A GOOD LIFE

AND
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Alpha Group Project
 Roles
Leader - Bayne Albin

Scheduler - Emily Ruttenberg

Strategist -Brady Leatherman, Byron Gonzalez

Writer - Ann Njoroge, Nathan Urquhart

Editor - Maya Morris, Emma Goff, Colin McFadden, Jalin Graham

Creator - Jordan Badenhop

Designer - Jasmine Moore

Introduction
For this assignment, the Alpha Group decided to focus on the topics of Education,
Travel, Sports, Social Media, Sleep, the Future, Humor, Pets, and Dancing and each
of their respective relations to the definition of a good life. Each member was able
to identify certain factors that contribute to their definition of a good life,which
was supported by further research, and this was compiled to display a common
group notion that a good life revolves around happiness, purpose and progression
towards goals. Through this activity, we were able to better understand what
factors contribute to a good life, and this is reflected in the research and analysis
completed.

Cuñado, Juncal, and Fernando Pérez De Gracia. “Does
Education Affect Happiness? Evidence for Spain.” Social
Indicators Research, vol. 108, no. 1, 2012, pp. 185–196. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/23261310. Accessed 2 Dec. 2020.
A Good Life and
Education
This article will be helpful for me to use because it is
a direct research article about how education affects
happiness and well-being. The article uses a data set
from Spain about the connection between education
and happiness. The article discusses how education
affects happiness indirectly, i.e. how education affects
income, and how that affects happiness. The article
also talks about the direct effects that education has
on happiness and if certain levels of education have
an affect on an individual's happiness. This article is
perfect for me to use because as a resource it gives
me a lot data to use on this topic
A Good Life and
Travel
This article is going to be great to use because I want
to research the effects of travelling on overall
happiness. This article, “How Do We Feel on
Vacation? A Closer Look at How Emotions Change
over the Course of a Trip” is a perfect article for
understanding the relationship between travel and
happiness. This article discusses how going on
vacation can affect people's emotions. The article
explores how the location, duration and
companionship factors of travel can affect someone's
emotions during a trip. This article is a perfect
Nawijn, Jeroen, et al. “How Do We Feel on Vacation? A Closer Look
research tool for understanding the relationship
at How Emotions Change over the Course of a Trip.” Journal of
between a Good Life and Travelling. Travel Research, vol. 52, no. 2, Mar. 2013, pp. 265–274,
doi:10.1177/0047287512465961.
A Good Life and
Travel
This article explains the relationship between traveling and happiness.
I specifically liked how it explains how the decision-making process
during travel engages the brain and taps into essential problem-
solving emotions. The article discusses the continuum of decision-
making, specifically mobility and transport in this case. This article
aimed to investigate relationships between travelers’ characteristics
and emotions. The research finds that a traveler’s happiness is
primarily based on travel and or transportation mode, this is the main
variable that affects the mood of those traveling. In addition, the
presence of unexpected events and the level of patience and
tolerance they have toward these events are also directly associated
Eleni G. Mantouka, Eleni I. Vlahogianni. Understanding Travel Behavior
with the happiness levels of travelers. The goal of the research was
through Travel Happiness - Eleni G. Mantouka, Eleni I. Vlahogianni,
additionally intended to highlight the importance of emotions in the
Alexandros E. Papacharalampous, Léonie Heydenrijk-Ottens, Sanmay
decision-making process of traveling. The results successfully
Shelat, Viktoriya Degeler, Hans Van Lint, 2019. 2019,
quantified travel happiness. This helps me to understand why I
journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0361198119836761.
personally find so much satisfaction in travel, and even in the thought
of travel.
 A Good Life And
Travel
This article assesses the relative importance of various trip and personal
factors influencing happiness during trips. This paper defines happiness
as people evaluating and experiencing their lives positively and often
referred to as subjective well-being. I personally have never heard this
specific definition, but I think it is a good one. Some scholars claim that
travel itself can have positive utility such as adventure, discovery, novelty,
