Are Happy People Smarter?

That was an incredible read. I just read the entire article and it really makes you think - think about yourself, and how you are with others. Am I the negative person in the situation that can cause others to be negative - or do I carry a positive light that spreads to others? I especially liked this part:

"How many of us have been horrified to suddenly realize that we've spent the last half-hour caught up in a gossip session--despite our strong aversion to gossip? "

Thats so true, when you REALLY step out of a situation and look back, many times you see yourself becoming what you despise the most, but you may not have realized it at that time!

I applaud the blog author for moderating the comments, and I believe that Kathy does an excellent job to clear up many misconceptions about the matter.

Very interesting....

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 at 13:34:26 GMT Link

I have moderated blog comments for a long while now. I have done so because most comments do not add any value to a post. And many of them might start aggravated postings back and forth between users causing an uproar.

I am all for friendly debates about how something should work with the facts being shown however when assumptions are being called upon and nothing is actually working out it is a little frustrating and many people do not want to read about a flesh of drama which in the end case doesn't really matter.

I think we see a ton of it in the programming world related to performance and security.

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 at 16:01:44 GMT Link

A lot of the "negativity" is also just people venting in a platform which you have provided for them. If you provide a way to vent anonymously it's no surprise that people will do so.

IANAP (I'm not a psychologist) but I would venture to say that it's therapeudic to have a good old fashion flame war every now and then.

Anyway, it's good to see people moderating comments. Your blog is your castle, if you let the trolls in you're either going to have to get them out or take responsibility for the mess they make :)

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 at 09:45:38 GMT Link

Reading long posts doesn't make me happy... flaming as soon as I find something I disagree with does ;)

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 at 14:29:39 GMT Link

Actually, I usually find myself frowning at angry comments, too. If you want to, you can even write critics in a positive, non-offensive way. Why fight if you can be constructive?

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 at 14:33:14 GMT Link

I don't like the destructive people which negotiate everything and have no own ideas. If somebody has the knowledge to say "thats an bad idea" he should be able the give a better idea.

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 at 12:38:49 GMT Link

I think there are a lot of different kind of fews. First, the psychology can research, that negative thinking will always cause a negativ feeling. So normaly easy answer ist: try to avoid every negativ situation. But another, very immportant point is, that people always are balanced between negativ and positiv. That means, that if you avoid all very negativ situations, some of the light negativ situations will cause the same negativ feeling than the big problems before. So it makes no sense. But on the other side, I think everyone hat the Situation in the past, that he got a very emotional bad feedback (could be a phone call or in a e-mail) and than he was blocked for a long time. I`m from germany and here the news normaly are only bad, god news in radio and Television are very seldom. Than I was in China for a few month (without such a lot of bad news), than I came back and realized: My personal feeling was much better than without the bad news before. But by the way this should be a reason to delete emotional, unprofessional content, but no excuse for delete content, only because I don`t like it!

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 at 13:09:05 GMT Link

I´m sure that happy people are smarter :o). All part´s of life are really easier with fun and happyness. And thats wy my car also is a smart :o)

Fri, 22 Dec 2006 at 13:34:12 GMT Link