It takes more than a vacation to make people happy. Indeed, vacationers tend to be happier than non-vacationers in the lead up to their break, but once they are back, there is very little difference between the two groups’ levels of happiness. These findings¹ by Jeroen Nawijn from Erasmus University in Rotterdam and NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences and his team are published online in Springer’s journal Applied Research in Quality of Life.

Research to date suggests that vacations are associated with a number of positive feelings. Jeroen Nawijn’s study sets out to answer four questions.

• Firstly, are vacationers happier than non-vacationers?
• Secondly, does a trip boost happiness?
• Thirdly, if a trip does boost happiness, how long does this effect last? And lastly, what are the roles of length of time away and vacation stress?

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Gretchen Rubin is a best-selling writer whose new book, The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, is an account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier.
Start your own Happiness Project Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox

Source: The Happiness Project

Research by the University of Warwick and the University of Manchester finds that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. The research has obvious implications for large compensation awards in law courts but also has wider implications for general public health. Chris Boyce of the University of Warwick and Alex Wood of the University of Manchester compared large data sets where 1000s of people had reported on their well-being. They then looked at how well-being changed due to therapy compared to getting sudden increases in income, such as through lottery wins or pay rises. They found that a 4 month course of psychological therapy had a large effect on well-being. They then showed that the increase in well-being from an £800 course of therapy was so large that it would take a pay rise of over £25,000 to achieve an equivalent increase in well-being. The research therefore demonstrates that psychological therapy could be 32 times more cost effective at making you happy than simply obtaining more money. [continue reading…]