happiness studies - in experiences

Study: Happiness Is Experiences, Not Stuff

If you're trying to buy happiness, you'd be better off putting your money toward a tropical island get-away than a new computer, a new study suggests.

The results show that people's satisfaction with their life-experience purchases — anything from seeing a movie to going on a vacation — tends to start out high and go up over time. On the other hand, although they might be initially happy with that shiny new iPhone or the latest in fashion, their satisfaction with these items wanes with time.

The findings, based on eight separate studies, agree with previous research showing that experience-related buys lead to more happiness for the consumer. But the current work provides some insight into why.

Among the reasons:

• People are more likely to mull over their material purchases than they are experiential ones, second-guessing themselves about whether they really made the best choice.
• We tend to think of experiences more on their own terms, rather than in comparison with other things.
• It's easier for us to decide on an experiential purchase than a material one.
• We're more upset if we learn that someone else got a better deal, or that a better option exists, for a material purchase than for an experience-related one.

Satisfaction with a purchase could also come down to mindset. When participants in one study thought of material purchases, such as a music CD, as an experience (many hours of enjoyable listening), they were more satisfied than those who viewed the purchase as just a material item.

In another study, 142 participants were asked to think about either a material or experience-related purchase they had made that cost at least $50. Then, they answered questions about: how difficult the decision was to make; how concerned they were that they made the right choice; and how satisfied they were with the purchase initially and at present.

The people who thought of a material purchase were significantly more likely to report feeling concerned about the buy and less satisfied with their choice at present than those who had recalled an experiential purchase.

A third study involved 164 participants who were asked how they felt about a hypothetical situation in which they had made a purchase, but later found out that other, superior choices existed. They imagined either buying a material good, such as a wristwatch, laptop, MP3 player or a pair of jeans, or an experience, including a meal at a restaurant, a movie viewing, a New York City show, or an island vacation.

Subjects who imagined a material purchase were more likely to be disturbed by the availability of better options, and in turn, reported diminished satisfaction with the buy, than those who imagined an experiential purchase.

And participants were more likely to be jealous of a rival's superior purchase if the item in question was a possession rather than an experience.

Since materials are more easily compared with other things than experiences are, material buys bring more concern and less happiness than experiential ones, the researchers from Cornell University say.

The results were published in the January issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

By Rachael Rettner, LiveScience Staff Writer

laughter, evolution

Everybody Laughs, Everybody Cries: Researchers Identify Universal Emotions

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2010) — Here's a piece of research that might leave you tickled: laughter is a universal language, according to new research. The study, conducted with people from Britain and Namibia, suggests that basic emotions such as amusement, anger, fear and sadness are shared by all humans.

Everybody shares the vast majority of their genetic makeup with each other, meaning that most of our physical characteristics are similar. We all share other attributes, too, such as having complex systems of communication to convey our thoughts, feelings and the intentions of those around us, and we are all able to express a wide range of emotions through language, sounds, facial expressions and posture. However, the way that we communicate is not always the same -- for example, people from different cultures may not understand the same words and phrases or body language.

In an attempt to find out if certain emotions are universal, researchers led by Professor Sophie Scott from UCL (University College London) have studied whether the sounds associated with emotions such as happiness, anger, fear, sadness, disgust and surprise are shared amongst different cultures. The results of their study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, Economic and Social Research Council, University of London Central Research Fund and UCL, are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They provide further evidence that such emotions form a set of basic, evolved functions that are shared by all humans.

Dr Disa Sauter, studied people from Britain and from the Himba, a group of over 20,000 people living in small settlements in northern Namibia as part of her PhD research at UCL. In the very remote settlements, where the data for the present study were collected, the individuals live completely traditional lives, with no electricity, running water, formal education, or any contact with people from other groups.

Participants in the study listened to a short story based around a particular emotion, for example, how a person is very sad because a relative of theirs had died recently. At the end of the story they heard two sounds -- such as crying and of laughter -- and were asked to identify which of the two sounds reflected the emotion being expressed in the story. The British group heard sounds from the Himba and vice versa.

