Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Happiness?

Are you happy? What does that even mean? And why are we asking?

Good questions. Happiness, it turns out, is important to our health.

A lot of scientific research surrounds the subject of happiness, but one of the biggest challenges of that research is understanding just how to define happiness. After all, happiness can mean different things to different people.

Let’s start by separating true happiness from, for example, the very pleasant but fleeting “oh yum” feeling when eating ice cream. Happiness as it relates to health could be more accurately defined as a mostly positive, peaceful, and optimistic state of mind.

What’s the scientific link between that kind of happiness and health? Find out more with this short quiz:

True or False

Happiness is linked to a healthier lifestyle.

True.

Happiness has been linked to positive and beneficial health habits that promote a greater sense of wellbeing, including a healthier diet, engaging in more physical activity and overcoming poor sleeping habits.

Happiness is contagious.

True.

A 2008 study of 5,000 individuals over 20 years found that happiness spreads like a beneficial virus through social networks. The researchers found that when an individual becomes happy, the network effect can be measured up to three degrees. In other words, one person’s happiness triggers a chain reaction that benefits not only his friends, but his friends’ friends, and his friends’ friends’ friends. The effect lasts for up to one year. Conversely, the same study found (thankfully) that sadness does not spread through social networks as robustly as happiness.

Money is key to happiness.

True and False.

Two researchers who have looked at this question in depth—and came up with opposing conclusions—collaborated on a recent study of Americans that confirmed that happiness rises steeply with income and then plateaus. The researchers concluded that money is just one of the many determinants of happiness, not the secret to happiness. In other words, money can probably help a bit, but it’s not everything. Also, there’s some evidence that happy people may earn more, so perhaps happiness and money do have other connections.

Happiness may have a genetic basis.

True.

We all know people who just seem to have been born with a sunny outlook. That’s probably because happiness is at least partially genetic, according to an article in Harvard Medicine. Researchers at the University of Minnesota found that identical twins appear to share not only the same DNA, but the same general level of happiness, regardless of whether they were raised together or separately. But that’s not to say that environment doesn’t play a role, too, or that we can’t learn to cultivate happiness despite our genes telling us otherwise.

Happiness can impact heart health.

True.

There’s evidence that happiness predicts lower heart rate and blood pressure. In one study, participants rated their happiness over 30 times in one day and then again three years later. The initially happiest participants had a lower heart rate on follow-up (about six beats slower per minute), and the happiest participants during the follow-up had better blood pressure.

Happier people live longer.

True and False.

A 2010 study followed almost 7,000 people from California’s Alameda County for nearly three decades, finding that the people who were more satisfied with life at the beginning were less likely to die during the course of the study. But a 2005 meta-analysis examining the results of other studies on health and happiness speculates that experiencing positive emotion could actually be harmful in people who are very sick with late-stage diseases. That increased risk might be due to the fact that happier people underreport their symptoms and don’t get the right treatment, or take worse care of themselves because they are overly optimistic.

Also True: We Can Work on Happiness Habits

More than 2000 years ago, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle observed, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim, and the end of human existence.”

If that’s true, we could probably all benefit from thinking more deeply about what makes us happy and why. The good news is that we can develop better happiness habits that include:

• spending quality time with loved ones
• engaging in acts of kindness
• expressing gratitude
• finding ways to celebrate milestones, achievements and events
• enjoying time in nature
• learning to relax and learning to “go with the flow.”