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  • Essay / Happiness and Success: Is There a Correlation Between Them

    The purpose of this essay “Happiness and Success” is to gather evidence consistent with the argument that happiness can precede and promote success. Since the majority of people spend a large part of their lives at work and many derive some sort of identity from it, this area is often considered a relevant area when people evaluate their level of success in life. Here is a review of the literature which will focus on the effect of subjective well-being on professional success. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayIn the past, the vast majority of psychological research on emotional states has focused on the negative aspects of human life. The so-called “disease model” has proven to be very useful over the years, but it also has many drawbacks. One of the major drawbacks of such an approach as described by Mr. Seligman is that it often ignores relatively peaceful people and how to improve their "normal" lives. Positive psychology, as introduced by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, instead focuses on positive emotions and their importance in long-term flourishing. The rise of positive psychology has legitimized research into happiness and other positive states, as opposed to negative outcomes and experiences of the past. dominant disease model. So, over the past decade, numerous studies have proven a strong relationship between success – including career, marriage and friendship – and happiness. The question remains whether this is because success breeds happiness or rather because positive affect reinforces success. Until recently, most research posited that achieving certain levels of success ultimately results in a general feeling of happiness: work hard, succeed, and then you will be happy. . This intuitive formula is ingrained in us by society from the day we are born. However, an important caveat to this reasoning is that once one achieves one's goals, one will redefine what success looks like in the hopes that achieving these newly set goals will bring even greater happiness. Furthermore, research suggests that this belief pattern is likely broken because it is backward. Research over the past decade in the fields of positive psychology, management, and neuroscience has proven that this basic formula works the other way around: happiness as a precursor rather than a simple result of success. In his book The Happiness Advantage, S. Achor states that the brain functions significantly better in positive states than in negative or neutral states. This “happiness advantage,” as he calls it, improves both career and educational outcomes and can mean the difference between leading a successful life and not fulfilling one’s potential. Evidence of the effect of happiness on achievement has become more widespread over the past decade. and can be divided into 3 main categories: cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental. Cross-sectional studies examine people at a specific point in time. Although such research can provide evidence of a link between happiness and success, it is important to note that it cannot determine the direction of causality. An extensive review of cross-sectional literature validates the hypothesis that happy people are more likely to succeed in a work environment than their less happy peers. To begin with, this proposition was confirmed byFrish since he was able to show that happy students are more likely to graduate. Additionally, Wright and colleagues successfully demonstrated that happy people on average receive more favorable ratings from their managers and colleagues. These positive reviews are a good indicator that happy people perform better. However, as Boehm & Lyubomirsky point out, these results should be weakened to some extent because there is always the possibility of the so-called halo effect: people with a high positivity rate Affected people are more likely to receive additional positive characteristics from the people around them. In addition, several studies show that people with a higher level of subjective well-being are generally more satisfied with their work than people who are dissatisfied. Another way to examine whether the performance of individuals high in positive affect is superior is to examine their work engagement. Happy people show greater interest and commitment to their work. Compared to happy people, employees with lower levels of subjective well-being generally suffer more absenteeism and burnout. Greaen's findings that happy individuals are more likely to be part of supervisory groups provides more evidence for the relative success of employees who experience greater positive emotions. Furthermore, several studies suggest a positive impact of happiness on income that is even stronger than that between education and income. In conclusion, the cross-sectional empirical literature reveals robust and widespread correlations between many factors of career success and happiness. However, as noted earlier, these cross-sectional data cannot answer the question of whether happiness causes success or vice versa. The question therefore remains whether success reinforces happiness or whether it is the other way around. To establish the temporal order of happiness and career success, the longitudinal literature is reviewed. Although longitudinal research is much less in-depth than cross-sectional research, it validates the hypothesis that happiness translates into increased career success. As Haase, Poulin, and Heckhausen, among others, have demonstrated, happy people are characterized by higher levels of job search success. In general, they are more likely to benefit from follow-up interviews and find subsequent employment. Additionally, longitudinal data show that the benefits of being happy extend to job satisfaction and career success. A study by Roberts, Caspi & Moffitt showed that happy teenagers were more likely to have prestigious jobs later in life. At the same time, they observed that young adults who gained higher status also became happier as a result, suggesting a bidirectional relationship between happiness and achievement. The idea that happy people are more successful is also more or less reflected by Zelenski, Murphy and Jenkins. Their research shows that happy directors are more productive than unhappy directors. However, an important caveat of their investigation concerns the nature of self-evaluation, because happy managers intend to rate their own productivity more favorably than unhappy administrators, even though they may not not been more productive. Like the cross-sectional literature, the longitudinal literature provides evidence that happy people.55.1.5