on the database of happiness, because it is really massive, and kind of hard to understand and use, but also totally fascinating. I’m going to make a note of how to use it, so I don’t forget.
How to use the world database of Happiness: The link above leads to a page that is the master page for information on ‘things that correlate with happiness” (I got to that page using the flowchart link on the main page).
This page gives a classification of subjects on the left hand side (e.g. how one lives, with whom one lives), which open up to provide subcategories (e.g. activities, work). Eventually, if you go through enough enough levels of subcategories, you get to links at the bottom level that are the correlation codes (e.g. P10 POSESSIONS). When you click on one of these, an option appears on the right of the page to open a new printer friendly window. This is definitely the good option to take.
The new window lists various studies. Each study has three sections: Study, Measured Correlate, Observed Relation with Happiness. The Observed Relation with Happiness has useful links explaining what the statistics mean.
So, looking at the
POSESSIONS page, I found a study done by Morrowitz D., in 1977, that
looked at how having or not having a phone was correlated with happiness.
The subjects of the study were people living in two villages in Israel.
Morrowitz did the study by asking participants a question intended to
measure their general level of happiness. The finding was that the
possession of a phone was not correlated with happiness (in other words,
the level of happiness or unhappiness of a person was not predicted by
whether or not the person had a phone).
posted at 17:28 on Mon, 23 Jan, 2006 |
path: /living
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