# data[].attributes.body
A summary of what I learned in my PBL

# data[].attributes.body
Friendship is probably one of the most crucial parts of obtaining happiness. Without my friends, I wouldn't have anyone to hangout with or tell all of my secrets. I think that friendship creates a positive energy crucial to any person's happiness.

# data[].attributes.body
In the Great Gatsby, I learned that money isn't a key to true happiness. Tom and Daisy don't truly love each other and it is evident through their actions. The only thing keeping them together is their money, which is the main reason they aren't happy. Gatsby also isn't truly happy unless he is with Daisy. This goes to show that relationships with the people that you care about are what cause true happiness.

# data[].attributes.body
This article shows that the better the income results in a tiny bit more happiness, but not by a huge margin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From a lecture series presented by Professor Mark Leary, Ph.D.

Does money make people happy? We don't have all the answers by any means, but we do know much more about happiness than ever. And the bottom line is that scientific research suggests that most of the things that people believe make them happy really won't-at least not in the long run. So, let's unravel the mystery of happiness.

Seriously, Can You Buy Happiness?

So what does make people happy? Many people think that they will be happier if they just had more money. What are the facts, here?

Well, research shows that it's certainly difficult to be truly happy if you live in poverty. If you're always hungry or cold or living in unsafe surroundings or always owe somebody money, happiness can be elusive. So, below a certain income level, poor people are in fact less happy and less satisfied with their lives than most of us.

Learn more: Solving Psychological Mysteries

But above the poverty level, things get complicated.

Researchers at Princeton University analyzed data from a sample of over 450,000 adults in the United States. These respondents reported their annual income, and they rated how much they experienced positive emotions on the previous day. Emotional quality was assessed by questions asking people to think about the previous day and to rate how much happiness and enjoyment they experienced, and how much they smiled and laughed.

The results showed that, up until an income of somewhere between $60,000 and $75,000-in 2010 dollars-more money was associated with feeling a little bit more happy. So a higher proportion of people who make, say, $70,000 tend to be happier than people who make, say, $40,000. The difference isn't large, but it is statistically significant.

Money "Fixes Problems"

The reason that money increases happiness up to a point seems to be that having a certain amount of money helps to fix certain problems in life that make people stressed out and unhappy. If my car breaks down, and I don't have enough money to fix it, that's stressful. If I have a health problem and not enough money, I have two sets of worries-my health and my money. If I get divorced and there's not enough money for legal costs and keeping up two houses, the financial issues make the breakup worse than it would otherwise be.

Learn more: Why Do We Have Emotions?

So, it's not so much that money makes people happy as that money can help to solve problems that would otherwise lower our happiness. So, having a certain amount of money helps take the sting out of our adversities.

But, here's the interesting thing: after people have somewhere between $60,000 and $75,000 a year, there's no relationship between income and happiness.

Let me say that again, once a person has about $75,000 a year, having more money is not associated with greater happiness! Not at all. The average millionaire is no happier than the average person who makes $75,000 a year.

Many people have trouble reconciling this finding with the fact that they know that they feel happy when they get a raise at work, even a small raise. Or they may even feel happy when they find a quarter on the sidewalk! But that's a very fleeting feeling.

The day you get your raise, you probably are happier; and maybe even the day after that. But how long does that glow last? Many people think that money will bring them lots of happiness for a long time, but it actually brings them only a little happiness for a short time.

Hello reader! You could be getting much more from this article by watching its accompanying video lecture on The Great Courses Plus! Click here for your free trial-the best professors in the world are waiting for you.

And, you can see that this is true if you think about your own earning history. People generally make more money as they get older. So, many of you who are working make more money today than you did, say, 10 years ago. Are you happier now on a daily basis because you make more money?

And, if more money makes people happy, then as a society, we ought to be much happier today than people were, say, 50 or 60 years ago. Even adjusting for inflation, the average person in the United States is much better off than they were in, say, 1940. In 1940, a third of all houses still didn't have running water and indoor toilets! But national polls show that people actually rated themselves happier in the 1940s than they do today.

I know that it seems like it, but having more money and big screen TVs and expensive cars don't make people happier. Of course, this is something philosophers have observed for hundreds of years. But now science is showing just how right they were.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Psychology of Happiness-Does Money Make People Happy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From a lecture series presented by Professor Mark Leary, Ph.D. So what does make people happy? Many people think that they will be happier if they just had more money. What are the facts, here? Well, research shows that it's certainly difficult to be truly happy if you live in poverty.

# data[].attributes.headline
Is laughter contagious? Can laughter make people happier?

# data[].attributes.subject
Is laughter contagious? Can laughter make people happier?

# data[].attributes.body
Studies actually do show that laughter is contagious and I think it also makes people happier. I think this video shows different people laughing for different reasons. I found myself smiling and laughing more and more throughout this video as it went on.

# data[].attributes.headline
 Does weather make a difference in mood?

# data[].attributes.subject
 Does weather make a difference in mood?

# data[].attributes.body
I like this article for the information that it has. Personally, my mood improves when it is the summer or late spring unlike the winter when I'm in more of a mellow mood.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Now that April is here, baseball season has returned and spring begins to take hold. People are excited that better weather will help them shake the winter doldrums and "improve their mood."

But while many people express these sentiments, it raises the question of whether the data back up such assumptions. Do our moods and self-evaluations actually improve with the arrival of spring and summer?

This question is complex and eludes a simple yes-or-no answer. For example, it is clear that weather strongly influences people who suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD). They often experience a depressed affect in winter that abates with the arrival of spring, primarily because of increased daylight (Oren et al., 1994). So for people who suffer from SAD, yes, better weather is a blessing indeed.

