If you have a spring in your step and a smile on your face, you're in good company. Americans are generally a pretty happy bunch, according to a new study that aims to further our collective understanding of happiness and its root causes.
Conducted by polling and consumer insights company CivicScience, the study, titled "Profiling Happy," explores reported levels of happiness from more than 262,000 Americans, linking them to thousands of attributes including demographics, lifestyle, media consumption and other characteristics. Lamar Pierce, PhD, associate professor of organization and strategy in the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, participated in the research.
"One of the project's goals is to harness the collective expertise of the many researchers and thought leaders who study the roots of happiness," Pierce said. "These data represent the tremendous potential to facilitate expanding our knowledge on consumers, health, beliefs and broader public welfare."
Among the study's findings:
Pierce, who also serves as chief academic adviser to CivicScience, focuses his research on business strategy and public policy, fraud and corruption, and ethics and incentives in organizations. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles, including a forthcoming paper he co-authored titled "Losing Hurts: The Happiness Impact of Partisan Electoral Loss," which incorporates the "Profiling Happy" data.
CivicScience is making the study's large set of aggregate data available to researchers, journalists and others who may wish to analyze the findings. The full results of the study are available for download here: http://info.civicscience.com/profilinghappy/.
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Materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis. Original written by Julie Hail Flory. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
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