The CONTENTED will inherit the Earth, say researchers (but it's bad new for the glum)

  • Researchers say a positive attitude could be evolutionarily advantageous
  • Created a series of algorithms to model how simulated humans coped
  • Those who survived were more content and valued long term happiness 

By MARK PRIGG FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

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Having a positive attitude could be evolutionarily advantageous, researchers have found.

They created a series of algorithms to model how simulated humans coped.

It found those who survived were more content, and valued long term happiness more that short terms gains.  

Cornell researchers created a series of algorithms to model how simulated humans coped. It found those who valued long term happiness more that short terms gains fared best.

Cornell researchers created a series of algorithms to model how simulated humans coped. It found those who valued long term happiness more that short terms gains fared best.

HOW CAN YOU BE CONTENT? 

Shimon Edelman, professor of psychology and a co-author of the study, advises:

'Instead of relying blindly on advice from self-help authors about how to be happy, get to know yourself – what your brain/mind is like, how it works and how it interacts with the world – and you'll be in a better position to decide for yourself.' 

Having a positive attitude could be evolutionarily advantageous, according to Cornell researchers who simulated generations of evolution in a computational model. 

Their study was published May 4 in PLOS ONE.

The findings offer scientific support to the ancient philosophical insights from China, Greece and India, which encourage cultivating long-term contentment or life satisfaction rather than grasping at the fleeting joy of instant gratification, the researchers said.

'In an evolutionary sense, you have to evaluate your life on the basis of more than what happened just now. 

'Because usually what happens right now is you go hungry,' said Shimon Edelman, professor of psychology and a co-author of the study.

The 'agents' or simulated actors that survived to produce offspring in the researchers' model were the ones that attached more weight to longer-term happiness than to momentary happiness, especially when food was scarce. 

They also 'remembered' past happiness for a longer period of time than their less-successful counterparts. 

No matter whether food was abundant or scarce, the agents that had a more positive outlook – attaching more importance to upswings in their situations than to downswings – also were more evolutionarily fit. 

Their counterparts that gave more attention to short-term joy and a negative attitude died off.

And when agents compared their food resources with their friends', they did worse when food was abundant.

The researchers also found the only situation in which those with a more conservative outlook had a higher level of evolutionary fitness was a harsh environment, in which poison was distributed along with food. 

'It may indeed be advisable, at least under conditions of scarcity or adversity, to focus on longer-term well-being or contentment over momentary pleasures and to be less envious of one's neighbors. 

The 'agents' that gave more attention to short-term joy and a negative attitude died off.

The 'agents' that gave more attention to short-term joy and a negative attitude died off.

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY WAS RIGHT 

The findings offer scientific support to the ancient philosophical insights from China, Greece and India, which encourage cultivating long-term contentment or life satisfaction rather than grasping at the fleeting joy of instant gratification, the researchers said. 

Also, in general, it may be wise to mark happy events more than unhappy ones,' Edelman said.

Edelman is co-author with Yue Gao, a doctoral candidate who recently defended her dissertation in the field of computer science. 

The study is titled 'Between Pleasure and Contentment: Evolutionary Dynamics of Some Possible Parameters of Happiness.'

'Our hypothesis was, giving more weight to longer-terms considerations like life satisfaction, or at least a longer period than just right now, would be advantageous, at least in some conditions,' Edelman said.

So they wrote an algorithm in which agents with combinations of traits foraged for food in four types of simulated terrain over the course of six experiments. 

The traits included positive or negative outlooks, an emphasis on either short-term (hedonic) or long-term (eudaimonic) happiness, and a tendency or an aversion to comparing performance to that of friends. 

Each type of terrain had a different distribution of food, from a random and scarce pattern to a more clustered and abundant distribution.

Edelman and Gao populated each environment with 400 agents in each generation for 40 generations and repeated each of the six experiments 10 times.

After a set number of cycles, each agent in the top half of performers was allowed to produce offspring that formed the next generation of agents. 

The bottom 50 percent was terminated. 

In this way, the researchers assessed the effectiveness of traits by tracking their prevalence in the population over evolutionary time.

 

 

 

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