Happiness is a strong positive emotion and is a fundamental human experience (Diener and Diener, 1996). Since ages, happiness has been an intriguing aspect of research and history, however, a relatively recent inclusion in the field of psychology (McMahon, 2006).

Positive psychology, or the science of happiness, which became popular in the past decade, was the first step by mental health professionals to gauge the importance of joy in different walks of life (Seligman, 2000).

The investigation of joy, or positive brain science, is a more extensive part of regular brain research and comparatively contemporary. Until several years ago, psychological research was tied in with taking care of mental problems and taking life back to the regularity.

However, positive psychology isn’t just remedial – it involves enhancing what is correct rather than correcting what is wrong. Positive Psychology ended up well known after 1998 with the spearheading work of Dr. Martin Seligman and Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who built it up as the pathway of finding the satisfaction that we all aim to get in our lives.

The 4 approaches to life

Much like the famous saying that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, positive psychology propagates that the way we see life is the way it becomes. According to Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, a leading psychology writer and lecturer, there are four approaches to life:

1. The Hedonic Approach– Where a person is concerned more about his pleasures and means to satisfy them. An egocentric attitude, Hedonic followers cannot refrain from guilty pleasures (for example binge eating or oversleeping) even after knowing the detriments.

2. The Rat Race Approach – Where we are concerned about what is good for us and continue seeking selfish goals. It is an egocentric and competitive approach in the sense that the followers may choose to overlook the benefits of others as long as they are helping themselves.

3. The Nihilistic Approach– Mostly seen in depressed and stressed individuals, the nihilistic approach is entirely pessimistic and caters to indulging negative thoughts. A negative person fails to divert his attention from the worries and mishaps of life and lacks the motivation to reconcile from stress.

4. The Positive Approach – It is believed to be the way that leads to happiness and contentment. A positive approach is where people can uncover the right balance between ‘I want to’ and ‘I have to’ and focus on building their qualities. The positive approach is in all its essence, purely solution-focused, goal-oriented, and the direct pathway to ‘Arbedjsglæde.’

In The Work Design Questionnaire (Morgeson and Humphrey, 2006) they recognized the following factors to be associated with happiness at work:

1. Workplace autonomy and the freedom to decide

2. Task variations and scope for creative ideas

3. Task significance

4. Recognition for work

5. Task difficulty

6. Professional skills and specialization

7. Social support within the workplace

8. Feedback from superiors

9. Environmental conditions at work

10. Business management and networking channels

A look at the research

Making happiness a part of the performance culture, reputed organizations like Google and McDonalds have specific posts allotted for Chief Happiness Officers (CHOs). Their job is to spread positivity and work on maintaining the motivation of the workforce.

In 1999, before Google had employed their first CHO Chade-Meng Tan, a French fashion brand Kiabi hired a professional as the Happiness Officer. That was one of the earliest advancements in the field and after the massive success of Google and their motivational CHO Meng, recruiting happiness officers became a culture for companies in different sectors.

Dr. Christine Carter, a senior research associate at the University of California, mentioned in one of her research publications that happiness, whether at work or in life, is not just about deriving the feeling of satisfaction.

She said that happiness is not the feeling that comes from getting or doing what we want to, instead, it is the ability to access an array of positive emotions like optimism, gratitude, etc., and consciously choosing to implement them in life.

From her findings, it is evident that being happy at work doesn’t mean universal acceptance or the complete absence of negative stress; it is just the power through which we can widen our perspective and bounce back from negativities.

Happy employees are an excellent investment for successful companies. Studies show that when positive individuals run an organization, it is more likely to gain financially and flourish in the long term.

Research at the University of Warwick has estimated that workplace happiness increases productivity by up to 12%. Happy workers are a guarantee for more productivity, more innovation, and less conflict.

Workplace happiness and personality styles

In a study carried out by Robertson Cooper Limited, it was established that the ‘feel-good factor’ that an employee derives from his work and workplace is by all means dependent on their persona.

The study was conducted on a large sample of around 3200 employees from various organizations, and the results revealed that:

1. Employees who felt good at work and had better working days scored high on positive emotions and low on emotions like loneliness, hopelessness, depression, and insecurities

2. The percentage of employees who had high scores on positive emotions were found to be more productive, more satisfied with their jobs, and healthier than others

3. People who scored high on positive emotions were more compassionate and empathetic towards their colleagues and subordinates

4. Employees who showed traits of depression, stress, and emotional vulnerabilities were less motivated, unwilling to improve their skills, and showed signs of unhealthy interpersonal connections at work

That personality disposition is a major contributing factor in determining workplace happiness was the primary objective of this study, and the findings indicated the same.

Professor Cynthia D Fisher, Ph.D., an eminent researcher in the Bond University, Australia, published an extensive report on her establishments about happiness at the workplace. She stated that what we regard as happiness at the workplace is dependent on constructs associated with socially acceptable judgment and consequences.

She defined happiness at work to be a combination of the level at which these constructs exist, the durability of their existence, and the specific quality of each construct.

This article was originally published on Positive Psychology, written by Madhuleena Roy Chowdhury, BA. Read the original blog post.

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