Are Singaporeans Happy?

http://www.straitstimes.com/supplements/mind-your-body 31 October 2013

 To detractors who think Singaporeans are a miserable lot, let it be said the nation came out tops in Asia and 30th worldwide in the United Nations' World Happiness Report released last month.

Singapore's ranking improved three places this year. Neighbours Thailand ranked at 36th, Malaysia at 56th, Indonesia at 76th and the Philippines at 92nd.

The UN report used six factors to determine the scores: real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, which is the average real income of a resident; healthy life expectancy; generosity (donation to charity); and their perceptions of social support, freedom to make life choices and freedom from corruption.  But before you give yourself a pat on your back, experts say the report does not paint a holistic picture of the state of happiness in Singapore.

RESEARCHING HAPPINESS

A more accurate picture of how happy Singaporeans are might be painted from research being done by academics here.

For instance, in a book published by two dons from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, Happiness And Wellbeing: The Singaporean Experience, one section analyses data collected over three time periods - 1996, 2001 and 2011 - in which respondents rated their satisfaction with various domains and life in general.

Dr Tambyah Siok Kuan, a senior lecturer in marketing at the NUS business school and one of the authors, said: "Surveys conducted over time provide a sense of how a country has been faring over the years and is probably more helpful than surveys that compare across countries. After all, rankings is just a numbers game."

The other author, Associate Professor Tan Soo Jiuan from the NUS business school, said cultural nuances are lost in the UN report as specific aspects of living in Singapore were not asked.

Happiness survey not an exact science

In their book, however, they charted people's satisfaction with 23 aspects of living in Singapore.

Over the years, Singaporeans continued to be most satisfied with the level of safety and security, the quality of law enforcement and the cleanliness of the country. They were least satisfied with the affordability of cars, properties, health care and cost of living.

In general, Singaporeans were most satisfied with their relationships with parents, children, siblings and romantic partners. In 2011, they were least happy with their income and education - two domains not asked in earlier years.

Singaporeans surveyed in 2011 were more satisfied with life in general but less satisfied with living in Singapore than those surveyed in 2001 and 1996.

The professors also found that compared with 2006, fewer Singaporeans in 2011 said they were happy or enjoying life. Yet more of them reported having a sense of achievement.

Dr Tambyah said people may have channelled their energies into achieving their goals at the expense of doing what they liked.

Associate Professor Christie Napa Scollon, who teaches psychology at the Singapore Management University, found that Singaporeans rated a person who has more material success (earning more than $10,000 a month) as having better life quality than someone who is low in material success (earning $2,100 to $3,000 a month).

Americans' perceptions of people with high or low wealth was less pronounced, she said. Other studies have also shown that Americans perceive a life's desirability to be less dependent on income than on the presence of happiness and meaning in life.

Her study was published in the Journal Of Cross-Cultural Psychology last year. She said the results probably reflected the culture here of people being "chronically concerned about how others perceive them".

The same study also led Prof Scollon to conclude that even if Singaporeans did not personally feel that wealth was important for a good life, they were influenced by other people's beliefs and conformed. She said large surveys such as the UN report are useful for countries to track their own progress.

But such rankings can also lead one to absurd conclusions - for instance, that the fifth happiest country, Sweden, must be a happier place to live in than the sixth, Canada, as conditions differ across countries.

Also, after last year's Gallup poll in which Singapore landed at the bottom of 148 countries, making it the butt of jokes for having the world's most emotionless people, it did much better this year. Some 70 per cent of Singapore respondents reported experiencing positive emotions last year, up from 46 per cent in 2011.

Like other experts, Prof Scollon thinks the bad publicity from last year's poll prompted people to answer more positively this time round. She said: "I don't mean they were answering dishonestly, but they may have lowered their threshold for saying 'yes' to questions such as if they smiled yesterday."

Though none of these surveys tracked the causes of unhappiness in Singapore, experts raised several areas in which Singapore can improve on. Mr Halbert Louis, the director of Connect Consultancy and Training which offers mental-wellness workshops for companies, said Singapore would be better without a culture of complaining. He said people here tend to blame others for making them unhappy. He said: "When I teach stress management, I emphasise to participants that the root cause of our stress is an internal problem.

