SHE is an American multi-millionaire reality TV star, famous for being famous, who seems to spend most of her time posting pictures of her glamorous lifestyle on social media.
So it is perhaps of little surprise that a major study using computational methods to analyse human characteristics has concluded the archetype of modern happiness is Kim Kardashian.
The research, being presented at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference in Brighton on Wednesday, found women of high socio-economic status, who are married, extroverted, exercise frequently and eat fresh food are likely to be the most contented.
Another famous name who is said to epitomise happiness is Hollywood star Ryan Gosling – with positive effects found from being Canadian and male.
Researcher Matthew Samson, a PhD student in psychology at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, said the study was different from others which tried to pinpoint the characteristics which promote happiness as it looked at the ‘whole person’, rather than individual traits.
He said: “There is a long tradition of research looking at the person characteristics which promote happiness.
“What we tend to do is isolate one or two variables – so for example if you are very extrovert and outgoing or if you are very wealthy then we know that is going to help you experience greater happiness on average.
“However this kind of comprises the view of the person as a very complex entity, with a series of interrelated qualities.
“We can actually apply new computational approaches to take a more holistic view of the person where we capture both components of their personality as well as lifestyle factors to find the constellation of traits which tends to promote different forms of happiness.”
The study was carried out by looking at happiness levels of around 4000 people in the US, the UK and Canada and used statistical software to find out the set of characteristics which create the most content people.
Samson said while the notion of an archetype had long existed in psychology, it was usually not “backed up with numbers”.
He said: “A good example of the kind of character constellation that we found promotes happiness is one that looks a lot like Kim Kardashian.
“So these are women who tend to be of high socioeconomic status, who are also a self-identifying ethnic minority, they are married and they tend also to be extroverted, they tend to exercise frequently and eat fresh food,” he said.
Samson said this analysis was based on including extremes of characteristics – such as extremely high or low extroversion. But when these were taken out to reflect the more average nature of the population, the archetype of happiness “looked a little bit like Ryan Gosling”, he said.
“There is a small positive effect to being from Canada and a small positive effect to being male,” he said.
However for those who despair of achieving – or wanting to achieve – the life of reality TV stars and actors, the study comes with a welcome note of caution.
“Like with all psychology models, there is some random variation around this effect – these are conclusions at a population level and they can’t be applied to any individual,” Samson said.
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