Positive moods derived from leisure and their relationship to happiness and personality

A comparative study has been made of the positive moods generated by four common leisure activities: sport/exercise, music, church and watching TV soaps. Some 275 participants whose ages ranged from 18 to 82 were invited to indicate the intensity of their personal, positive feelings for the items of four measures designed to be representative of each of the activities. It was found that each activity was a significant source of positive moods. Factor analysis of the measures showed that they each contained a strong social component, as well as a factor characteristic of each activity. Using the Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI) as a measure of happiness, only sport/exercise appeared to result in increased happiness, and the reasons for this are explained in terms of the several components of the OHI. The associations of each of the activities with the Eysenck personality traits as measured by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) were also examined and the most frequent association is with extraversion. Church membership is atypical, in that church members exhibit significantly lower scores for psychoticism (tough mindedness) and higher lie-scale scores (social conformity). (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.