Okay, so money does make people happier but only up to a point. After that, regardless of how wealthy they become, people revert to their usual level of happiness. Western societies, which have seen average incomes doubling in the past 50 years, have seen no increase in happiness among their populations. So, if more money doesn’t make us happy, what does?

Genetics
Not surprisingly, there are a few factors at play. Research with twins suggests that some people are genetically predisposed to be happier than others, which might explain those happy-go-lucky types who manage to stay jolly in the most adverse of situations. On top of this, personality type is believed to account for a large proportion of the variation in happiness, with the key traits of the happy person including, for example, extraversion, openness to experience and conscientiousness.

While we can’t control our genetics, personality type or, to some extent, our life circumstances, there are other things that influence our happiness that we can control. Interestingly, research has shown that, a few years after the event, there is little difference between the happiness levels of lottery winners and people who became paraplegic due to an accident – proof, if it were ever needed, that we have a lot of power over our own happiness.

Relationships
One of the most important things to watch out for is the quality and stability of our relationships with others. The ending of key relationships has been shown to be more damaging to happiness than, for example, loss of income. This is not limited to romantic relationships but also includes relationships with family and friends. So spending time building and maintaining lasting, meaningful relationships is probably a better investment in happiness terms than putting in extra hours at work in the hope of nabbing a promotion.

Work is another important determinant of happiness but it doesn’t matter so much what type of work we do or how much we earn. What matters is that we find it satisfying and feel we have some degree of control over our job situation. The social relationships we form through work are also important to happiness and, when someone loses their job through redundancy, the subsequent drop in happiness is usually about much more than just the drop in funds.

Keeping up with the Joneses
Living in a country where there is a relatively big gap between rich and poor can also indirectly lead to unhappiness, as people constantly compare themselves with others whom they see as better off than they are in terms of wealth, status or professional success. We also compare how we look and behave with how others look and behave, and often find ourselves wanting.

It is difficult to avoid this kind of social comparison entirely but we can at least try to go a bit easier on ourselves.

Outlook
Ed Diener, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, has been researching happiness for the past 30 years. He says we need to be careful about how we look at the world. “We need to train ourselves not to make a big deal of little hassles, to focus on working toward our goals (but not waiting until we achieve them to be happy) and to make a habit of noticing the good things in our lives,” he says.

On a positive note, Diener’s research suggests that most people are reasonably happy. “A minority are basically unhappy, and a smaller percentage are actually depressed, but the average person is slightly to moderately happy. We think that humans might be predisposed to mild happiness and the idea that modern society is a sink of unhappiness seems wrong.”

Either way, when it comes to psychological well-being, just as with physical well-being, prevention is better than cure. Understanding more about what really influences our happiness (as opposed to what we think does) can help us focus on what’s important.