"People from both groups seemed to find the basic emotions -- anger, fear, disgust, amusement, sadness and surprise -- the most easily recognisable," says Professor Scott, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. "This suggests that these emotions -- and their vocalisations -- are similar across all human cultures."

The findings support previous research which showed that facial expressions of these basic emotions are recognised across a wide range of cultures. Despite the considerable variation in human facial musculature, the facial muscles that are essential to produce the basic emotions are constant across individuals, suggesting that specific facial muscle structures have likely evolved to allow individuals to produce universally recognisable emotional expressions.

One positive sound was particularly well recognised by both groups of participants: laughter. Listeners from both cultures agreed that laughter signified amusement, exemplified as the feeling of being tickled.

"Tickling makes everyone laugh -- and not just humans," says Dr Disa Sauter, who tested the Himba and English participants. "We see this happen in other primates such as chimpanzees, as well as other mammals. This suggests that laughter has deep evolutionary roots, possibly originating as part of playful communication between young infants and mothers.

"Our study supports the idea that laughter is universally associated with being tickled and reflects the feeling of enjoyment of physical play."

Previous studies have shown that smiling is universally recognised as a signal of happiness, raising the possibility that laughter is the auditory equivalent of smiles, both communicating a state of enjoyment. However, explains Professor Scott, it is possible that laughter and smiles are in fact quite different types of signals, with smiles functioning as a signal of generally positive social intent, whereas laughter may be a more specific emotional signal, originating in play.

Not all positive sounds were easily recognisable to both cultures, however. Some, such as the sound of pleasure or achievement appear not to be shared across cultures, but are instead specific to a particular group or region. The researchers believe this may be due to the function of positive emotions, which facilitate social cohesion between group members. Such bonding behaviour may be restricted to in-group members with whom social connections are built and maintained. However, it may not be desirable to share such signals with individuals who are not members of one's own cultural group.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100125173234.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29#

animal intelligence

Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'

Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps

Jonathan Leake

Dolphins have been declared the world’s second most intelligent creatures after humans, with scientists suggesting they are so bright that they should be treated as “non-human persons”.

Studies into dolphin behaviour have highlighted how similar their communications are to those of humans and that they are brighter than chimpanzees. These have been backed up by anatomical research showing that dolphin brains have many key features associated with high intelligence.

The researchers argue that their work shows it is morally unacceptable to keep such intelligent animals in amusement parks or to kill them for food or by accident when fishing. Some 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises die in this way each year.

“Many dolphin brains are larger than our own and second in mass only to the human brain when corrected for body size,” said Lori Marino, a zoologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who has used magnetic resonance imaging scans to map the brains of dolphin species and compare them with those of primates.

“The neuroanatomy suggests psychological continuity between humans and dolphins and has profound implications for the ethics of human-dolphin interactions,” she added.

Dolphins have long been recognised as among the most intelligent of animals but many researchers had placed them below chimps, which some studies have found can reach the intelligence levels of three-year-old children. Recently, however, a series of behavioural studies has suggested that dolphins, especially species such as the bottlenose, could be the brighter of the two. The studies show how dolphins have distinct personalities, a strong sense of self and can think about the future.

It has also become clear that they are “cultural” animals, meaning that new types of behaviour can quickly be picked up by one dolphin from another.

In one study, Diana Reiss, professor of psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, showed that bottlenose dolphins could recognise themselves in a mirror and use it to inspect various parts of their bodies, an ability that had been thought limited to humans and great apes.

In another, she found that captive animals also had the ability to learn a rudimentary symbol-based language.

Other research has shown dolphins can solve difficult problems, while those living in the wild co-operate in ways that imply complex social structures and a high level of emotional sophistication.

In one recent case, a dolphin rescued from the wild was taught to tail-walk while recuperating for three weeks in a dolphinarium in Australia.

After she was released, scientists were astonished to see the trick spreading among wild dolphins who had learnt it from the former captive.

There are many similar examples, such as the way dolphins living off Western Australia learnt to hold sponges over their snouts to protect themselves when searching for spiny fish on the ocean floor.

