It's a complicated business, happiness research, and that is no doubt because happiness itself is complicated. Ian, at Marbury, has the details of a study that correlates populations which are happier, on the one hand, with higher rates of suicide, on the other. (I'd better throw in there an 'all other things equal', just in case.) I find this result puzzling. I find it puzzling because, if the happier population is a place of more suicides, doesn't this immediately - even ipso facto - decrease the happiness level being measured? I mean, some of the people in the happier populations are so unhappy, they're dead. Surely that must be factored into the aggregate result.
The researchers' hypothesis as to why greater happiness correlates with a higher suicide rate is that 'human beings measure themselves against each other'; those tending towards feeling unhappy feel more unhappy when others around them are cheerful. I think the hypothesis is incomplete. There's also the fact that happier people have more time to contemplate ways of doing themselves in; less happy people are preoccupied with trying to make it through the day. (Via.)
