2 | Jason
April 26, 2010 at 09:02

I just read your post entitled ‘Conversation and Happiness’ after happening upon your blog. Very interesting and illuminating. Your explanation of the correlation in the study is one of conversation leading to happiness. While this is also the case, like many correlations, the opposite direction, in the correlation, also accounts for much of the phenomenon. Meaning that Happiness, in my opinion, also leads to conversation. A while ago I read a study of how happier people were more inclined to take risks, risk failure, be independant,…. Well, think of what a deep coversation is. It opens the persons ideas up for criticism; thus, a person is risking their ideas as well as whatever emotion and self is connected thereof. Also they risk being wrong. Now, a happy person is more apt to converse in such a manner because the happier person is not skating on thin ice, so to speak, emotionally. However, the person who is less happy, is already emotionally fragile, and therefore cannot take a blow to his/her ideas or a challenge that makes them think and possibly expend emotional energy; nor do they have the emotional reserve to deal with being wrong. Thus, while it is quite valid to contribute a portion of the – happiness/conversation correlation – to conversation as a factor leading to happiness, I would not minimize the reverse as also playing a major part, since the happy person has a far easier emotional time when conversing since he/she is on solid ground,amotionally speaking. Lastly, there is a third option regarding the correlation, which is that who converses more? People who are in, or have good relationships (with parents, siblings, friends, spouse,…). And therefore, if you have these good relationships then you tend to be happier, or possibly happier people foster these relationships as well; thus, this third way indicates another logical path that can be followed in terms of explaining the makeup of ( at least a goodly percentage of) the correlation.