Something you just cooked up out of your imagination is not a real counter-example
Edit: The point is that the title implies that you'd get the significant health benefits just by experiencing joy, but the article says that you need good social relationships, so, if we believed the article, the title would misdirect people.
For what it's worth this is a correlation study and not causal. I'm sure there are some loners out there that are very happy, but when I've had turbulent times in my life, it was my friends who helped me.
Here's this survey as well: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235068/online-gaming-so...
> A 20-year longitudinal study has traced the academic, social, and emotional development of 60 young Australians with IQs of 160 and above. Significant differences have been noted in the young people’s educational status and direction, life satisfaction, social relationships, and self-esteem as a function of the degree of academic acceleration their schools permitted them in childhood and adolescence.
> The considerable majority of young people who have been radically accelerated [skipped 3+ years of K-12], or who accelerated by 2 years, report high degrees of life satisfaction, have taken research degrees at leading universities, have professional careers, and report facilitative social and love relationships. Young people of equal abilities who accelerated by only 1 year or who have not been permitted acceleration have tended to enter less academically rigorous college courses, report lower levels of life satisfaction, and in many cases, experience significant difficulties with socialization.
> I believe that all the young people in this study would have benefited greatly, both academically and socially, from grade advancement, while the considerable majority would have benefited from radical acceleration. Sadly, only 17 were radically accelerated, and indeed, the majority (33 of the 60) were retained with age peers for the duration of their schooling.
> Several of the nonaccelerands have serious and ongoing problems with social relationships. These young people find it very difficult to sustain friendships because having been, to a large extent, socially isolated at school, they have had much less practice in their formative years in developing and maintaining social relationships. Six have had counseling. Of these, two have been treated for severe depression.
Circumstances and life adjust this up and down... but some people are just innately happy and other people are innately unhappy, and adjust to their set-point quickly after a life change.
FWIW I think that the genetic component of 'innately happy' is quite small, as I've known relatively few dirt poor people who were happy anyway, and relatively more carefree upper class folks. Though of course it's possible it's still genetic and just caused economic sorting higher up the tree, I suppose.
Funny enough the only example I've found of an "event" having a long term positive effect is cosmetic surgery
Any links? It isn't clear whether you are talking about cosmetic surgery to mitigate an obvious issue (for example, correcting a hair lip or removing a disfiguring facial birthmark), as compared to cosmetic beauty enhancements (nose job or tummy tuck). I would guess "enhancements" have a very strong sampling bias, because of a strong correlations with disposable income, belonging to certain social groups, and the type of person that prioritises surgery over other expenses. Adjusting to remove bias would be problematic?
I also suspect that there would be an inherent bias in reported studies, because the cosmetic surgery industry will fund and publish results that benefit the industry?
Copy-pasted from a 2006 paper by Bruce Headey I had lying around. I haven't looked into this in a few years but you might be able chase those refs down if you're interested
I think it's astounding that people take happiness-set-point theory so literally. Has everyone here been uniformly happy/miserable throughout their life? I certainly haven't - when things have been bad I've been miserable, when things have been good I've been happy
I don't agree with the implication that genetics are to blame, but rather I believe it is incredibly difficult for a person to change their core beliefs, even when reality is at odds with those beliefs.
More importantly, I would say, it's likely innate to us that we are unhappy without adverse circumstances. I.e. for there to be brightness there needs to be darkness.
1. To the title: I'm confident there are good genes that cause joy. I'm certain there are bad genes that cause anti-joy.
2. The actual article talks about relationships with people, and not about happiness per se. (For example, what about a hermit who constantly derives joy from listening to classical music?) Bad title.
3. Most of what is stated is a correlation, and it seems there are obvious alternative explanations, such as the opposite-direction causality: if your health problems get bad enough, that may interfere with your relationships. For example: "Part of a study found that people who had happy marriages in their 80s reported that their moods didn’t suffer even on the days when they had more physical pain. Those who had unhappy marriages felt both more emotional and physical pain." Maybe those who feel worse physical pain are more likely to snap at their spouse, and/or less likely to do the things that make their spouse feel loved.
I mean, it's plausible that the thesis is correct, but the article seems to overstate the certainty of the evidence.