Is there a correlation between happiness and sociability?

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Is there a correlation between happiness and sociability?

Abstract:

The aim of this investigation was to discover whether there is a correlation between happiness and sociability. The experimental hypothesis was that there would be a significant correlation between happiness and sociability, because most of the background research indicated that this would be the case. A total of 20 participants were used from college that were selected using a casual sample. The results were in terms of numerical scores and were analysed using the Spearman’ Rank Order Correlation Coefficient, and were found not to be significant at the 0.05 level of significance for a one tailed test. The results for the mean (11.3 (happiness), 7.7 (sociability)), median (12 (happiness), 7.5 (sociability)) and mode (14 (happiness), 5 (sociability)) reflected this with there being fairly significant differences between the results for happiness, and those for sociability. The range (14 (happiness), 12 (sociability)) showed that the data for both sets of scores was skewed. The conclusion was that the results were inconclusive, as most evidence pointed to there being a positive correlation between happiness and sociability.

Introduction:

To be able to gain a better understanding of what this questionnaire is about the terms happiness and sociability need to try and be defined, so it can be seen what is actually being measured.

Definitions of Sociability:

‘The tendency to have and make personal relationships’(*1)

‘Ability to engage in an appropriate range of social relationships.’(*2)

Definition of Happiness:

‘Having, taking, or demonstrating pleasure or satisfaction’(*3)

‘glad, content, happy’(*4)

There is lots of evidence that points towards happiness and sociability being related. These quotes show this relationship:

“Social science surveys have universally concluded that people claim to be most happy with friends and family, or just in the company of others”(*5).

This shows how people who socialise are likely to get a feeling of happiness; therefore, in theory the more sociable a person, the happier they should be.

“Relationships make us extremely happy when they go well, and very depressed when they don’t work out”(*5).

This shows how the breakdown of social relationships can be the cause of unhappiness, but these relationships can also cause a person to be happy when they are going well.

“Happiness, along with health and mental health, is increased by presence of certain social relationships and depressed by those losing these…”(*6).

This demonstrates how social relationships can not only affect a person’s happiness, but also their health.

Horowitz et al., 1982, and Weeks et al., 1980(*6) concluded that lonely people become depressed, and Horowitz et al. also concluded that lonely people also feel excluded, alienated and angry. This demonstrates how those who don’t socialise very much may become unhappy.

Reich and Zautra, 1981 (*6) have shown that increases in social contact lead to increases in happiness, therefore suggesting that the results to our questionnaire are likely to show that the more sociable a person is the more likely they are to be happy, and visa versa.

Wessman and Ricks, 1966 (*6) conducted an experiment between happy students and unhappy students. Their findings showed that the students who had the better relationships with other students were the happier ones, whilst those students who were unhappy their social relations were often ‘sources of anxiety, anger and guilt that led to cautious withdrawal and empty isolation’. This study demonstrates well how the happiness of a person can affect their sociability, although it is not clear how Wessman and Ricks measured the students happiness.

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For this investigation we have comprised a questionnaire with questions taken from Eysnck’s (*7) Personality questionnaire, which has been accepted in terms of reliability and validity.

Campbell, Converse and Rodgers, 1976 (*5) compiled the following table taken from an American national sample survey of 2164 people in 1971 showing what people

thought were the main sources of satisfaction in everyday life:

From this table we can see that two of the things that people regard as being among  the most important sources of satisfaction are friendship and leisure activities which are both associated to sociability, showing ...

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