"Your boss or spouse may trigger your emotions, but our stress comes from our rigid thinking of how things should or should not be."

Dr Christopher Cheok, head of the department of psychological medicine at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, said Singapore was an "over-measured society" where all aspects of life, from academic results or work performance to where one lives, are scored. He said people should accept that there will always be others better than themselves and focus on their own goals to be happy.

A LIFELONG PURSUIT

Dr Albert Liau, associate professor with the Psychological Studies Academic Group at the National Institute of Education and his colleague, Associate Professor Maureen Neihart, head of the Group, are studying the effects of positive interventions on happiness and depressive symptoms in people.

In a study published in the Journal Of Happiness Studies last year, Dr Liau found that undergraduates at a Malaysian private university who wrote gratitude letters and recorded three good things a day, and those who identified and used their strengths, had significantly higher levels of happiness than a control group. They are now conducting similar studies among young people in Singapore.

Experts stressed that achieving happiness is a lifelong pursuit that people need to work hard at.

Dr Wolff von Auer, a counsellor at Counseling and Hypnotherapy Hub at Sime Darby Centre, said: "Rather than wasting our energies trying to gauge how happy we are, we need to recognise that happiness is an unlimited resource and focus on ways in which we can attain more of it."

In pursuit of happiness

 Happiness depends upon ourselves, said Greek philosopher Aristotle.

Aristotle thought that a happy life embraced a broad range of conditions, including physical as well as mental well-being.  Modern studies agree.

While money in itself does not bring happiness, its ability to meet one's physical needs is important. Once people's basic physical needs, such as food and housing, are met, higher incomes do little to boost happiness.

Instead, a hierarchy of needs emerges and mental and emotional well-being come into the picture. That is where people find satisfaction and joy in their work and connections to others. Research has shown that having support through friends, family and social networks is a reliable indicator of happiness.

Spending time with family and friends, sharing laughs with loved ones, coming home to a home-cooked meal, knowing that loved ones are happy and healthy and spending time serving others were the common threads in their answers.

Being in a state of happiness has been linked to the individual having better health. Some studies have suggested that it is linked to having lower levels of stress hormones and better immune systems.

Psychologists and counsellors here and elsewhere are studying how to help people learn to be more positive and, hence, happier.

Achieving happiness is a lifelong pursuit that one needs to work at and the answer to each individual's happiness lies within oneself.

THE HAPPINESS QUOTIENT

Happiness is both an emotion and a state of mind. A person is said to experience positive emotions when he experiences happiness, joy, excitement, calmness, pride, love and affection. These can be brief feelings or permanent character traits.

Indeed, some people are just sunnier than others. According to Associate Professor Maureen Neihart, head of the Psychological Studies Academic Group at the National Institute of Education and author of the book Happiness Is A State Of Mine, 50per cent of people's subjective well-being come from their genetic make-ups. About 10 per cent is due to external circumstances and the remaining 40 per cent can be controlled by the individual.

The world is made up of roughly two-thirds who are born optimists and the rest pessimists, said psychiatrist Christopher Cheok. But pessimists can practise optimism and become good at it, said the head of psychological medicine at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital who, with a colleague, published a toolkit on happiness for World Mental Health Day on Oct 1.

Dr Cheok also holds workshops teaching strategies that maximise this 40 per cent to boost one's happiness level. These aim at boosting substances in the brain, such as the "reward" chemical dopamine, which sends one into a good mood when an achievement is accomplished, and oxytocin, an "attachment" hormone released when a person is around people he is close to.

SMU's Prof Scollon said there is no "signature physiological profile" but happy people experience more positive moods than negative moods, though this does not mean they are never sad.

What is clear from research is that experiencing positive emotions yields short- and long-term health benefits. Prof Scollon said negative emotions, such as anger and fear, increase a person's heart rate and blood pressure to aid survival - the classic "fight or flight" response.

But these physiological changes are not sustainable as they wear down the body. Positive emotions help the body return to a balanced state (homeostasis) more quickly.

