Hope makes you happier
One of the studies revealed that people's expected future health has about one sixth the effect on current happiness as their current health. Image: PeskyMonkey/iStockphoto Imagining a rosy future is key to present-day happiness, new research conducted in Australia and China has found.Two recent studies from The University of Queensland School of Economics, the University of New South Wales, the Australian National University, and Monash University, have found that optimistic expectations are the key to making people happy with their lot in life.Professor Paul Frijters, one of the authors of the two studies, said a sample of over 10,000 Australians over nine years showed that people seemed to be better off if they expected good things to come.“People systematically over-estimate how rosy the future should be and this is crucial for their wellbeing,” he said.“People are much less affected by regret than previously thought, and they do not tend they tell themselves...