“going from $40,000 to $80,000 of income gives you the same happiness boost as going from $80,000 to $160,000 of income, which gives you the same happiness boost of going from $160,000 to $320,000 of income. So basically you have to keep on doubling your income to get the same happiness boost.”
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“they found all these things like, socializing, being with friends: really, really important. Being with your romantic partner: really, really important. Many of us think that we’re gonna have a good time if we just lie on our couch and browse the internet, or go on social media or play an iPhone game. And the data, when you actually ask people doing that, they tend to say they’re not particularly happy doing that.”
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“So the happiest activity, according to Mappiness — and actually every experience sampling project has landed on the same exact finding — is that sex and intimacy and making love are the happiest activity, which is not so surprising.”
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“work is the second most miserable activity according to [scholars Alex Bryson] and MacKerron, which shocked me because I had grown up with this idea that work is where you get a lot of your fulfillment and joy and purpose.”
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“the interesting thing about parenting is that there have been all these studies of identical twins, adoption studies where you have kids from the same parents raised by different families. And overall, they converge on this idea that parents just matter a lot less than we think they do.
Many of us suspect that if we do the right thing with our kids, we’re gonna give them an amazing life. And if we do the wrong thing with our kids, they’re gonna have a terrible life. And I think the data suggests that’s just not the case at all, that the effects of parents are pretty small.
What has a surprisingly large effect is genetics, which a lot of people don’t like talking about. But when you talk about a kid’s income as an adult, genetics play two to three times a bigger role than parents do.”
https://www.vox.com/even-better/23338680/instincts-happiness-data-seth-stephens-davidowitz