a sense of speed, motion, control, and enjoyment of natural beauty, and
more. I like this because I find a lot of happiness within myself when
seeking adventure. The article touches on daily travel such as commuting
to work. Even travel on this small scale has an influence on one’s
happiness. Travel happiness is a relatively new research field that is just
starting to be explored. The measurement methods for travel happiness
include the “Satisfaction with Travel Scale (STS)”. In conclusion,
Happiness is the dependent variable while the independent variables are
broadly divided into three categories. The first includes travel attributes
which is interactions with others, travel mode, trip duration, and travel
purpose. Next is personal attributes. Meaning, age, sex, race, region,
labor force status, work type, among other factors. Lastly, family attributes Shuyan, Chen. “Assessing the Relative Importance of Factors Influencing
like family income, presence of children, and marital status. All of these Travel Happiness.” Shibboleth Authentication Request, July 2019, www-
factors combined is what creates the travel experience and contributes to sciencedirect-
the happiness levels you will experience. com.librarylink.uncc.edu/science/article/pii/S2214367X18301236.
 A Good Life And
Travel
This article was written about how trips and trip events affect one’s
satisfaction with life. It splits up this satisfaction into “various life
domains”, including social life, leisure & recreation, family life, love
life, arts & culture, work life, health & safety, financial life, spiritual
life, intellectual life, self, culinary life, and travel life. It states that
trips can induce satisfaction in these various domains, especially in
events. “This feeling of satisfaction may be due to meeting new
people, making new friends, spending quality time with friends and
sharing mutual interests, and spending time away from home and
family.” (263). The article also states that “satisfaction with one’s life
is mostly determined by satisfaction with a variety of life
domains”(263). The article then goes into a detailed description of
two studies, and writes about the results. This article helped my
description of a good life because it provided studies that highlight
the positive effects vacations and trips can have on one’s Sirgy, Kruger. “How Does a Travel Trip Affect Tourists’ Life
Satisfaction?” Journal of travel research 50.3 (2010): 261–275.
satisfaction in life.
Web.
 A Good Life And
Travel
This article goes well into depth on the benefits of travel, mostly
delving into the benefits of every-day travel. This includes the daily
commute to work and travel to and from daily activities. The article
talks about how active forms of commute are more beneficial to a
satisfactory life, and it uses studies to back up this information.
The article also lists public transport as a beneficial mode of travel
because it mixes active transport with passive transport, and it
also includes daily interactions with people. The article also talks
about how “long travel time to work is associated with increased
risk of mental distress” (Jakobsson Bergstad et al. (2011)) I
enjoyed this article because it included many studies on the topic,
Friman, Gärling. “How Does Travel Affect Emotional Well-Being and
and it also included some studies that would go against its ideas
Life Satisfaction?” Transportation research. Part A, Policy and
and gave evidence to counter them. This article is helpful in my
practice 106 (2017): 170–180. Web.
description of a good life because daily travel is a massive part of
our lives, and the differences in fulfillment between different forms
of travel can also be applicable.

Nagelhout, Ryan. Baseball: Science at the Ballpark. Lucent Press,
2018. Web
A Good Life and
Sports
I feel like this source matches right up with my idea of a good
life and sports thought the idea of just sports was a little too
broad, so I decided to pick out my favorite sport which is
baseball, this source covers just that. This book begins talking
about the cultural influence the game of baseball has on the
world, and people like me. If baseball didn’t exist, I honestly do
not know what I would have done growing up because I have
been connected with baseball for as long as I can remember.
As we learned throughout this semester, A Good Life is not
based on achieving certain things or by self-proclaiming it, it is
attained by doing things you love and completing steps along
the way towards your goal. It’s just like in the game of baseball,
the older you get, the higher the difficulty the game becomes
and the better your counterparts become as well, which is what
makes baseball such a fun and interesting sport.

