英语美文:大量的全球研究证实，金钱可以买到幸福

阅读，不是为了得到什么，而是在被生活打击的无路可退时最后的安身之所。静静等待，阅读，一定会给予你奖励。下面是英语美文:大量的全球研究证实，金钱可以买到幸福的资料，希望你会喜欢！

Money, it turns out, really can buy you happiness -- or at least one form of it, according to the biggest study to examine the relationship between income and well-being around the world.

Can money buy happiness? It's a down payment. How income correlates with happiness

Pulling in the big bucks makes people more likely to say they are happy with their lives overall -- whether they are young or old, male or female, or living in cities or remote villages, the survey of more than 136,000 people in 132 countries found.

But the survey also showed that a key element of what many people consider happiness -- positive feelings -- is much more strongly affected by factors other than cold, hard cash, such as feeling respected, being in control of your life and having friends and family to rely on in a pinch.

"Yes, money makes you happy -- we see the effect of income on life satisfaction is very strong and virtually ubiquitous and universal around the world," said Ed Diener, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Illinois who led the study. "But it makes you more satisfied than it makes you feel good. Positive feelings are less affected by money and more affected by the things people are doing day to day."

Previous studies had suggested that money was associated with happiness. But the relationship appeared weak, and earlier work tended to focus on individual countries and global evaluations of life without parsing out the effects on specific positive and negative emotions or examining differences across nations.

The new survey -- the first large international study to differentiate between overall life satisfaction and day-to-day emotions -- makes that crucial distinction, allowing researchers to explore the elusive concept of happiness in much greater nuance.

"It's sort of a new era for the study of well-being," said Daniel Kahneman, a professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University.

The reason for the distinction is probably that when people are asked whether they are "happy," the first thing they do, wherever they are, is take stock of their lives by comparing themselves to their equivalent of "the Joneses" using the most obvious measure: income, several experts said.

"When people evaluate their life, they compare themselves to a standard of what a successful life is, and it turns out that standard tends to be universal: People in Togo and Denmark have the same idea of what a good life is, and a lot of that has to do with money and material prosperity," Kahneman said. "That was unexpected."

But day-to-day positive feelings depend a lot on other things, which also turn out to be fairly universal and therefore help clarify what makes people content, several researchers said.

"The thing I think is exciting about this is money can make you feel better in a limited way," said Barbara L. Fredrickson, a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "But positive feelings like enjoyment and laughing can do a whole lot more for people. They can help people grow and learn and become a more resilient, better version of yourself."

The new survey, dubbed the "first representative sample of planet Earth," was conducted by Gallup and involved detailed questioning in 2005 and 2006 of 136,839 residents age 15 and older. The samples in each country were designed to be nationally representative and represent about 96 percent of the world's population.

"What makes this paper so important is the sample is so huge and covered the entire world," said Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Riverside. "It's really interesting that if you look at countries that are so different -- from rural villagers to people living in a city like Stockholm -- they are all about the same in terms of what makes people happy."

The researchers gathered information about a long list of attributes, including income, whether basic needs such as food and shelter were met, what conveniences the subjects owned and whether they felt their psychological needs were satisfied. The survey asked people to rate their lives on a scale from zero for the worst possible life to 10 for the best. They also reported whether they experienced enjoyment, smiling, laughing, sadness, depression or anger the previous day, whether they felt respected and had family or friends they could count on in an emergency, and how free they were to choose their daily activities, learn new things or do what "one does best."

Life satisfaction was directly and strongly correlated with income, with the impact felt equally among all ages, men and women, and rural villagers and urban dwellers in virtually every corner of the globe, the researchers reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Although money also influenced emotions, the effect was much weaker. Both positive and negative emotions tended to be affected much more in relation to other psychological and social factors, such as feeling respected, having autonomy, strong social support and working at a fulfilling job.

"What we didn't know before is the extent to which life evaluation and emotional well-being are so distinct," Kahneman said. "When you look at the books about well-being, you see one word -- it's happiness. People do not distinguish."

The findings "are really significant" because "we are finally able to answer the big questions, such as 'What is a good society?' " Shigehiro Oishi, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, wrote in an e-mail. "If the goal of a society is to raise the daily enjoyment of its citizens, then, it seems critical to devise ways to increase the relational wealth of nations (e.g., stronger social network)."

