Happiness offers reasons to clap hands — and to worry

It's been a rough couple of weeks. Hamas won the Palestinian elections; protests over cartoons representing the prophet Muhammad raged around the world; more Americans and Iraqis were killed by suicide bombers; new Abu Ghraib photos were released; and, here at home, the vice president accidentally shot his friend. But despite the trying times, we Americans are managing to keep our spirits up. Last week, the Pew Research Center released a report on happiness in the United States. Of the Americans surveyed, 34 percent informed researchers that they were "very happy," while another 50 percent reported that they were "pretty happy." That's a happiness record in which our nation can take pride.

More than 200 years ago, our forefathers broke new ground by insisting, in the Declaration of Independence, that "the pursuit of happiness" was an inalienable right, sharing pride of place with "life" and "liberty." If the Founders could see us today, I bet they'd be proud of the 84 percent of Americans who consider themselves happy campers.

Admittedly, some of us have made more progress than others when it comes to the pursuit of happiness. For instance, 45 percent of Republicans were "very happy," compared to only 30 percent of Democrats. White evangelical churchgoers were also a particularly cheery lot, with 49 percent reporting themselves "very happy."

Meanwhile, poor people and black people tend, like Democrats, to be party poopers. Those with family incomes under $30,000 were only half as likely as those with family incomes over $100,000 to be "very happy," and blacks were almost twice as likely as whites to insist churlishly that they were "not too happy."

Not that this is surprising. Everyone knows that poor people, minorities and Democrats are always carping about racial and economic inequality, war, torture, the deficit, our lack of preparation for terrorist attacks and natural disasters, blah, blah, blah — all real downers. Meanwhile, happy people — exemplified by President Bush — resist all that negativity and stay focused on the good news.

So if you're one of those "very happy" Americans, clap your hands! Or, at least, pat yourself on the back, because you've got a lot to look forward to. Happy people have stronger immune systems than the gloom-and-doom crowd, and they may be more successful in life. As scholars Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King and Ed Diener conclude in a recent Psychological Bulletin article, "happiness, rooted in personality and in past successes, leads to approach behaviors that often lead to further successes." In other words, happiness doesn't just result from success: It may actually cause success. Now there's something to be happy about!