Talk a lot if you want to be happy

Happy people tend to say more than unhappy people and their conversations are always more informative.

Photo: brentdarnell.com.

Livescience said a team of psychologists from the University of Arizona and the University of Washington in the US conducted a study to understand the difference in the type of talk between happy people and unhappy people.

In the experiment, volunteers wore a recording device called Electronically Activated Recorder for 4 days. This device records short conversations in the daily life of volunteers. After 4 days they collected more than 2,000 conversations.

The researchers then listened to the conversations and divided them into two categories: trivial or informative. They also asked volunteers to assess their personality and satisfaction with life through the templates available.

The results showed that the volunteers felt happy to have a talk time greater than 70% compared to the most unhappy. Meanwhile, the time spent living in the solitude of those who are more unhappy than happy people is about 25%.

Compared to the group that feels the most unhappy, the number of conversations that have the knowledge content of the happiest people is twice as high, but the number of their trifles is only 1/3.

These findings - detailed in Psychological Science - show that happy individuals tend to mingle with the surrounding society and conduct informative conversations. On the contrary, unfortunate individuals are often self-contained and speak superficial stories, with little useful information.

Scientists believe that high-level conversations can make people feel more satisfied with life. However, this study does not indicate that the conversation has information as a cause or a result of feeling of happiness.