（内容从阮一峰的网络日志转载。我加上了翻译。 ）
哥伦比亚大学的心理学教授Jonathan Freedman做了一个关于幸福的问卷调查，下面是一些调查结果。
1。爱情和性
People see love as the key to happiness. Those who love and are loved in return are happier than others. Great prosperity, a high-status job, health, personal attractiveness, marriage, even sex -- none of these make up for a lack of love. "You can be happy without a good sex life, and you can have a good sex life and be unhappy." Freedman point out, though sex is an important element in happiness for most people.
人们认为爱是幸福的关键。那些爱着也被爱着的人要比其他人快乐。财富，高位，健康，个人魅力，婚姻，甚至是性，没有一项能弥补爱的缺失。“你可以没有很好的性却很幸福，你也可以有很好的性却不幸福。” Freedman指出，即使对于大多数人来说性仍然是很重要的幸福因素。
2。婚姻
Being married makes happiness easier, even in an age of widespread divorce. "Despite changing attitudes toward marriage and the incredible high divorce rate," says Freedman, "a vast majority of our population seem to find happiness in marriage and to be unhappy if they remain single too long."
结婚能让人更为幸福，即使目前的离婚率如此之高。Freedman说，“虽然人们对于婚姻的态度在转变，离婚率也惊人的高，很多人都仍然可以在婚姻中体会到幸福，而单身太久则不太幸福。”
3。单身
Single men and women are generally less happy than married ones. Still, the questionnaire replies revealed sharp differences between the sexes. After age 40, the "happiness gap" between single and married men seems to disappear, while it increases between single and married women. For many reasons, life seems particularly hard for single women as they age.
单身男女通常要比已婚的更少幸福感。然而，问卷调查表明男女之间有很大的差异。过了40岁以后，所谓“幸福感的差别”，对于单身男人和已婚男人就消失了。而对于单身女人和已婚女人来说却增加了。由于很多原因，生活对于单身女人来说随着她们年龄的增长尤其困难。
4。离婚
Those who are divorced are much less happy than those who maintain a central love relationship. So it comes as no surprise that most who get divorced eventually remarry. And those who do get married again, the survey indicates, are much better off than those who do not.
Second marriages have at least as much potential for happiness as first ones. "One failure, one poor choice, one relationship that does not work out, may cause considerable unhappiness, but it does not seem to reduce one's chance for finding happiness in marriage or in general." In fact, survey results indicate that for men the second marriage is happier than the first. Unfortunately, women, on average, are slightly less happy in a second marriage.
相对于长久维持爱情的人来说，离婚的人更少幸福感。所以，并不奇怪大多数离婚的人都会再婚。调查表明，再婚的人要比没有再婚的人有更多幸福感。
对于幸福感的获得来说，第二次婚姻和第一次婚姻都一样。“一次失败，一次错误的选择，一段没有结果的关系，会严重挫伤幸福感。但这并不影响人再次从婚姻中体会幸福。” 实际上，调查表明，男人在第二段婚姻中能有更多幸福感。而不幸的是，女人通常在第二段婚姻中有更少的幸福感。
5。职业妇女
One of the questions in the survey asked people if they suffered from headaches, sleeplessness, worries, loneliness, etc.-- since people who do consider themselves less happy than those won don't. Married women who do not work are much more likely to have these kinds of symptoms," the book says. "Employed wives are less anxious and worried, and less likely to feel worthless than housewives."
问卷中的一个问题是关于是否有头痛，失眠，焦虑，孤独感的痛苦。没有工作的已婚女性更有可能有这些症状。有工作的女性要更少焦虑，也更少觉得自己是不重要的人。
6。年龄和幸福
Despite widespread belief that the middle years are the happiest, the survey says this isn't so. Nor does old age inevitably mean the onset of unhappiness.
An intriguing sidelight of the survey is the discovery that people become gradually less happy with the state of their health from age 20 to age 45, but then things level off. "From the age of 45 on, people do not report any noticeable change in the extent to which health is a problem or a source of unhappiness."
As might be expected, major factors contributing to unhappiness in old age are reduced income, loss of a spouse, and the boredom of retirement. Yet, on the whole, "the reported happiness levels of people in the later years, including a great many who have retired, is no lower than in any other group." In fact, older people are more likely to say that they are very happy than any other age group in the survey.
虽然人们普遍认为中年人是最快乐的，调查结果却不是这样。但也不是说年纪大了就不可避免的开始不幸福。一个奇妙的插曲是，人们在20到45岁之间，通常会由于健康问题而减少幸福感，但之后就没有了。“从45岁以后，人们就不会再说健康状态的变化是不幸福感的一个原因了。”
7。收入和教育
A large part of the influence of money and education on happiness derives from one's original expectations. If you thought you'd earn a lot, and did, you may have a "so what?" attitude. But if your expectations have been overfulfilled, the happiness that comes from getting more than you thought you would get can be quite pronounced. "The happiness that comes from getting more than you thought you would get can be quite pronounced. "The happiest groups were those with little education who earned a lot; while the highly educated who earned a lot were not so well off psychologically."
金钱和教育对于幸福的影响源于人们的最初的期望。如果你以前就觉得自己会赚很多，并且现实中确实也赚到了，那么你就可能有 “那又怎么样？”的态度。但是如果你得到的比你期望的要多，你就会有更多幸福感。“幸福感强烈的一组人是较少教育但是挣得比较多，而高教育赚得也多的人在心理上就不那么富有了。”
8。工作和幸福
Satisfaction with your work is more important element of happiness than anything except love and marriage, the survey makes clear. Ranking various occupations by the happiness of the workers revealed that clerks were at the bottom of the the range, secretaries and blue-collar workers came next, the architects, college professors, nurses and managers. And at the top of the contentment scale came clergymen, psychologists and entertainers.
"One of the enigmas of this survey," Freedman writes, "is that lawyers and, even more so, doctors, rated themselves as relatively unhappy."
调查表明，除了爱情和婚姻之外，对于工作的满意程度对于幸福感的影响最大。白领职员的幸福感最少，然后是秘书和蓝领工人，建筑师，大学老师，护士，经理人。而幸福感最强的是牧师，心理学家和艺人。Freedman写道，“奇特的一点是，律师的幸福感很低，意医生还要低。”
9。童年和青春期
Although the key to happiness does not lie in one's childhood experiences, it does seem to be associated with a child's relationship with the same-sex parent and with childhood guilt -- "two factors from early life closely related to adult unhappiness."
虽然幸福感和童年体验不是紧密相关，但调查表明来自于同性父母的影响和童年负罪感的影响比较大。“青春期的两点会影响到成人时期的幸福感。”
10。结论：如何才能幸福：
To love and be loved in return. To have enough money, but not necessarily a great deal. To have meaning and direction in life, and a sense of control over it. To have received more from life than you expected.
爱和被爱。有足够的钱，但不必要很多。活得有意义有方向，知道怎么去控制它。得到的要比期望的多。
