{"id":129,"date":"2011-12-02T10:33:02","date_gmt":"2011-12-02T18:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/?p=129"},"modified":"2011-12-02T10:33:02","modified_gmt":"2011-12-02T18:33:02","slug":"art-and-happiness-new-research-indicates-4-out-of-6-happiest-activities-are-arts-related","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/2011\/12\/art-and-happiness-new-research-indicates-4-out-of-6-happiest-activities-are-arts-related.html","title":{"rendered":"Art and Happiness: New research indicates 4 out of 6 happiest activities are arts-related (!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, an article that was actually published nearly a month ago on Chatelaine.com<\/a> passed through my Facebook feed four times in two days.\u00a0 The article, titled \u201cThe three times people are happiest\u2014you may be surprised,\u201d rather vaguely discussed a research project out of the London School of Economics that was mapping happiness levels associated with various activities\u2014and the results, per the article, indicated that, behind sex and exercise, the next most happiness-inducing activity was attending the theatre.<\/p>\n

This landed with a big thud inside my head, as it sits so squarely next to a lot of the work we\u2019re trying to do to understand the impacts, effects and benefits of the arts beyond the economic, so I did a little research and discovered that the project is called the Mappiness Project<\/a> and it is the graduate work of an LSE researcher named George MacKerron<\/a>.\u00a0 And I emailed him, he emailed back, and we chatted briefly.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s the shocker\u2014the Chatelaine article, and the Marie Claire<\/a> article it\u2019s based on, left out potentially the most amazing part of MacKerron\u2019s (very preliminary) results so far.\u00a0 Of the top six most happiness-inducing activities, again after sex and exercise, the other four are all arts-related<\/span>.\u00a0<\/strong> They are, in descending order:<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Intimacy\/making love
\n<\/span>2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sports\/running\/exercise
\n3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Theatre\/dance\/concert
\n4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Singing\/performing
\n5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Exhibition\/museum\/library
\n6)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hobbies\/arts\/crafts<\/p>\n

MacKerron\u2019s research, which relies on an iPhone app that randomly dings at you twice a day and has you take a short survey on your happiness and alertness, has garnered three million data points from 45,000 users in the UK over the last 18 months.\u00a0 \u00a0And it\u2019s important to point out that, of those 3 million responses, only 3,500 were in the theatre\/dance\/concert category (about .3%).\u00a0 But, and this is important, those 3,500 people who responded during or immediately after that activity were demonstrably happier.\u00a0 The way McKerron put it to me, \u201cSomeone at the theatre will average about 6 points happier than someone who isn\u2019t.\u201d\u00a0 (It’s on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being completely unhappy and 100 being completely happy).\u00a0 This, compared to someone having sex, who averages 12 points happier than someone who isn\u2019t, and I see a new ad campaign.<\/p>\n

MacKerron and his co-researcher\/advisor,\u00a0Susana Mouranto, are (at least for now) particularly looking at the impact of the environment around an individual on their happiness, and so as part of that they have attempted to control for confounding variables in an attempt to ensure that they\u2019re actually measuring the happiness induced by the event of that moment, and not the general happiness level of the individual.\u00a0 In this case, MacKerron is intrigued by the theatre result in part because theatre attendance requires advance directed action (i.e. you have to buy a ticket), so that tends to mean that he feels more comfortable extrapolating that they\u2019re happier because<\/em> they\u2019re in the theatre, and not in the theatre because <\/em>they\u2019re happier.\u00a0 He has more trouble with such conclusions in places like parks.<\/p>\n

Survey responses that come in more than an hour after the solicitation are discounted in an effort to ensure that people are actually recounting their happiness levels as accurately as possible (and, at the same time, to be realistic about allowing a person to finish up (ahem) whatever activity they\u2019re doing at the time).\u00a0 And so, in this way, MacKerron\u2019s work isn\u2019t really about long term echoes of an experience\u2014more instant gratification than long-term emotional health.\u00a0 Which is in itself interesting.\u00a0 And, while he didn\u2019t have the demographic data in a useable form when he chatted with me, he does have demographics on the respondents as well as relatively-accurate GPS location tracking of where people were when they responded, which spark two ideas in my head: such research has the possibility of (1) helping us better understand if our work is differently-affecting different people and (2) allowing us to actually map of particular events (or organizations) are instigating higher happiness scores in general.<\/p>\n

All in all, MacKerron\u2019s work, which he\u2019s also discussed in a TEDx talk<\/a>, has a lot of potential to tell us more about what role the arts play in the emotional well-being of individuals\u2014and I can\u2019t wait for him to begin publishing his work, which is in process.<\/p>\n

Across all types of theatre work (see (very preliminary) graph), our research into intrinsic impact indicates that captivation (i.e. getting lost in the work and losing track of time) and emotional resonance are particularly affecting impacts with theatre.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In this sense, then, perhaps another word for captivation (especially in context with sex and exercise) might be euphoria, which Webster\u2019s dryly defines as \u201ca feeling of well-being or elation,\u201d and Wikipedia more colorfully defines as \u201ca medically recognized mental and emotional condition in which a person experiences intense feelings of well-being, elation, happiness, ecstasy, excitement and joy.”<\/p>\n

Six points happier.\u00a0 Six points, I would argue, healthier.\u00a0 That\u2019s awesome data, and I can\u2019t wait to see more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, an article that was actually published nearly a month ago on Chatelaine.com passed through my Facebook feed four times in two days.\u00a0 The article, titled \u201cThe three times people are happiest\u2014you may be surprised,\u201d rather vaguely discussed a research project out of the London School of Economics that was mapping happiness levels associated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-129","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"category-research","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}