Luke, Andrew. Inside The World of Sports. 2016. Web. 29 Nov,
2020.
A Good Life and
Sports
The second source I decided to use is another book, but this one talks
more about the great and historical moments that have taken place in
baseball history. It spans very old moments like Babe Ruth calling his
shot and Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech, to very recent moments like the
Boston Red Sox and Chicago each breaking their curse of not winning a
World Series Championship (Boston in 2004, Chicago in 2016). These
types of legendary moments that happen on a yearly basis, are the
reasons why the game of baseball is so fun and “addictive” for me at
least. Just like I was saying in the first annotation, to me a good life
includes baseball and as long as baseball is still a thing, I will have a
good and happy life. Many people who like baseball will usually say they
like to only watch the game or like to only play it but, for me, I love to
play, watch, and especially get the statistics about everything baseball
related. I guess you could call me an extreme baseball fanatic.
A Good Life and
Social Media
This article discusses the effect social media interactions has on
happiness. Specifically, it discusses whether “online social
interactions can replace real-life social connection in our pursuit of
happiness.” I chose this article due to the rise of interactions
people have on social media within the last decade, but also
because of these times during a pandemic, and my personal
experience of having to communicate with my friends via the
internet, instead of being able to interact and socialize with them
face-to-face. I personally feel like in order to have a good life, one
must be able to have physical interactions with people around
them, talking to someone via text on a screen is not as satisfying
or likely to bring a person happiness, compared to if you are able
Arampatzi, Efstratia, et al. “Social Network Sites, Individual Social
to see the person you’re talking to. The article provides a study Capital and Happiness.” Journal of Happiness Studies, vol. 19, no. 1,
from different people with different levels of interaction both within Jan. 2018, pp. 99–122. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10902-016-9808-z.
social media and outside of it, which allows me to see how it
affects people differently.
A Good Life and
Social Media
The article above discusses the social media Facebook and its
effects on people’s mental health. This was interesting to me, as I
first began reading this with the biased opinion that social media
cannot affect a person’s mental health in a positive manner, if it
did, I thought, it was a very negligible and false perception of
happiness that people were able to experience. What I kind of
found out, was that like most things in life, people’s happiness was
based on how they personally “took it to be”. Admittedly even after
reading some of the arguments of how it can positively affect a
person, I still lean towards the idea that social media negatively
affects a person’s happiness. A majority of the article discussed Brailovskaia, Julia, and Jürgen Margraf. “Comparing Facebook
what I had predicted it to be about: how social media forces Users and Facebook Non-Users: Relationship between Personality
people to try and create a false perception of happiness, which in Traits and Mental Health Variables– An Exploratory Study.” PLoS
ONE, vol. 11, no. 12, Dec. 2016, pp. 1–17. EBSCOhost,
turn creates a low self esteem for others who think they should be
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0166999.
happy all of the time.
 A Good Life and
Sleep
I believe that sleep is needed to live a good life. This article is a
study or experiment on the way sleep affects people,
specifically teens and changes their mood. The amount of sleep
a person gets can affect their cognitive abilities and
performance. This article uses teen subjects and were restricted
for how long they can sleep each night. The researchers then
measured the performance of the adolescents mentally and
physically. It was interesting to see that attention was one of the
things that was measured during this experiment. I like that this
was included because the decrease in an individual’s attention
span could affect how they enjoy their hobbies and
relationships. This could overall do harm to the factors that were
mentioned in Haidt’s book. This source helps show that sleep is
a factor that was not mentioned by Haidt that can play a role in
Lo, June C, et al. “Cognitive Performance, Sleepiness, and Mood
living a good life, and how detrimental it can be to the lives of
in Partially Sleep Deprived Adolescents: The Need for Sleep
teens and their future.
Study.” Oxford University Press, vol. 39, Mar. 2016, pp. 687-698.
PubMed Central, doi:10.5665/sleep.5552. Accessed 2 December
2020.
 A Good Life and
Sleep
This article reveals a specific study in the Japanese
adolescents. The study tries to find a correlation between lack
of sleep and the subjective happiness within daily activities of
these teens. Although my argument is based on the sleep of
every individual, humans at earlier ages are most effective
because it influences their future. They recommend that
teachers and parents can help improve the sleep of these
adolescents. The researchers studied the level of happiness
that these teens rated for themselves while doing everyday
tasks such as eating breakfast and whether they drink, smoke,
or have mental health issues. The table in the article shows a
linear relationship between subjective happiness and sleep.
This article is helpful because it gives straight statistics to show
how sleep is an essential part of living a good life, and I think
Otsuka, Yuichiro, et al. “The relationship between subjective
that it is overlooked by Haidt and interview subjects such as the
happiness and sleep problems in Japanese adolescents.”
one I interviewed.
Netherlands: Elsevier BV, vol. 69, Jan. 2020, pp. 120-126.
ScienceDirect, doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2020.01.008. Accessed 2
December 2020.
A Good Life and
Future
In this article I looked at a group of researchers who found
that there was a correlation between expected life
expectancy and the expected quality of living. The biggest
reason I chose to look at this study was how they used
people from the ages of eighteen to sixty five. They used
constraints such as taking out people who took too little time
completing the survey and were not included in the study.
They also were limited by the fact that older participants had
a lower expected life expectancy as they may have had a
recent decline in health then those who were younger taking
the survey. This was because one of their main questions to Rappange, Brouwer. “A Long Life in Good Health: Subjective
the group was “What age do you expect to reach yourself?... Expectations Regarding Length and Future Health-Related Quality
of Life.” The European journal of health economics 17.5 (2015):
years?”. Another thing from the study that shocked me was
577–589. Web.
that 56% of participants would rather have a shorter life in
perfect health then a longer life in less than perfect health.
A Good Life and
Future \

