Happier people sell and earn more money.
Morning Happiness Brief #18 from the Happiness PhD Project with Jackson Kerchis…
In a 1985 study, positive psychologist Martin Seligman studied salespeople at MetLife Insurance.
They were hiring more than 5,000 people per year at that point. He introduced a test to measure and assess optimism levels and made it part of their screening process. They also tested for aptitude (basically technical and sales proficiency).
Two years after hiring, the optimistic employees sold 31% more than pessimistic employees. And more interestingly perhaps, those who failed the aptitude test but scored very high on the optimism test sold 56% more in the second year.
When we look at earnings as a whole, economics and positive psychology research suggests the same pattern: those with a more positive outlook and higher level of happiness tend to earn more.
The good news is, optimism is learned (as is happiness).
There are ways to increase optimism intentionally. One mechanism is explanatory style. We tend to see pessimists explain negative life events as permanent, pervasive, and personal whereas optimistic people explain them as temporary, local, and impersonal.
By doing cognitive exercises to rewire explanatory style: consciously explaining positive events as permanent, pervasive, and personal and negative events as temporary, local, and impersonal — one can become more optimistic.
For example, there is a traffic accident and you are late to work.
A pessimistic explanatory style would go — I will never learn to be on time, I’m never on time for anything, I’m not dependable.
A more optimistic style would still take accountability, but might say — next time I’ll leave a few minutes earlier and be on time, I was on time for most other commitments this week, and there was this unexpected traffic situation out of my control.
To set yourself up for more happiness and success focus on the “3 Ps” to be more optimistic.
Your happiness nerd,
Jackson
REFERENCES
Seligman, M. E., & Schulman, P. (1986). Explanatory style as a predictor of productivity and quitting among life insurance sales agents. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(4), 832–838.
Como, Michael '11 (2011) "Do Happier People Make More Money? An Empirical Study of the Effect of a Person’s Happiness on Their Income," The Park Place Economist: Vol. 19