Happiness and love

My recent reading list consists of a strange pairing of topics - happiness and love, polygamy and adultery. They are pretty good reads though.



On happiness and women - Women, by and large, are slightly happier than men. But they are also more susceptible to depression... which suggests either that women are more likely to experience more extreme emotions, or that a few women are more miserable than men, while most are more cheerful (The Economist, Dec 2010). Quite true.

Neurotic people - those who are prone to guilt, anger and anxiety - tend to be unhappy. Neurotic people are not just prone to negative feelings: they also tend to have low emotional intelligence, which makes them bad at forming or managing relationships, and that in turn makes them unhappy (The Economist, Dec 2010). It's scary to see how the characterization of neuroticism is not all that remote.