There was a study on children younger than five years old back in 2007
the first Lancet series on early childhood development that I looked at
and found that more than two hundred million children were not
reaching the developmental milestones that most children should have
reached by that point. The study also gave me a direct correlation to
look at between children reaching developmental milestones and
reaching the good life we all want to obtain so badly. The study found
that these children when they got older were hurting their societies that
they lived in as they were not prepared enough for their lives and could
not contribute to society like they should. The problem comes from the
fact that recently in the past 2 decades there have been so many crises
around the world like this article says that it is crucial that every country
and government invest in their children as these children will be the Lo, Das. “A Good Start in Life Will Ensure a Sustainable Future
future of society in whatever country they are in and they will be the for All.” The Lancet (British edition) 389.10064 (2016): 8–9.
next ones to try and live the good life. Web.

Yue, Liu. “Humor Styles, Self-Esteem, and Subjective Happiness.”
Psychological reports 115.2 (2014): 517–525.
EBSCOhost, doi:10.2466/07.02.PR0.115c18z6.
A Good Life and
Humor
This article is helpful to me when thinking of what a good life
entails, as it connects to the idea from this course that the
quality of things in our lives matter as much as their presence,
like love or relationships. This study examined how our style of
humor could affect our self-esteem, and then in turn affect our
subjective happiness. It did this by giving over two hundred
Hong Kong undergraduate students a questionnaire and scales
for self-esteem and subjective happiness. The results of the
study showed that affiliative humor and self-enhancing humor
had a significant connection to self-esteem and happiness.
Aggressive humor and self-defeating humor did not. While
there are limitations to the study, such as the sample size being
limited and that it therefore cannot be used to generalize the
results, the findings from this article are very interesting and
can point me to more research on this topic.
 A Good Life and
Humor
This article is helpful to me when thinking about a good life. It identifies
four personality traits that characterize happy people: extraversion, internal
locus of control, high self-esteem, and optimism, and the findings suggest
that they are happy from developing adaptive strategies to use humor in
their daily lives. The article provides a study examining the relationships
between those personality traits, different humor styles, and happiness. It
found that happiness was positively related to self-enhancing and affiliative
humor styles, and related negatively to self-defeating and aggressive
humor styles. The article concludes that happy people regularly engage in
positive uses of humor and avoid negative uses in their daily life. Self-
enhancing humor is viewing life in a humorous way, and affiliative humor is
humor used to entertain others or improve social relationships. This is
useful information to support Haidt’s takeaways from “The Happiness
Ford, Thomas E., Shaun K. Lappi, and Christopher J. Holden.
Hypothesis”; Haidt told us that we are hypersocial creatures and a factor
"Personality, Humor Styles and Happiness: Happy People
within a good life is the quality of our relationships, connecting to this
have Positive Humor Styles." Europe's Journal of Psychology
article’s conclusion that one method of achieving those things is through
12.3 (2016): 320-37. ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2020.
humor.

