“World Database of Happiness: A Continuous register of scientific research on subjective appreciation of life” is being created by Ruut Veenhoven at the Erasmus University Rotterdam

It collects all the available information about what makes people happy and why. According to the research, married, extroverted optimists are happier than single, pessimistic introverts. Nurses enjoy life more than bankers, and it helps to be religious, sexually active and a college graduate with a short commute to work. The wealthy experience more mirth than the poor, but not much. Sounds to me that if you don’t know any better and feel that you are expected to be happy then you would probably say you were happy,

And currently the happiest people are in Iceland and the country with the highest rate of suicides is Lithuania and the UK gives out the most anti-depressants to its population but the US deems to be the most depressed country perhaps based on their long working hours and the fact that they have no statutory holidays.

other related links:

The secret of happiness | It’s in Iceland | Economist.com

The science of happiness season on BBC last year

Happiness is the measure of true wealth by A C Grayling

Suicide rates of the world

The happiest country in the world

The most depressed place in the world

Bureau of labor statistics: how leisure time is spent in the US

Centre for Economic and Policy research: The No-Vacation Nation

The international labour organization

National Statistics Online

Found out about this institute via the Horizon programme about decision making.

The main “scientist”, Dean Randin , has been Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences since 2001. His initial career as a concert violinist diverted into science after earning a Masters degree in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. For a decade he worked on advanced telecommunications R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories and GTE Laboratories; for over two decades he has focused on consciousness research at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, University of Nevada, and three Silicon Valley think-tanks, including SRI International, where he worked on a classified program investigating psychic phenomena for the US government. At the institute of noetic sciences he was carrying out experiments that were suggesting that we subconsciously predict what will happen next: that we have precognition and therefore allows us to make intuitive decisions. This theory was highlighted via an experiment that used a slideshow that randomly selected positive and negative imagery. By attaching GSR sensors to the respondents, the anticipation that each slide would be an emotionally charged or non emotionally charged created varying results. These results were interpreted as being the key moment of precognition.

More about Paul randin and The Institute of Noetic Sciences

Yes it is another new year, another January and anther excuse for publishers to not only predict the future but tell you how to change your life and be happy! The future of self-knowledge is here again!