Experiments have shown people in a positive mood have quicker cardiovascular recovery after a stressful task than those exposed to neutral or negative mood inductions.

One study tracked the mortality of 180 Catholic nuns who had written autobiographies in early adulthood. It found the greater the number of positive words and sentences, the greater the probability of the nun being alive 60 years later.

Fortunately, the number of negative emotions reported was not conversely associated with mortality.

Another study showed that those with high levels of positive emotions were less likely to develop a cold when exposed to a virus. Dr Cheok said large-scale studies have shown optimistic people face a 48 per cent reduced risk of stroke, up to 20 per cent reduced risk of heart disease and a 7 per cent reduced risk of cancer death.

Strategies to achieve happiness

√ Count your blessings

Keep a gratitude journal, listing what you are grateful for that day or in the past week. It can be about things, events, situations or people, and helps to foster an attitude of thanksgiving.

A similar exercise is to reflect on three good things that happened in the day and why they went well.

Another version of this is a gratitude visit. First, you pen a letter to someone who made a difference in your life but you never thanked properly. You then visit the person to read the letter to him and use the opportunity to discuss your feelings, helping to strengthen the relationship.

Dr Martin Seligman, known as the father of positive psychology, found that people who practised gratitude visits were less depressed and reported greater happiness than those who did not, one month later.

Source: Happiness Is A State of Mine by Maureen Neihart

 √√ Identify strengths and values

In positive psychology, "flow" occurs when people are fully engaged in activities they enjoy so much that they lose track of time.

Using one's strengths is one way to achieve greater engagement. For example, instead of working just for a salary, find a job which appeals to you, matches your skill set and fits your personality.

Ensure your behaviour is in line with your values, which set your direction in life. If you value filial piety, then spending time with your parents is a meaningful activity that boosts your happiness.

Use online resources, such as www.behaviourlibrary.com/strengths.php to identify your strengths.

Source: Achieving Happiness In Singapore by DrChristopher Cheok and Angelina Esther David (available at www.thrive.org.sg/simple_event/detail/21)

√√√ Stop incessant comparisons

Life is like a carousel ride - it is full of ups and downs and there is always someone in front of and behind us.

We should concentrate on improving ourselves, not because others are doing better, but because we are able and want to do better.

Accept that there will always be someone better, cleverer and luckier than you. See yourself as your biggest competitor and aim to be better than you were yesterday.

Once we learn to be happy with ourselves, others will accept us for who we are.

Source: Happiness Within Your Reach: 52 Ideas To A Happier You by Sean Lim

√√√√ Consider different viewpoints

Whenever you encounter a setback in life, look at your situation through a different lens.

If your boss said the report you have submitted is not up to par, you may be very upset initially. But if you looked through a longer lens, you might see how much that remark could mean to you in the future. You are likely to feel less upset about it or even forget about it.

Using an alternative lens also lets you view the situation from someone else's perspective. A colleague may point out that the comment provides a learning opportunity for you. The wide lens provides the big picture, which is how you can learn and grow from the experience. For instance, learn the kind of reports your boss expects.

Know that you do not have the power to change your boss nor to quit your job at the drop of a hat, but you do have the ability to control how you feel and respond to a situation.

Source: Ms Elizabeth Sarah Ragen and Ms Marlene Chua, psychologists at the Centre for Effective Living at the Camden Medical Centre

√√√√√ Learn to regulate your emotions

Life will always hand you setbacks and make you experience feelings such as sadness, anger, grief and disappointment. They are all part of the human experience.

Those who are good at regulating their emotions do not necessarily lead perfect lives, but they do not dwell on negative experiences and know how to soothe themselves.

People can use strategies such as distraction (doing something else to take the mind off the upsetting event), reappraisal (reinterpreting events in a more positive way) and suppression (trying not to think about the upsetting event).

In general, people should direct their attention to people or things which bring them joy and gratitude and make it a habit to create and savour happy memories.

Source: Associate Professor of psychology Christie Napa Scollon of the School of Social Sciences at the Singapore Management University