An app to measure happiness. It’s called Mappiness and it has been developed by George MacKerron, a researcher at the London School of Economics . The goal is to study the relationship between people’s satisfaction with their own lives and the environment they live in.
The user can download the app for free and just by answering a couple of questions a day, he can take part in the study, helping the researchers understand which elements affect us the most.
The first results seem to confirm the common beliefs: apparently it is true that people are happier when they spend time in nature and the happiest day of the year, well… Guess what? It’s Christmas.
We have tried Mappiness and we have to admit that being asked how you are and whether you are happy or not everyday, twice a day, is not as creepy as we first thought, au contraire, it makes you feel pretty important. But the initial excitement obviously dies out when you give it an extra thought and you realize that you are not talking to a real person, but to an app. When you think about it, not only you feel sad about living in a world where everybody is so tied up they hardly have the time to listen to the answer when they ask you how you are, but you also start feeling sorry for yourself because you got so excited about the app in the first place.
However the good thing about using Mappiness, besides being helpful to the London School of Economics research, is that it helps you reflect upon your own happiness. As a matter of fact the app allows you to download or see charts about your own mood, including when, where and with whom you are the happiest.
After all, this app does have some sort of power: it makes you stop for a moment everyday and think about yourself.
Who knows? It could be a new way to help you get your priorities straight.
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