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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

sloanreview.mit.edu

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#151

Post by eecc »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #69
vbezhenar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s questionable. Germany is social state. It has great protections for ordinary people. It’s really hard to lose everything because of bad work. Sounds more like US where you could be fired any minute without warnings.

Not entirely true. Outside of government workers who are set for life, getting fired in Germany is definitely possible for various reasons, I know many cases. There are legal processes the employer must follow in order to fire employees but nearly all companies have lawyers that take care of that process to let employees go without getting sued. And you can fall on financial hardship if for example, you took massive…

Germans tend to rent, and overstretched mortgages aren't a thing over there. If you are fired you still have access to healthcare and unless your professional qualifications are in terribly low demand you will find work for adequate salary (unions in Germany sit on the boards). If everything else fails, you will get social security subsidies, albeit much to keep you out of poverty.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#152

Post by mellavora »

nine_k wrote: post #143
hyperman1 wrote: post #128

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…

I see it like this: A lot of resource —> happiness. A lot of resource —> energy for curiosity. A lot of resource —> energy and time for high achievement at work. So happiness is a correlate for staying in high-resource state in a stable manner, which correlates with high achievement, the quality employers seek. Immediately one can consider a trap of unhappiness, similar to the trap of poverty: being worried makes you…

You had me agreeing with you there until you recommended highly addictive drugs with questionable benefit as the primary intervention.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#153

Post by pyb »

suction wrote: post #150
hyperman1 wrote: post #128

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

You make a good point. Are people successful because they are happy, or vice versa?

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#154

Post by throwaway984393 »

> We saw four times as many awards earned by the initially happiest soldiers

They have conflated the idea of winning an award with being a top performer, but winning an award has more to do with being well-liked than being a top performer. There are top performers who don't win awards, and there are people who aren't top performers who do win awards.

Really what they've shown is that if you want an award, you should be happy, and people will think you're a top performer. If you don't believe me, wait a bit and people will be citing this study as proof that happiness leads to top performers, hence happy people must be top performers.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#155

Post by themacguffinman »

cloutchaser wrote: post #118
jevgeni wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any racial minority outside of Cuba, maybe?

How about extremely poor white people, from terrible backgrounds? Are they intrinsically happier because they are white? And so they get better jobs? How about asians and indian backgrounds who are richer than whites despite being minorities? Should we make them unhappier in your opinion or just discriminate against them? Really? That is your point? From this article, you got... racism. Congrats.

Was the top level comment edited or something? I see "disadvantaged by race, gender, sex, class, mental health, and other forms of discriminitation as well as poverty" which includes a lot of the issues you mentioned, it's you who focused on race exclusively.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#156

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

vatican_banker wrote: post #84
robertlagrant wrote: post #44

This paper does seem a little dodgy in its assumptions. We shouldn't dismiss military-based studies? Okay, (ish), but then the study doesn't measure happiness vs performance, it measures "how do you rate yourself" vs "the army's selection process for awarding medals". Given medals at least partly exist to reward extremely optimistic behaviour at the expense of personal safety, shall we say, having an optimistic outlo…

> the study doesn't measure happiness vs performance, it measures "how do you rate yourself" vs "the army's selection process for awarding medals". The author explains that happiness is subjective: > The behavioral science literature often refers to happiness as subjective well-being because the meaning of happiness varies in different contexts ...and then proceeds to delineate how psychology defines happiness: 1. a…

Haven't read the full paper, but they probably used this scale" https://ogg.osu.edu/media/documents/MB%20Stream/PANAS.pdf

It's relatively standard in the field.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#157

Post by mellavora »

jfoutz wrote: post #23
adra wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue lazy people don't often change the world and probably not people who are drunk/high all the time. I'd argue self worth and personal happiness doesn't eliminate ones desire to positively change society (same with rich people), though it may be less common. Lincoln was a rich white guy who still did good things. Tons of CEOs are money obsessed miserable sociopaths whos greatest contributions will be adding so…

Lincoln was born in poverty. The founding fathers were all rich. I get your point, it’s just a bad example.

Benjamin Franklin was his father's 10th son, and his family only had enough money to send him to school for 2 years. He started working as an apprentice at age 12. At 17, he ran away from home and supported himself doing menial labor in Philadelphia print shops.

He ended up very rich, but he didn't start that way.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#158

Post by nextaccountic »

suction wrote: post #150
hyperman1 wrote: post #128

I had the chance to work with a few people I'd consider genius level. While I'm pretty smart myself, they all have something I don't always have: The ability to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. For example, we were walking trough a hallway. On a wall is an old, damaged, ugly map of my country, half covered with graffiti. I'd walked past it almost every day for half a year. He checks it out, and…

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

I think that's the best argument for UBI. If people aren't constantly worried about being homeless and not having food, they are happier, healthier, more productive and live more fulfilling lives.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#159

Post by lillecarl »

mellavora wrote: post #152
nine_k wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it like this: A lot of resource —> happiness. A lot of resource —> energy for curiosity. A lot of resource —> energy and time for high achievement at work. So happiness is a correlate for staying in high-resource state in a stable manner, which correlates with high achievement, the quality employers seek. Immediately one can consider a trap of unhappiness, similar to the trap of poverty: being worried makes you…

You had me agreeing with you there until you recommended highly addictive drugs with questionable benefit as the primary intervention.

SSRIs aren't necessarily highly addictive, you need to taper off, but you it's not opioids...

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#160

Post by suction »

pyb wrote: post #153
suction wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

You make a good point. Are people successful because they are happy, or vice versa?

Secure situations make successful people. Children raised in well-off households with no financial worries do better in school and later in their careers, on average. Sure, you get the rich kid wasting their life on parties or drugs, or the poor kid beating the odds by hard work and determination, but those are outliers. That's why there are so many of these characters in literature, movies, and TV - they're not the norm.
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