The Relation between Happiness and Work Productivity

The Relation between Happiness and Work Productivity

Abstract

Despite extensive research on the subject spanning over 70 years, uncertainty still remains as to whether happier workers are in fact more productive. This study combined longitudinal prospective and experience sampling methods to examine the relationship between happiness and self-reported productivity among Directors employed in the public and private sectors. Analyses at a trait level suggested happy people were more productive. Similarly, at the state level of analysis, people were more productive when they were happier. Among the happiness indicators examined (job satisfaction, quality of work life, life satisfaction, positive effect, and negative affect) positive affect was most strongly, but not exclusively, tied to productivity at both the state and trait levels. Discussion focuses on reconciling a long history of mixed findings regarding the happy productive worker thesis.

Introduction

There is a large economics literature on individual and economy-wide productivity. There is also a fast-growing one on the measurement of mental wellbeing. Yet economists currently know little about the interplay between emotions and human productivity. Although people's happiness and effort decisions are likely to be intertwined, we lack evidence on whether, and how, they are causally connected.

Since the 1930s there has been a great deal of interest in the relationship between employee well-being and productivity. Hersey (1932) reported a positive relationship between daily emotions and performance, whereas Kornhauser and Sharp (1932) reported that worker attitudes (more cognitive assessments of happiness) were altogether unrelated to efficiency. Knowing whether or not happiness in the workplace promotes productivity has important implications for management and strategies for workplace improvements. Despite considerable research on the subject, uncertainty remains today as to whether happier workers are indeed more productive (see Wright and Cropanzano 2004). Researchers have suggested that inconsistent findings linking happiness and productivity may be due to inconsistent measurement. Most often in studies of happiness and productivity, happiness has been operationalized as job satisfaction (e.g., Brief and Weiss 2002). However, job satisfaction may not be an effective proxy for happiness.

The term 'happiness' lacks scientific precision, and some researchers refer to subjective well-being (SWB) instead. SWB is also an inclusive term comprised of multiple, empirically distinct constructs. For example, emotional experience (often operationalized as the independent dimensions of positive affect and negative affect) is correlated with, yet distinct from, more cognitive appraisals of subjective well-being such as life satisfaction (at a global level) or various domain satisfactions, such as job satisfaction (see Diener 2005; Kim-Prieto et al. 2005). We retain the term happiness for its historical and commonsense value in discussing the happy-productive worker literature, and view it as a broad term akin to SWB. However, it is important to recognize that happiness has meant different things to different researchers, and more specific statements (i.e., about a particular indicator) necessarily qualify broader statements about happiness. Our empirical approach recognizes the many facets of happiness (or SWB) by employing multiple happiness indicators and comparing them.

There is also growing recognition that research on the happiness-productivity link must distinguish between ...