Chapter Summary

People who are happy are generally and genuinely pleased with their lives. Research suggests that money predicts only about 2 percent to 5 percent of one's happiness. Gender, race, and age are also poor predictors of happiness, as are significant life events such as winning the lottery and crippling accidents. What does predict happiness? Self-esteem, relationships, faith, optimism and meaningful work.

Most people enjoy working because it fulfills basic human needs for identity (“I am a manager.”), belonging (we tend to work with others), competence (we tend to learn and stretch our skills when we work), predictability (we tend to have routines at work), and making a difference (sometimes we can use our work to make an impact on the world).

We feel flow (optimal experience or peak performance) when we are fully engaged in doing something that we believe is important; when we have clear goals, rules, and feedback; when we can concentrate on the task without distraction; when we have the skills to do the job yet feel challenged to learn new skills; and when we have control over how we do the task.

People who are optimistic have a positive bias toward themselves and the world. They see themselves as more competent than they are and the world as a more positive place than data would suggest. Research suggests that optimists tend to be happier, healthier, and more effective because they are likely to set higher goals for themselves, be persistent, take risks, reward themselves, and cope better with stress. Optimism can be learned by paying attention to the ways that we interpret the positive and negative events in our lives.

Your job can affect your health. A bad relationship with a supervisor can increase your stress. A lack of control over your work not only increases stress, but research suggests that it can increase your risk of heart attacks.

Both perfectionism and Type A behavior can positively influence your effectiveness and career when they are not extreme. However, extreme perfectionism and Type A behavior (particularly the hostility component of Type A behavior) can negatively influence your effectiveness, psychological well-being, and physical health. Notably, perfectionism and Type A behavior can become more extreme in ambiguous and high-pressure situations, precisely when they can be most damaging.

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor suggests that the work patterns of the U.S. workforce have changed dramatically in the past 40 years. Overall, people at the lowest level of the income bracket are working less, whereas people at higher income levels and with higher educations tend to be working more. Women at all income levels are working more than in the past. The father-at-work and mother-at-home family is on the decline. There are more dual-career couples, single-parent families, women as primary breadwinners in families, and women with young children working full-time. Approximately one-quarter of working women earn more than their husbands. Although women continue to earn less than their male counterparts, the difference in income is decreasing.

In a study of managers and professionals in the public sector, the researcher found that married men with children tend to earn more than married men without children, single men, and single fathers (who tend to earn less than the others). Married women with children tend to earn almost as much as married women without children, and more than unmarried women. Although being a single father seemed to negatively affect advancement, being a single mother didn't. Both married men and women with spouses at home advanced more than others. This suggests that a spouse at home provides valuable resources to the working spouse.

Many working parents must rely on day care to help take care of their children's needs while they are working. Research suggests that high-quality day care can benefit children's intellectual and behavioral development and interferes little, if at all, with children's feelings of attachment to their mothers. However, poor-quality day care can harm children's intellectual and behavioral development. Unfortunately, day care in the United States is considered by many to be “fair,” at best.

Working parents' attitudes and behaviors influence their children's development more than day care does (unless day care is of very poor quality). Several factors influence parents' ability to positively influence their children: parents' self-esteem, income, and education; job quality; marital relationship quality; and whether the mother made her own decision about whether to work or not.