Such observations, along with others showing, for example, how dolphins could co-operate with military precision to round up shoals of fish to eat, have prompted questions about the brain structures that must underlie them.

Size is only one factor. Researchers have found that brain size varies hugely from around 7oz for smaller cetacean species such as the Ganges River dolphin to more than 19lb for sperm whales, whose brains are the largest on the planet. Human brains, by contrast, range from 2lb-4lb, while a chimp’s brain is about 12oz.

When it comes to intelligence, however, brain size is less important than its size relative to the body.

What Marino and her colleagues found was that the cerebral cortex and neocortex of bottlenose dolphins were so large that “the anatomical ratios that assess cognitive capacity place it second only to the human brain”. They also found that the brain cortex of dolphins such as the bottlenose had the same convoluted folds that are strongly linked with human intelligence.

Such folds increase the volume of the cortex and the ability of brain cells to interconnect with each other. “Despite evolving along a different neuroanatomical trajectory to humans, cetacean brains have several features that are correlated with complex intelligence,” Marino said.

Marino and Reiss will present their findings at a conference in San Diego, California, next month, concluding that the new evidence about dolphin intelligence makes it morally repugnant to mistreat them.

Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, who has written a series of academic studies suggesting dolphins should have rights, will speak at the same conference.

“The scientific research . . . suggests that dolphins are ‘non-human persons’ who qualify for moral standing as individuals,” he said.

beauty and science

I was emailed the Journal article on the 30th -- it is saved in my email... posting a "social" (read: taken from College News) review of the paper.


Men and women both go for pretty faces…

....But there are differences in short and long-term relationships and male-female attractiveness

Kate Oczypok

So, when you’re out there looking for a mate, do you tend to go for a pretty face? Or more of a hot body? The Frisky recently reported that, in point of fact, men and women actually both go for the face over the body.

A new study said that men and women go for beautiful faces when they’re going for long-term relationships, but short-term ones are another story: women are more likely to go for nice faces over bodies but guys definitely wanted hot bodies over faces. The article quips, “gives a whole new meaning to the word phrase ‘butter face.’” How many of you have heard or used that term while in school?

The study, by Dr. Thomas E. Currie at the Royal Society University in London, assessed the relative importance of the face and body in judgments of human physical attractiveness, according to the Official Journal of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society. Basically, the results of the study suggest that faces and bodies signal different information about potential mates.

Touching further on the idea of the face, an article from psychcentral.com said that new research at the University of California Santa Barbara said that women pick up cues in men’s faces that show that they’re interested in children. They then use those to figure out if they’re attracted enough to have a long-term relationship with the guy.

So ladies, maybe next time you’re with a guy long-term, see if you subconsciously pick up on cues that you may be searching for his interest in having kids. Also, the more masculine a man’s face is, the more likely a woman is going to be attracted to them for a short-term relationship, according to Psych Central.

About this: My two best friends here are males and they always insist men choose women based on whether or not they have a pretty face. I used to not buy this but the more I think about it, the more I realize that maybe it’s true. The study is honestly what sold me. Girls like Megan Fox, or cougars perhaps, are boys’ things to have fun with for a bit. But in the long-term, if a guy wants to marry you, what actually matters is whether or not he thinks your face is attractive enough to stare at for 50-something years.

So what are your thoughts on face vs. body attractiveness?

10/1/09
http://www.collegenews.com/index.php?/dating/men_and_women_both_go_for_pretty_faces_10012009122323582/

evolution, clues to human origins

Hello Ardi! Welcome to our evolutionary tree! I'm posting the discovery news article because its the simpliest and most concise of articles I've encountered so far.


This is a drawing of what Ardipithecus ramidus ("Ardi") likely looked like. The 4.4 million-year-old hominid opens up a new chapter on human evolution because, as the lead researcher says, "it is as close as we have ever come to finding the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans."
J.H. Matternes/Science/AAAS

'Ardi,' Oldest Human Ancestor, Unveiled

"Ardi" dates to 4.4. million years and may be the oldest human ancestor ever found.

