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Correlational findings

Study Vitterso et al. (2009): study NO 2005

Public
Students and technical staff university, Norway, 2005
Sample
Respondents
N = 30
Non Response
Assessment
Interview: Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI)
The study was conducted in a quiet room, containing a chair and a table with a computerscreen and a keyboard. Participants were taken to the room one by one, and told that the study was about happiness and quality of life, and that they had to answer some questions and conduct some tasks, all of which would be done in front of the computerscreen. The program first asked about background information (age, gender and whether the participants were right handed or left handed). Next the participants answered a series of commonly used subjective well-being questions, such as the Satisfaction With Life Scale and a one item happiness question, and a series of positive emotion and negative emotion items. Participants gave their answers by pressing the number keys on the keyboard as each item was presented on the screen. Finally participants did several recognition tasks.

Correlate

Authors's Label
Recognition of happy/sad faces
Our Classification
Operationalization
Reaction time in recognition task


POP-OUT REACTION TIME

Participants were exposed to a series of 3 X 3 matrices of smiles of which half showed 8 identical and neutral faces and 1 happy face and half showed 8 identical and neutral faces and 1 sad face. The deviant face occurred randomly at all positions in the matrix over 18 trails of this test.

Participants were told that they would see nine faces on the screen and that one of them differed from the others, by being either a happy face among neutral faces or being a sad face among neutral faces.

A random half of the participants were told to press the 'happy' (button the 'm' key marked with a red sticker) if the happy face appeared and a 'sad' button (the 'z' key marked with a red sticker) if a sad face appeared. For the remaining half of the sample the instructions were reversed so that the 'happy' button was the 'z' key and the sad button was the 'm' key.

Participants were told to respond as quickly as possible. Each trail consisted of the following sequence: (a) a fixation point appeared at the center of the screen for 500 ms, (b) a 3 X 3 face matrix was then displayed until the participant pressed one of the two response keys on the keyboard.


DOT-PROBE REACTION TIME

A total of 20 pairs of happy and sad faces were displayed on the computer screen.

Each trail consisted of the following sequence: (a) a fixation point appeared at the center of the screen for 500 ms, (b) the happy and sad faces were displayed in the right and left positions of the screen for 3000 ms, (c) the two faces disappeared from the screen, and (d) an X appeared in the center of the screen location where of the faces had been.

The X remained on the screen until the participant pressed one of the two response keys on the keyboard. Participants were told that they would see two faces on the screen, and were instructed not to respond until an X appeared.

They were told then when the X appeared on the screen they should respond as quickly as possible. If they saw the X appear on the right side of the screen, they should press the right button (the 'm' key marked with a red sticker); if the saw the X appeared on the left side, they should press the left button (the 'z' key marked with a red sticker).

Happy and sad faces were presented randomly on the left and the right side of the screen, and the X appeared randomly on either the happy or the sad side of the screen.

In the computation of pop-out and dot-probe RT means that error trails (i.e. pressing the 'happy' button for a sad face and vice versa) and responses outside the range +/- 3 SD from the individual's own mean were included.

X is referred as the 'Happy X' when it appeared where the happy faces had been and referred as the 'Sad X' when it appeared where the sad faces had been.

Observed Relation with Happiness

Happiness Measure Statistics Elaboration / Remarks O-HL-u-sq-v-4-j r = -.20 ns recognition time happy face      pop-out test O-HL-u-sq-v-4-j r = -.33 ns recognition time sad face        pop-out test O-HL-u-sq-v-4-j r = -.31 ns recognition time happy face      dot-probe test O-HL-u-sq-v-4-j r = -.15 ns recognition time sad face        dot probe test