Study: Happiness Improves Developers' Problem Solving Skills

itwbennett writes "Researchers at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy have found that happier programmers (or, more specifically, computer science students at the university) were significantly more likely to score higher on a problem solving assessment. The researchers first measured the emotional states of study participants using a measure devised by psychologists called the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience Affect Balance (SPANE-B) score. They then tested participants' creativity (ability to write creative photo captions) and problem-solving ability (playing the Tower of London game). The results: happiness didn't affect creativity, but did improve problem-solving ability."

Comments

or, alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

People good at solving problems are happier.

Re:or, alternatively

[gwstuff]

My first reaction to this comment was "certainly not, not in a competently executed experiment..." But looking at the methodology these guys use, their SPANE test thing grades people by general happiness, rather than a temporary state that they are steered into. So yeah, you cannot rule a general correlation between the two things, or even more generally that the problem solvers report their SPANE scores higher (which doesn't strictly mean that they are happier...)

Most good experiments that deal with emotional state rule out such associations by deliberately steering multiple control groups into a 'happy' or 'unhappy' state.

For example, in one experiments, people were brought together and asked to participate in a general group discussion. They were then told that they would be interacting in pairs, and had to anonymously write down the name of their preferred partner on a chit of paper. The experimenters collected these chits in a box, and quietly took them to the back and DISCARDED THEM in the garbage.

They then took each individual aside one by one, and for one half of the group, told the individual that he had been chosen by every other person but was the odd man out and had to work alone. For the other half, the person was told that nobody chose him and so he had to work alone. All of the participants were given logic puzzles to solve.

The experimenters found out that the 'happier' group of people who thought that they were cool and popular generally performed better, and even more ostensibly were less likely to binge on the cookie jar placed next to them while doing the puzzles. The dejected group of supposedly unpopular people ate twice as many cookies and generally fared worse at the puzzles.

Studies that make this conclusion (happiness => more productive) are pretty common.

Re:or, alternatively

[mrmeval]

People who get regular sex are happier and more productive.

It's a health care issue and should be mandated the employer pays for whores.

Re:or, alternatively

[Concerned Onlooker]

"People who get regular sex are happier and more productive."

You misspelled reproductive.

Re:or, alternatively

[invictusvoyd]

People who get regular sex are happier and more productive.

I'd rather say they can be quite productive if they are not "protective".

Real World

[jawnah]

I'm not really sure this is applicable to the real world since most software developers don't live/work in Silicon Valley so the concept of taking a break to go play volleyball or hackeysack is pretty much a "non-starter". I think they should really evaluate the productivity of developers in the two scenarios that most apply to the real world: 1) Your managers are incompetent when it comes to what it is that you do, how you do your job, and what makes you happy. They do, however, understand obnoxious "development methods" resulting in a countless number of ways for them to waste your time doing everything BUT developing software. 2) Your managers DO understand your job and work very hard to give you a productive environment and support you in what you do. They keep everything other than software development off your plate so that you can focus on doing what's best.

Re:Real World

[causality]

I believe that the "real world" is a fallacy. Everyone has their own perception of reality.

I would go so far as to say that you never truly reached adulthood until you can clearly and effortlessly distinguish objective, evidence-based reality from your own subjective feelings and opinions and wishes. Objectivity is when your own tastes and preferences do not influence your decision-making about anything important.

Until you can do that, life is a chaotic mess with no solutions except those that create more and more problems.

get'em laid

[sgt scrub]

I've been saying all along that the schools should get the geeks laid instead of the jocks. Even with this study they still won't listen.

Re:get'em laid

[narcc]

That's some serious self-delusion there.,,

I can buy that

[Snotnose]

I've worked 2 stints at Qualcomm, 4 years as a consultant in the late 90s, and 4 years as an employee in the mid 00's. I've never worked so hard, put in more hours, got more stuff done, cranked out more code, etc, as I have in my QCOM time. Why? In meetings my ideas were listened to. I had a ton of freedom in my job to Get Things Done. I was recognized for Stuff I Got Done. I was not bogged down in daily staff meetings, weekly department meetings, etc. I had input on who to hire for my team. Most of all, I Had A Door I Could Close (but never did). Treat your employees like intelligent people, give them the tools they need, get out of the way, and they will not only be happy, but productive as fuck. And why the fuck can't I format this in any way except for 1 paragraph? Cuz that ain't how I wrote it, none of my html tricks are doing squat, and I'm prolly off to Soylent News soon anyway.

Re:Um,

[causality]

Aren't happier people better at pretty much everything? Isn't that sort of the problem with depression?

It's also the problem with alienation and dehumanization, not merely depression. Go out sometime and see for yourself, how rarely people talk to one another like fellow human beings. Usually they would rather talk at someone, listen poorly and keep interrupting (because they have no patience) even when they are listening to an answer to their own question, and generally can't relax and slow down and "take in" much of anything. The irony is, this rushed and hurried approach to life is so error-prone that they accomplish fewer of their goals than they would otherwise.

Compared to that, depression is just a particular special case, an instance of a much more widespread problem with the way we live.

Re:From TFA

[JoeMerchant]

Obviously, unhappy developers are spending a fair amount of brain power plotting their revenge on whatever is making them unhappy...

Stress lowers IQ - randomized control trial

[clawsoon]

This is reminiscent of another study which found that asking people how they'd deal with a big car repair bill - just getting them to think about it - lowered their IQ by an average of 13 points, "comparable to the cognitive difference that’s been observed between chronic alcoholics and normal adults".

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/08/how-poverty-taxes-brain/6716/

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976

The advantage of the car-repair-bill study is that people were randomly assigned to the control and experimental groups, as opposed to being an observational study like the one in the story (with all the complications that brings). Same basic conclusion, though.