Happiness

The section of the book with regards to happiness I found very interesting. Some things that are correlated to happiness I wasn't surprised about, and some things I wasn't surprised about. The one thing that didn't surprise me at all was that happiness doesn't decrease with old age. I know from reading psychology magazines that self esteem increases as we age, I assume because our crystallized is always increasing and doesn't decline much with old age. This is also increased with the positive effect, which suggests that we remember our positive experiences way more than our negative ones. As we age, these positive experiences accumulate and make us happier when we reminisce upon them. The other thing I wasn't surprised about was that regular exercise makes us happier, because it's a staple of bringing oxygen to our brains, in addition to being a staple in good brain health.

The one surprising thing I found was that marriage made people happier. I know that a great marriage in theory would produce more happiness. However based upon divorce rates in the country, it would seem that most people aren't very happy after all. Also, I was a little surprised that money and happiness wasn't correlated to happiness. For me, I love technology and so when I make purchases that make my life easier like a great laptop for example, I'm convinced that it increases my utility. I knew that a lot of people over estimate how much money would make them happy, but I was still shocked that there is literally no correlation between money and happiness. I suppose that all of these conclusions are based on science, so I need to adjust my opinions in order to lessen my cognitive dissonance on these matters.