大量的全球研究证实，金钱可以买到幸福

金钱，最后被证实，真的可以买到你的快乐——或者至少可以买到快乐的一种形式。根据最大的研究检验在世界各地，收入和幸福之间的关系。

一个调查了132个国家的1360000人的研究发现一大笔钱总的来说更能让人说他们的生活很快乐——不管他们是年轻的，年老的，男的女的，住在城市或者偏远的乡村。

但是调查也显示出，很多人认为幸福的关键因素是——积极的情感——更深受这个因素的影响而不是冰冷的金钱，比如被尊重的感觉，掌控生活，在紧要关头有朋友，家人可以依靠。

“是的，金钱可以让你快乐——我们看见收入在生活中满意度中的影响是很强烈的，事实上，这在全世界都是普遍存在的。”伊利诺大学一个退休的领导这个研究的心理学教师Ed Diener说。但是相对于它让你感觉不错，它会让你更满意。积极的情感受到金钱的影响比较小，更多的是受到人们每天做所的事情的影响。”

先前的很多研究暗示金钱是和快乐相关的。但是这个关系很弱，早期的研究工作主要倾向于关注个别国家，总体的生活评估，没有分析积极和消极情绪的影响或者检验不同国家的差异。

这个新的调查——第一个大的国际性的区别对待所有生活满意和每日的情绪的研究——发现了一个重要的区别，允许研究者在较多较大的细微差别探究快乐难以捉摸的概念。

“这是研究幸福的新纪元。”普林斯顿大学一位退休的心理学，公共事物教授丹尼尔.卡尼曼说。

有区别的原因可能是当人们被问到是否快乐时，无论他们在哪里，他们做的第一件事就是，把自己的生活和与自己地位相等的人比较，用的最明显的评估是：收入，很多专家说。

当人们在评估他们的生活时，他们是在和成功生活的标准在比较，结果证明这个标准是很普遍的。多哥和丹麦的人在对于什么是好生活时，有着相同的想法，并且大多数都和金钱，物质的富足有关。”卡尼曼说：“这是想不到的。”

但是每天的积极的情感更多的是依赖别的东西，这个被证实是相当普遍的，因此能够帮助弄清什么使人们满足，很多研究者说。

我认为对于金钱在某方面可以让你感觉更好这个看法是很令人兴奋的。”教堂上的北卡莱罗纳大学的心理学芭芭拉.德里克森说。“但是积极的情感就像乐趣和笑声，能给人们带来很多。他们能帮助人们成长，认知，变得更开心，能更好地提升自我。”

这个新的调查，由盖洛普指挥，在2005年和2006年间对15岁以上的136839人做了问卷调查的，被授予“地球上第一个具有代表性的样本”的称号。每个国家的样本别设计用来做全国的典型，并代表全世界96%的人口。

“这个样本很大，涵盖了整个世界，这使得这篇文章很重要。”加州大学河滨分校的心理学教授Sonja Lyubomirsky说。“如果你观察不同的国家，会发现很多的不同，从乡村的村民到像居住在斯德哥尔摩这些城市里的人们，这真的很有意思——就什么让他们快乐而言，他们都是一样。”

研究者收集一长串的关于属性的信息，包括收入，是否基本的需求如事物，藏身处能到满足，这个主题本身是很具有方便性的，并且是否他们的心理需求得到了满足。这个调查要求人们给自己的生活打分，0分是最糟糕的生活，10是最幸福的生活。他们也报告他们早先是否经历翻译乐趣，微笑，笑声，悲伤，沮丧或者愤怒，是否他们觉得被尊重，在紧急关头是否有家人或者朋友可以依靠，在选择他们的日常活动，学习新知识等上他们可以多自由。

据研究者在个性与社会心理学杂志上的报道，生活的满足和收入有着直接，强烈的关系，事实上不管处于什么不同的年龄段，不管是男人还是女人，乡村的村民还是城市的居民，世界每个角落的人都有着同样的影响。尽管金钱会影响情感，这个影响是微乎其微的。积极的和消极的情感更多的是受别人心理的和社会的因素影响，比如受尊重，有自主权，强大的社会支持，有一份令人满意的工作。

“我们之前不知道的是在什么程度上生活评价，精神状态是有区别的，”卡尼曼说：“当你在看关于幸福的书时，你会发现一个字眼——那就是快乐。人们不懂得区分。”

这个调查结果“是很有意义的”因为“我们最终能回答这些大问题，比如“什么是美好的社会？”弗吉尼亚大学的一位心理学副教授Shigehiro Oishi在她的邮件中写道“如果社会的目标是提升公民每天的乐趣，然后想方设法去增加国家的相关财富，这是很重要的。”