By Jennifer Viegas

The world's oldest and most complete skeleton of a potential human ancestor -- named "Ardi," short for Ardipithecus ramidus -- has been unveiled by an international team of 47 researchers.

Their unprecedented, 17-year investigation of Ardi is detailed in a special issue of the journal Science.

The 4.4 million-year-old hominid opens up a new chapter on human evolution because "it is as close as we have ever come to finding the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans," project co-director Tim White told Discovery News.

"This is not an ordinary fossil," added White, a paleontologist in the University of California at Berkeley's Human Evolution Research Center. "It's not a chimp. It's not a human."

Instead, he said, "It shows us what we used to be."

Placement on the Human History Timeline

The actual last common ancestor of chimps and humans probably lived between five and 10 million years ago, based on genetic and other estimates, so Ardi falls somewhere between this still unknown species and "Lucy," the famous 3.2 million-year-old "ape-man" hominid, also found in Ethiopia, belonging to the genus Australopithecus.

"If you dig up in younger time horizons at the site where Ardipithecus was found you have Australopithecus, so we feel that we are in a position to say that Ardipithecus may have given rise to Australopithecus, which in turn gave rise to Homo (sapiens)," White said.

Ardi, who was a female, may or may not have had any direct descendants. Her species may have given rise to Lucy's species, Australopithecus.

Bones Reveal Appearance and Behavior

Gen Suwa, one of the project's paleoanthropologists, spotted the very first Ardipithecus fossil in 1992 while conducting a foot survey in the Afar Rift in northeastern Ethiopia. Since that time, a total of 110 specimens representing a minimum of 36 different individuals of Ardi's species have been found within a sediment layer at the site that was precisely dated using multiple established techniques.

Ardi is the most complete of these individuals, as the skeleton includes her skull, teeth, arms, hands, pelvis, legs and feet. Based on these findings, the researchers know that she and others in her species were both tree- and land-dwelling omnivores. They had a relatively small, chimp-sized brain, long arms and short legs.

The scientists suspect Ardi used simple tools, such as twigs and leaves, but no stone tools were found at the dig site.

"Believe me, we've looked for them," said White, who added that the earliest known stone tools date to 2.6 million years ago.

The First Key Differences Between Hominids and Apes

Ardi could climb trees, using lengthy fingers and big toes for grasping, but she could also walk on the ground on two feet. Detecting that latter ability was critical for the scientists, as it appears two key features distinguished the very first hominid from other apes: walking with two feet on the ground and a reduction in the size of the canine teeth.

Both of these characteristics provide clues as to what might have caused the last common ancestor to diverge from other apes.

The Making of Families, Not War

"We now believe that social, instead of environmental, change, led to the species division," White explained. "Natural selection involves reproductive success, so Professor Owen Lovejoy of the project suspects that Ardipithecus males were probably pair-bonded to specific females, and may have aided them by gathering and carrying foods."

Such provisioning by males would have favored those males who could best walk on two feet, according to the researchers, allowing them free hands for carrying food. Provisioned females could have "intensified their parenting" and carried their infants, which is easier to do in woodland environments when the forelimbs are free.

The reduction in canine teeth, which Lovejoy called "weapons of aggression," further suggests that Ardipithecus males were not as physically hostile with each other as larger-canined chimpanzees are today.

Myth Busted: Humans Never Evolved From Chimpanzees

Although chimpanzees remain our closest living primate relatives, there is now no evidence that Homo sapiens somehow evolved from chimpanzee-like individuals, losing chimp characteristics over time. Instead, after the chimp/hominid split, the two groups appear to have gone their separate evolutionary ways, developing the unique traits seen in each today.

Alan Walker, a professor of biological anthropology at Pennsylvania State University who did not work on the project, said that the Ardipithecus fossils "tell us that the anatomy of closely related living species cannot predict the anatomy of their ancestors very accurately."

Walker said, "It now seems, from the analyses carried out by the discoverers and their colleagues, that the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was much less chimpanzee-like than previously thought."

He concluded that the unveiling of the new hominid "is certain to cause considerable rethinking of not only our evolutionary past, but also that of our living relatives the great apes."