Lee, Sang Uk. “Humor as Wisdom for Reframing Life.” Journal of
religion and health vol. 57,2 (2018): 551-560. doi:10.1007/s10943-
017-0535-5
A Good Life and
Humor
This article covers the basis and presence of humor in what is
defined by the author as working towards building a good life. The
argument presented supporting this notion is that the psychology
behind understanding humor, primarily studied in older adults who
are considered by society and circumstantial events to have a
higher level of wisdom, due to the multitude of life experiences one
has gone through allows for a better ability to try and relate with
others. This is followed by an examination in how the ability to
engage with humor demonstrates a method of problem solving and
comprehension that allow us to complete and understand tasks.
The findings of this article are important as they demonstrate a
view that relates the concept of humor in how a good life is
considered to be lived, and this contributes to the identification of
humor as a key factor in a good life.

Leist, Anja K; Müller, Daniela. “Humor Types Show Different
Patterns of Self-Regulation, Self-Esteem, and Well-Being.”
Journal of Happiness Studies; Dordrecht Vol. 14, Iss. 2, (Apr
2013): 551-569. DOI:10.1007/s10902-012-9342-6
A Good Life and
Humor
This article discusses the types of humor that different people may
possess and present to others, which can act as indicators of their
general well-being in their lives, which can be viewed as a factor
contributing to the definition of a good life. The report begins by
identifying humor as part of one’s well being and comparing
different humor types and their contributions or correlations to
one’s well being, which were then tested among subjects. The
results of this study support the view that the type of humor which
is self-promoting or supporting best lends to a higher well-being in
an individual. This is important information as the results of the
research promote the notion that certain types of humor leads to a
higher well-being, which can then promote productivity towards
goals, a factor important for a good life.

Amir, L. (2014). Humor and the Good Life in Modern Philosophy:
Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard. In Humor and the Good Life
in Modern Philosophy. State University of New York Press.
A Good Life and
Humor
This article will be useful to me because it ties in to having a good
life and humor and draws many parallels to how the happiness
hypothesis is written. This article focuses a lot on humor and how it
is perceived and how it is incorporated into a good life. I can relate
to this in a personal sense because I get through a lot of tough
situations by using humor. This book talks of using humor as a
facet to living through a lot of things in life and how it knows no
boundaries regarding social standing and even religion. I can use
this as kind of a multi tool because of how much different used
humor can be applied and how many different situations can be
lightened through the use of comedy. I also can rely on the fact that
philosophy is used in this as well because it will take a more poetic
approach.

