Happiness and curiosity

Contemporary research into happiness and wellbeing has explored numerous variables, searching always for those factors that lead to greater happiness and the experience of more positive emotions.

One of the more interesting variables, or traits that seems to lead to higher levels of happiness is "curiosity"...how interesting!

Technically, positive psychology researchers divide curiosity into two components: (1) exploration or the tendency to seek out new and challenging situations and (2) absorption or the tendency to become fully engaged in these interesting situations.

A recent study, just published by Gallagher and Lopez in the Journal of Positive Psychology, found that in particular, exploration is associated with higher levels of happiness. This is entirely consistent with our experiences at The Happiness Institute in which we've found that happy people tend to try more new things and explore novel options more frequently.

So if you want to boost your happiness today...go and try something different; introduce yourself to someone new; take up a new hobby or sign up for a new course.

Consider calling on your curious side...and you might be interested to find you're experiencing more happiness!