Yet when it comes to other people, the scientific literature has found that the weather-mood link is small-and sometimes surprising (e.g., Keller et al., 2005). For example, Deniseen et al. (2008) studied more than 1,600 people, examining daily reports of their well-being along with local weather station conditions (e.g., temperature, sunlight, wind conditions). The findings were interesting in that none of the weather measurements significantly predicted positive affect (e.g., feeling enthusiastic, inspired, determined). There was, however, evidence that negative affect (e.g., feeling jittery, distressed, irritable) increased with warmer-and not colder-temperatures, and decreased with more sunlight and less wind. Overall, the effects were small, and the findings observed indicated that although weather was unrelated to people's positive affect, warmer temperatures actually increased people's negative feelings, even though more sunlight, as one might expect, had a more desirable effect-but again, the effects were modest in size.

However, it is likely that better weather provides us with other, indirect benefits. For example, nicer weather often allows people to get outside to exercise and commune more with nature. Having urban residents spend 90 minutes walking through a park resulted in people showing less ruminative thinking and exhibiting more healthy brain activity (Bratman et al., 2015). Similarly, research has shown that hikers show 50% boosts in creativity after just a few days of hiking while being disconnected from technology (Atchley et al., 2012). Thus, even if the weather itself does not produce significant direct benefits for individuals, getting outside because of nicer weather can improve our health and mental performance through greater connection with nature and more exercise.
What about summer love?
Does better weather lead to the initiation of new romantic relationships? There is a belief that spring and summer are the seasons for love, while fall is when depressing break-up songs earn their popularity. Interestingly, Facebook can provide some insight into this issue in that the website tracks changes in relationship status across the calendar (albeit an imperfect measure of romantic relationship initiation and dissolution). Some interesting trends emerged in a study of users in the United States by Facebook researchers in 2012: More relation dissolutions occurred during the summer-June was the worst month for Facebook users' relationships, regardless of user age-while the days with the most "new relationships" occurred in February, right after Valentine's Day. In short, if Facebook is a barometer of relationships, summer weather brings about the demise of relationships, not their flourishing. Maybe the dissolution of some relationships is a cause for joy, but only a true cynic would conclude that breakups, on average, bring people greater happiness.
Summer is prime time for crime
One final note about summertime: In addition to its being a potentially bad time to maintain a romantic relationship, it also tends to be a period when more antisocial behavior occurs. In a classic study by Anderson and Anderson (1984) examining crime data in Houston, the number of aggressive crimes (e.g., murder, rape) went up as the temperature rose. Similar data emerged from examining more than 5 million publicly available crime reports in Chicago since 2001 (van Zanten, 2016). These data show that for violent crimes like assault, robbery, sexual assault, and battery, there is a strong linear trend of more of these crimes occurring as the temperature increases from cold (20°F) to warm (90°F).

Clearly, such weather-crime findings have alternative explanations (e.g., warm weather may simply increase the amount of contact that people have with others that is necessary for person-on-person crime activity rather than warmer temperatures causing antisocial behavior directly). However, controlled laboratory research has repeatedly shown that hot temperatures increase hostile thoughts and feelings that trigger aggressive actions (Anderson et al., 1995).
Summary
Overall, it is interesting that although people instinctively believe that better weather results in better moods, the evidence for this assumption is weak. In general, the effects of "better weather" on people's feelings are modest, inconsistent, and at times counter to commonly-held expectations. Moreover, warm weather seems associated with breakups and more antisocial behavior. Yet there can be benefits, not only directly for people who suffer from SAD, but via indirect effects when people get out in nature and exercise more. As with many assumptions in life, presumed cause-effect relations can be wrong. Often, the key to experiencing benefits depends on what people do with their opportunities rather than whether they simply have them in the first place.
References
Anderson, C. A., & Anderson, D. C. (1984). Ambient temperature and violent crime: Tests of linear and curvilinear hypotheses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 91-97.

Anderson, C. A., Deuser, W. E., & DeNeve, K. M. (1995). Hot temperatures, hostile affect, hostile cognition, and arousal: Tests of a general model of affective aggression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 434-448.

Atchley, R. A., Strayer, D. L., & Atchley, P. (2012). Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51474.

Bratman, G. N., Hamilton, J. P., Hahn, K. S., Daily, G. C., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112, 8567-8572.

Denissen, J. J. A., Butalid, L., Penke, L., & van Aken, M. A. G. (2008). The effects of weather on daily mood: A multilevel approach. Emotion, 8, 662-667.

Facebook (March 21, 2012). The right time for love: Tracking the seasonality of relationship formation. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-right-time-for-....

Keller, M. C., et al. (2005). A warm heart and a clear head: The contingent effects of weather on mood and cognition. Psychological Science, 16, 724-731.

Oren, D., Moul, D., Schawartz, P., Brown, C., Yamada, E., & Rosenthal, N. (1994). Exposure to ambient light in patients with winter seasonal affective disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 151, 591-593.

van Zanten, E. (April 3, 2016). Chicago crime vs. weather. Retrieved from http://crime.static-eric.com/.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Does Warmer Weather Really Make You Happier?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Now that April is here, baseball season has returned and spring begins to take hold. People are excited that better weather will help them shake the winter doldrums and "improve their mood." But while many people express these sentiments, it raises the question of whether the data back up such assumptions.

# data[].attributes.body
I find myself most happy when its really hot outside and I'm playing soccer with my friends. I think that money is something that only makes people happy short term. Relationships and experiences with people are what last long term and matter the most.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Benjamin Head - Unit 4 KWL - Student Template*