Hurley, Matthew M., et al. Inside Jokes : Using Humor to
Reverse-Engineer the Mind. MIT Press, 2011.
A Good Life and
Humor
I like this book as a reference because instead of looking at humor
from outside or societal standpoint it focuses on the mind from an
internal POV. I feel like I can draw some amazing points from a
cognitive position. The root of all emotions comes from the mind
and I believe that once you understand where it comes from that
you can understand it more and use it to help control emotions.
This will work great with what I’ve learned from Haidt because I
realized that a good life is all about perception and being grateful
for what you have. Even dark situations can have humorous
aspects to them if the right situation shines a light on it, or If an
obscure situation is pointed out. All in all, I know that this article will
be beneficial to me due to its scientific nature and its connection to
cognitive responses in the mind.
A Good Life and
Pets
This article examines a study in which pet owners report
higher ratings of life satisfaction, particularly dog owners.
Dog owners also scored higher on aspects of well being
when compared to cat owners. I find this to be true within
myself, I have a dog who is about to be six years old in
April. I’ve always had dogs growing up and find them to be
a significant source of comfort. My dog is a husky named
Cayman and she stays with me at school. I live in a one
bedroom apartment by myself while I’m at school and I
find that having a dog makes it considerably less lonely
especially during the pandemic. While having a dog is a
big responsibility especially when combined with school, I
Bao, Katherine Jacobs, and George Schreer. “Pets and Happiness:
feel that this responsibility for another living being actually Examining the Association between Pet Ownership and Wellbeing.”
enables me to stay home and be constructive during that Anthrozoös, vol. 29, no. 2, May 2016, pp. 283–296
time instead of resorting to spending a lot of time out.
A Good Life and
Pets
This article is about a study that explores the relationship
between dog walking and health and well being in adults
by interviewing ten dog owners. The participants reported
an emotional connection with their dog and believed
walking their dog led to healthy reactions socially and with
their environment. The study also mentions that an
emotional connection between a human and a dog can
lead to motivation to exercise through dog walking. As a
dog owner during a pandemic, I’ve realized that the only
times I’m currently getting out is when I’m either walking
my dog or taking her to the park, or going out with friends.
I believe exercise is fundamental to promoting well being
Campbell, Kate, et al. “How Does Dog-Walking Influence
and happiness, and dogs certainly ensure that you go Perceptions of Health and Wellbeing in Healthy Adults? A
outside and get some fresh air. My dog specifically loves Qualitative Dog-Walk-along Study.” Anthrozoös, vol. 29, no. 2,
cold weather and I really enjoy taking her out to see how May 2016, pp. 181–192
energetic it makes her.

Duberg, Anna., et al. “‘I feel free’: Experiences of a dance intervention
for adolescent girls with internalizing problems.” International Journal
of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being. 11.1 (2016).
Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Dec. 2020.
A Good Life and
Dancing
The main idea of this article is to examine how dancing can help
young women healthily express their emotions. I chose this source
because it is a good way of showing young women how to find a
creative outlet, like dancing, and use it to help them express
themselves. Expression correlates with a good life because
instead of internalizing problems, these young women are
releasing them in a creative and healthy way. Not only does this
decrease the possibility of forming health issues, but it also
develops high self-esteem which contributes to better life
decisions later on in life. Another thing about this article that I find
beneficial is that the authors correlated a non-judgemental and
supportive environment to the increase in participation and trust
formed within the girl’s dance community. Trust and support are
two factors that should be further researched to discover whether
they contribute to a good life.
 Conclusion
The findings of this assignment were beneficial to an overall understanding of the
definition of a good life. Many of the conclusions from the research completed by
the group found that a good life consisted of factors including levels and sources of
happiness, engagement and progress in and towards activities. By reviewing topics
discussed in the class material as well as introducing and examining factors not
previously discussed in any class material, findings that correlated with the
identification for a good life remained able to be found and applied. Through the
examination of concepts relating to a good life and further supporting research on
their importance to a good life, this group was able to uniformly conclude that a life
consisting of at least happiness and dedication towards a certain goal contribute to
the overall definition of a good life.
 Zoom Extra Credit

Brady Leatherman was also in

attendance, but his phone
died at the end so was unable
to be in the screenshot