BehindTheMedspeak: What makes you happy?

Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman and colleagues, in last week's Science magazine, published the results of their exhaustive research into happiness.

Their findings?

• What makes people happy has little to do with what they say makes them happy.

• Money and children, which people often say give them happiness, do not appear to lift people's moods on a day-to-day level.

• "Saying that you generally don't enjoy spending time with your kids is terrible," said Norbert Schwarz, a psychologist at the University of Michigan involved in the study. "But admitting they were a pain last night is quite acceptable."

The scientists, using a technique they call the "Day Reconstruction Method," found that simple social activities and watching television turned out to be among the most enjoyable daily activities, whereas being married or rich made relatively little difference to people's everyday moods.

The study was conducted on 909 women by researchers at Michigan, Princeton, the University of California at San Diego, and Stony Brook University.