What Makes a Person Happy

Many people have wondered what exactly the key to happiness is. Does being happy consist of how much money you have, your age, or how attractive a person you are? Contrary to popular belief, these things do not matter much along with gender, having children, or how intelligent you are. Studies have shown that the most important things in causing happiness are love, marriage, work, and personality. Let’s delve further into these areas. Money does play a role in how happy a person is. However, it is a very small role. Think about it; say you suddenly loose your job. You have bills to pay, gas to buy, and food to put on the table. Now there is the question of how you are going to do all these things without earning an income. Common sense will tell you that this is not a good situation to be in. Obviously, you will not be happy being under all this stress. But, on the average, even wealthy people are only marginally happier than those in the middle class. (Weiten Lloyd, 2006) Studies have shown that once people ascend above the poverty level, there is little relation between income and happiness. (Weiten Lloyd, 2006) But what though of age? Many people feel that growing old is something to dread. But surprisingly, age and happiness are consistently found to be unrelated. (Weiten Lloyd, 2006) Age accounts for less than 1 percent of the variation in people’s happiness. (Weiten Lloyd, 2006) Perhaps people feel that once they reach a certain age, life will become apprehensive. Abruptly, they feel they are in the middle of the time they have left. They are able to look back to their past with certainty, but feel that their future is looming in the fog. Let’s now take a glance at physical attractiveness. One of the first things that a person notices about another person besides clothing is physical features. Day after day people are discriminated against or discriminate against others themselves based on a person’s physical appearance. This is something that cannot

Cited: Weiten Lloyd, W. M. (2006). Psychology Applied to Modern Life; Adjustment in the 21st Century. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.