Paul B. Farrell: Happy investors are bad investors - Financial - Financial Services - Mutual Funds - Personal Finance

Paul B. Farrell: Happy investors are bad investors - Financial - Financial Services - Mutual Funds - Personal Finance: "ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- The media love the new 'science of happiness' -- smiley faces, comics laughing, color photos of brain scans, monks wired on electrodes, eight steps to nirvana, tests scoring your happy level -- all irresistibly fun stuff."

But is happiness "bankable?" Will getting happier make you richer? Not as an investor. Happy investors aren't better investors. In fact, they're often very bad investors.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with the new happiness gurus: Happy people make more money. But what they don't tell you is you're also more likely to lose money if you get too happy playing the stock market.

So listen closely: I'll show you the secret to making more money on the job and not losing all of it in the market, a strategy guaranteed to help you retire a happy millionaire.

First, the good news: Happy investors get their inspiration from psychologists like Dr. Martin Seligman, the godfather of "positive psychology" and author of "Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism."

Seligman and his colleagues focus on building healthy minds rather than curing mental pathologies. Their research proves that happy people live longer, are healthier, have more satisfying family lives, enjoy their work more and are content with what they have.

Now the bad news from the new behavioral-finance folks: These psychologists and economists warn us that when it comes to investing, you can indeed be "too happy." Their research tells us investors aren't

Beacon Journal | 02/21/2005 | The power of positive attitudes

Beacon Journal | 02/21/2005 | The power of positive attitudes

The power of positive attitudes

By Candace Goforth

Beacon Journal business writer


IT DIDN'T TAKE a scientist to figure out that grumpy people make others feel lousy, and feeling lousy makes them less productive at work.

But, in fact, researchers have quantified the effect of chronic negativity. And you'd never have guessed how expensive those scowls can be.

Negativity costs the U.S. economy $300 billion a year -- and researchers consider that a conservative estimate.

Unfortunately, smiles and sunny outlooks can't be mandated in the company manual.

But managers can neutralize and even reverse damaging negativity through the measured use of employee recognition and praise.

And there's a scientific formula for that, too, said Tom Rath, global practice leader for strengths-based development for the Gallup Organization and co-author of How Full is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life. Rath wrote the book with his grandfather, Donald O. Clifton.

Clifton died in 2003, and never saw the book published. He was a psychologist who pioneered the study of positive psychology and developed the dipper-and-bucket analogy that

Brain study points to 'sixth sense' | Science Blog

Brain study points to 'sixth sense' | Science Blog

Following the Asian tsunami, scientists struggled to explain reports that primitive aboriginal tribesmen had somehow sensed the impending danger in time to join wild animals in a life-saving flight to higher ground. A new theory suggests that the anterior cingulate cortex, described by some scientists as part of the brain's "oops" center, may actually function as an early warning system -- one that works at a subconscious level to help us recognize and avoid high-risk situations.

While some scientists discount the existence of a sixth sense for danger, new research from Washington University in St. Louis has identified a brain region that clearly acts as an early warning system -- one that monitors environmental cues, weighs possible consequences and helps us adjust our behavior to avoid dangerous situations.

"Our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought," said Joshua Brown, Ph.D., a research associate in psychology in Arts & Sciences and co-author of a study on these findings in the Feb. 18 issue of the journal Science.

The findings offer rigorous scientific evidence for a new way of conceptualizing the

The Next Level Newsletter | Anthony Robbins Companies

The Next Level Newsletter | Anthony Robbins Companies

Have you ever thought about what it really means to be a philanthropist? When you think about it, it is really an amazing life endeavor—one of the greatest examples of the power of contribution in our lives. Its definition alone—“love to mankind; benevolence toward the whole human family; universal good will”—tells us so much about the meaning behind it.

Contributing is something very dear to philanthropists. Take Andrew Carnegie, for example. The self-made steel magnate was such an advocate of education, he contributed a large portion of his fortune to establishing a library system in the U.S. Contribution plays a

Scotsman.com News - Features - Happiness is no laughing matter

Scotsman.com News - Features - Happiness is no laughing matter

Happiness is no laughing matter

JIM GILCHRIST


IF YOU WERE to believe the advertising agencies, sometimes it was egg-shaped, sometimes a cigar called Hamlet, while John Lennon assured us it was a warm gun. It is the thing we desire most, but it can’t be bought. We’re talking, of course, about that elusive concept known as happiness.

Happiness has always been closely bound up with economics, national or personal: as far back as the 1930s, after all, Will Fyffe was lamenting the price of it, as engendered by whisky, in his song, Twelve and a Tanner a Bottle:

So hoo can a fella be happy
When happiness costs
such a lot?

But happiness, if not necessarily in its distilled and bottled form, is coming under renewed scrutiny by economists, psychologists and social scientists. At Princeton University, New Jersey, a team led by psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, has been working on a "national happiness audit" to complement gross domestic product in seeking a more accurate indicator of a nation’s well-being than

NPR : Measuring Happiness with a Palm Reading

NPR : Measuring Happiness with a Palm Reading

Diversions
Measuring Happiness with a Palm Reading
by Allison Aubrey

Correction: This story incorrectly stated the number of times that kidney-disease patients in the study underwent dialysis sessions. These patients underwent dialysis three times a week.

Morning Edition, February 14, 2005 · A growing number of psychologists have set out to determine what makes the heart sing. Scientists are using Palm Pilots to gauge people's moment-to-moment levels of happiness.

TownOnline.com - Natick Bulletin & TAB - Opinion & Letters

TownOnline.com - Natick Bulletin & TAB - Opinion & Letters


Maddocks: Finding happiness and shin splints

By Phil MaddocksFriday, February 11, 2005

The good news is we have the power to increase our happiness. The bad news is the means to the end sounds about as joyful and pleasant as grinding out the last mile of a marathon.
That seems to be the message, at any rate, out of the positive-psychology movement, which supports its argument with research that supposedly shows it is possible to raise your level of happiness in much the way you improve the tone of your muscle tone or the shape of your waistline.
In other words, by watching Oprah, or at least by imitating what she does.
"I'll quote Oprah here, which I don't normally do," said one psychologist when asked if it was possible that daily exercises such as

Money Magazine: What's love worth? Try $100k - Feb. 10, 2005

Money Magazine: What's love worth? Try $100k - Feb. 10, 2005

salon :: :: col :: keil :: Tying the knot, By Garrison Keillor :: Page 1

salon :: :: col :: keil :: Tying the knot, By Garrison Keillor :: Page 1

Business Before Pleasure: Emotions Play Key Role In Guiding Consumer Spending

Business Before Pleasure: Emotions Play Key Role In Guiding Consumer Spending

USATODAY.com - Study: Young cancer survivors adjust well

USATODAY.com - Study: Young cancer survivors adjust well

Happiness Segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4489098

(Un-)Happiness in the Modern World
Talk of the Nation, February 7, 2005 ·

The last 50 years have givenAmericans better health, shorter work-weeks and the ability to buy morestuff -- but not more happiness. A leading economist looks at why thatis, and what societies can do to make people happier.

Guest:Richard Layard, author, Happiness : Lessons from a New Science;professor, London School of Economics