Psychology

There are many similarities and differences that are exhibited by different individuals in the society. Some are as a result of genetic make up while others are influenced by environment. Surprisingly, even people who are born of the same parents are always different in many and diverse ways. For instance, some people are always happier than others even when they are faced with difficult situations like stress, hardship or even trauma. On the other hand, some individuals are never happy and if at times they become happy, they never show it. Therefore, all individuals become happy at times, but some show it and others suppress it and that is the reason why it has been assumed that some individuals are happier than others. Individual differences may be the main reason why some people appear to be happier than others as all individuals are faced with hardships at particular times in their lives. This paper shall discuss some of the psychological as well as other reasons that make some people to be happier than others.

Studies of Klar (1999) illustrate that happiness may be interpreted differently by different people.  Most of the psychologists define happiness as the ability of an individual to cope with all situations with a positive attitude and with positive emotions. Different explanations have been given by psychologists to explain the reason as to why some people appear to be happy than others. Some have been supported by scientific evidence while others have not been supported by any form of evidence.

Studies of Malinowski (2008) illustrate that happiness is not as a result of experience but it is a result of ability to experience. The same studies record that meditation improves the cognitive ability of the brain because people who meditate are happier than those who do not meditate at all. Studies of Swain (n.d) argue that happiness is affected by the personality and the biological or genetic factors. Further studies illustrate that people of different personalities exhibit different levels of happiness as introverts are less happy compared to extroverts. Biologically, the same study records that there is a possibility that the neurotransmitters which affect the negative and the positive emotions are determined by genetics. Lyubomirsky (1994) argues that the only difference between happy and unhappy individuals is that happy individuals are always in a position to experience and react to all events and situations of life  in a more positive and adaptive way.

There may be so many reasons as to why there is always a different level of happiness between individuals. Studies of Sonja (2001) illustrate that some of the cognitive and motivational processes distinguish happy individuals from those who are unhappy. One of the processes concerns how people compare themselves to their peers.  Most of the unhappy people in the society always consider themselves to be at a lower level in relation to their peers. This may be in terms of achievements or even physical appearance. Such people are usually never satisfied with life which results to an unhappy status unlike the happier people who are satisfied most of the times because they do not consider their peers to be better than them.

Self evaluation which involves how people judge themselves is a major reason as to why some people are happier than others. There are people who always victimize themselves for all the problems they encounter and the problems of others. Such people cannot afford to be happy even if the prevailing situation dictates happiness because they harbor so many worries about their own shortcomings and the shortcomings of others. More often than not, such people exhibit poor self evaluation techniques unlike most of the happy people who exhibit good self evaluation techniques as highlighted by studies of King  Sheldon (2001) and Carr (2004).

There are certain people who usually harbor bad feelings about other people in the society which makes them to demonstrate a negative attitude towards other people and towards a lot of situations in life. The attitude or the perception contributes so much to the emotions of people such that most people who have always been happy perceive situations and people positively. Dissonance reduction is yet another factor which involves how people justify important and trivial choices in their lives.  These ideas which are borrowed from the Construal theory of happiness show that the level of happiness is determined by a persons cognitive ability to deal with situations that happen daily as well as the challenges of life.  Individuals whose cognitive ability enables them to deal adequately with the challenges and experiences are usually happier compared to those people whose cognitive ability does not enable them to meet daily challenges adequately (Sonja, 2002).

Sirgy (2002) argues that individuals are the authors of their own happiness. The scale that individuals use to measure their satisfaction dictates their happiness. The study continues to argue that if someone measures satisfaction with the greatest moments of their life, the most probable outcome would be unhappiness but if the level of satisfaction is measured with the difficult situations or the tough days in life, the resultant factor is usually happiness. It is therefore clear that the reason why majority are usually unhappy is due to lack of satisfaction.

People who usually have a high self esteem are most of the times happier than people of low self esteem. There are many reasons that can lead to this, some of which are related to personality types. A person of high self esteem displays high levels of confidence, a trait which helps a person to meet the challenges of life positively.  Moreover, a person of low self esteem may be unhappy most of the times a situation that can result from failure to relate with others effectively as well as failure to achieve some of the important life goals. Although it has been argued that success only leads to happiness for only a short time, it is clear that it is more likely than not for the successful people to show high levels of happiness compared to the unsuccessful people in the society (Lopez  Snyder, 2007).

Studies of Chamorro-Premuzic (2007)  Nettle (2005) indicate that there is a high relationship between personality traits and happiness.  Therefore, the reason why some people are happier than others is due to their personality types.  Extroverts are usually happier than introverts because there are individual differences between the two personality types. Emotional reactivity is quite different between personality types. Extroverts are more emotional compared to the introverts and that is the reason why they always look happier. For example, during a graduation ceremony, an extrovert individual will always look happy as the occasion is supposed to cause happiness while an introvert may remain to be gloomy even though such an occasion calls for happiness.

Information processing is yet another difference among the personality types. This relates as to how people regard the events, whether in positive or negative manner. Most of the introverts are pessimistic while the extroverts are usually optimistic. Pessimists are usually unhappy while optimistic people are usually happy because happiness is usually determined by the way people view life i.e. positively or negatively. For instance, two people may fail to go through an interview. A pessimistic person will most likely take it negatively blaming himself or herself and others while an optimistic person may take it positively, as a learning experience. The people who usually look happier are always capable of taking all the life events positively whether good or bad (Veenhoven, 2006).

According to Eysenk (2002), experiences that people go through on daily basis can illustrate why some people are happier than others. He illustrates with a case where people went through different experiences. One group had won the national lottery while the other had suffered a tragic accident. The group which had won the lottery demonstrated high levels of happiness while the group which had suffered the tragic accident demonstrated low levels of happiness. However, the happiness caused by such experiences is short lived because after some time the level of happiness of those who had won the lottery was reported to have come down while the level of happiness of those who had suffered the tragic accident was found to have increased and almost stabilizing.

According to the set point theory of happiness, factors that affect the subjective well being also affect the levels of happiness in human beings.  Such factors are inclusive of health and marital relationships as well as job satisfaction. For instance, psychologists have argued that people who get married and stay married are happier five years before marriage more than those who do not get married at all or those who get married and divorce later. Therefore, even if married people may sometimes have a lot of problems they may be happier than the divorced, widowed or those people who have never been married. In addition, diseases and injuries reduce the level of subjective well being and even after recovery the level does not stabilize to the original position (Headey 2010).

Although wealth has never been a measure of happiness, there is a possibility for those people who can comfortably afford their basic needs to be happier than those who can barely afford their basic needs. Moreover, such people are more likely than not to be satisfied with their achievements which in turn increase the level of happiness. Therefore, one can conclude that one reason why some people would appear to be happier than others is due to achievements and satisfaction derived from the careers or their jobs. People who achieve their dreams in life are most likely to be happier than those who fail to do so.

Some research findings about happiness vary greatly. Although life circumstances like relationships, wealth and health affect the levels of happiness, happiness is an emotion that largely originates from within. Moreover, individual differences that emanate from personality types, biological and genetic make up have a very big role to play because they affect how individuals adapt to different life circumstances.