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don’t worry about old age, be happy

Lighting another candle on the birthday cake each year may not seem like a cheerful occasion, but think again. According to Yang Yang (American Sociological Review, April 2008), growing older may actually make us happier.

Yang draws upon the General Social Survey to show how happiness actually peaks in our late 50s, long after the supposed “glory days” of youth. But not everybody experiences the same levels of joy as they age. Baby boomers, for example, report the lowest levels of happiness, perhaps due to more competition with their peers in school and the workplace.

Inequalities in happiness also decreased over the past 30 years. Whereas women are happier than men in youth, there’s no noticeable difference later in life. Differences between whites and African Americans also decreased with age, though whites remain significantly happier. This may be thanks to shared life experiences that trigger (or dampen) happy thoughts over a lifetime, such as marrying a sweetheart, retiring from the workforce, or losing a loved one.

Yang’s study gives us something to look forward to as our hair grays and our pace slows—the grass does turn greener on the other side of the hill. Carpe diem. R.A.

and that’s why my name is on the annual report

For some companies, the second letter in CEO might as well stand for ego. And according to Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick (Administrative Science Quarterly, September 2007), having a narcissistic boss could bring big dividends to a company.

Chatterjee and Hambrick measured the narcissism of more than 100 chief executive officers in the software industry and looked at its effect on company performance. Evidence of vanity included lots of headshots in annual reports, the use of first-person pronouns when talking about the company, and relatively high pay for the top executive.

As it turns out, spending a lot of time in front of the mirror could be good for the company, at least some of the time. Companies with a narcissistic boss made bigger and bolder acquisitions, and their strategies were more dynamic. However, big egos correlate with big losses, too. Company performance was more erratic and extreme for the self-absorbed firms, and thus they did no better or worse over the long run than their humbler counterparts.

This study reveals how the personality of a leader can shape the performance of an organization, particularly in an industry as unpredictable as the software sector. And it shows a big payoff every now and then doesn’t necessarily offset the narcissistic boss staring into the pond at the company picnic. W.L.

when is a felon not a felon?

Being convicted of a felony has major impacts long after the prison sentence is up. That is, unless no one ever finds out about the conviction.

Florida law allows judges to “withhold adjudication” for people convicted of felonies, which means individuals keep the right to vote and other civil liberties, and can even lawfully claim they were never convicted of the crime.

Ted Chiricos, Kelle Barrick, William Bales, and Stephanie Bontrager (Criminology, August 2007) studied 96,000 men and women found guilty of a felony, about half of whom had adjudication withheld. They found that being legally labeled a “felon” made people significantly more likely to commit another crime within two years of their release, even when accounting for the type of crime committed and community into which they returned.

The study shows the powerful and long-lasting effects of deviant labels given to people convicted of past crimes. It also points to the promise of policies aiming to reduce future harm rather than simply punish the offender. J.W.