Postive Psychology - Nancy

Nancy starts off her lecture with many different way people seek happiness. There are over 2000 titles with advice on habits, secrets, steps and choices. There are also 120 million anti-depressants prescribed to patients seeking happiness around world. Finally in 1995 the drug business accounted for 8% of world trade, which is over 400 billion dollars, this is roughly the same percent as gas and oil. Studies show the lack of happiness across the world, and the rise of depression. The world’s health organization predicts that as of 2020 depression will be the second largest cause of disability. People have a balance of negative and positive emotional system. The negative system is tremendously sensitive to negative bias. People are born to like the taste of something sweet rather then bitter. People also hate the feeling of losing, but love the feeling of winning. There has been many updated studies on happiness, some think that just because on is not unhappy anymore it does not mean that they are happy. This only means that the person is unhappy, unhappiness and happiness do not meet at endpoints. Freudian’s scale of happiness showed that the more you grow unhappy, the more you continue onto the scale towards happiness, which is not accurate. Some positive offsets are people are generally above average when it comes to happiness. About 50% of one’s genes will determine their level of happiness. A study was done on patients recovering from surgery; there were some facing a brick wall and other looking out a nature. The people facing the brick wall stay in the hospital longer and took a great time to heal. As oppose to the one’s that could see nature, they were in for a shorter period of time and healed much faster. That show’s a connection between humans and nature; we need nature in our lives to become happy. Other things that make people the happiest are when they are with other people, playing sports, learning, focusing on a loved one, and having sex. Social