SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS, NPTEL
WEEK 4 ASSIGNMENT
1. According to the findings of the study done by Biswas and Diener (2001) on the slum
dwellers of Kolkata, which of the following factors is/are the most important predictor(s)
of life satisfaction?
A. Romantic relationships
B. Family
C. Friends
D. Material resources
i. Only D is true
ii. Only A, C and D are true
iii. Only A, B and C are true
iv. All of these are true
Ans iii
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 16
2. In 1938, a group of researchers from Harvard University embarked on a decades-long study
to find out, “What makes us happy in life?” The researchers gathered health records from
724 participants from all over the world and asked detailed questions about different
aspects of their lives (like relationships, success, marriage, etc.) at two-year intervals. This
is considered to be the longest longitudinal study on human happiness, and some of the
following are the findings of this 85-year-long study. Which of them are correct?
A. Physical fitness contributes more to happiness than social fitness or positive
relationships
B. Our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships have a powerful
influence on our health
C. There are positive correlations between men’s flourishing lives and their
relationships with family, friends, and community
D. People who were the most satisfied in their relationships at the age of 50 were the
healthiest at the age of 80
i. Only C and D are true
ii. Only A, B and D are true
iii. Only B, C and D are true
iv. All of these are true
Ans iii
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 16
3. Which among the following is NOT one of the components related to community
cohesiveness in rural areas?
A. Forgiveness
B. Working together
C. Good behaviour
D. Non-interference
Ans d
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 16
4. What was the main purpose of the Milgram experiment with pedestrians?
A. To test the power of conformity among pedestrians in doing something good in
public settings
B. To understand the relationship between the size of the stimulus crowd and the
propensity of the pedestrians to imitate the crowd
C. To understand the walking behaviour of the pedestrians while navigating through
crowded streets
D. To investigate the bystander effect among the pedestrians in emergency situations
Ans b
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 17
5. Creation of a network with similar kinds of people is known as ____________. (Fill in the
blank)
A. Homophily
B. Dyadic
C. Identical
D. Hyper dyadic
Ans a
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 17
6. Our words and actions ripple through, impacting our friends, our friends’ friends and their
friends. Which of the following options describes this attribute?
A. Three degrees of cooperation
B. Three degrees of influences
C. Three degrees of expressions
D. Three degrees of connections
Ans b
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 17
7. Karishma is a low earner and Dhiman is a high earner. Both are appointed at a central
government institute. Recently their institute has implemented the decision taken by the
seventh pay commission to give a salary hike to the employees and both of them receive
the same proportion of increment on their previous salary. If we ignore other circumstantial
factors, what changes will this salary hike bring into their happiness level?
A. Karishma will be happier than Dhiman
B. Dhiman will be happier than Karishma
C. Both of them will be equally happier than before
D. None of them will be happier than before
Ans c
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 18
8. According to the findings of the research done by Lindsay Dodgson (2018) regarding the
altruistic tendencies among people of different status (divided based on their possessed
amount of monetary wealth) in the society, ______________. (Fill in the blank)
A. Altruism is not a natural tendency of people irrespective of their status and they do
not donate until forced by the situation
B. People of higher status donate more than the people of lower status
C. People of lower and higher status donate equivalently
D. People of lower status donate more than the people of higher status
Ans d
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 18
9. Higher earners find happiness in moment & memory, but also report more stress. This
statement is an inference of the study by ____________. (Fill in the blank)
A. Daniel Kahneman
B. Matthew Killingsworth
C. Erik Erikson
D. Angus Deaton
Ans b
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 18
10. Attributional thinking styles refer to the ways individuals explain the causes of events, both
positive and negative, in their lives. Some of the followings are the types of different
attributional thinking styles. Which of them are true?
A. Positive
B. Personal
C. Passive
D. Pervasive
E. Permanence
i. Only A, B and E are true
ii. Only B, C and E are true
iii. Only B, D and E are true
iv. Only A, D and E are true
Ans iii
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 19
11. For the people with a positive belief system, gene unfolding will be different from those
having a negative belief system. Is this statement true?
A. True
B. False
Ans a
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 19
12. Four friends - Raj, Anil, Vinay and Hirak - are going to appear for their final exam of
Bachelor’s degree from tomorrow. They are very close to each other, and to avoid the
exam-related stress, they decided to share a meal together the night before their final exam.
At the dinner table they are having a conversation about their upcoming exam. Raj says to
the others, “I have tried my best to prepare for this final exam. I think I will pass the exam
without much hassle and do well enough.” Hearing this, Vinay says, “Well, I am not that
confident like Raj. Although I have prepared well for the exam, I was feeling pretty stressed
until this evening. Then I decided not to worry about it anymore and went on to revise the
last three chapters”. Anil joins the conversation saying, “Well, you guys know already that
due to my mother’s sickness I could not prepare well for the whole semester, and I don’t
expect to receive good grades in the final examination. Hopefully, I had good enough
grades in the earlier semesters. So, all results combined, I think I will pass and hope it will
not affect my job internship”. Hirak looks really excited and he says to the others “I don’t
know about you three, but you know, I consider myself a better student than almost
everyone in the class. So, I don’t see any reason to worry about this exam and I am pretty
sure that I will top this final exam too”. Based on the above conversation, match the people
on the left-hand side with their thinking styles on the right-hand side.
A. Vinay I. Strategic optimism
B. Raj II. Explanatory optimism
C. Hirak III. Dispositional optimism
D. Anil IV. Optimistic bias
i. A-III, B-I, C-IV, D-II
ii. A-II, B-IV, C-III, D-I
iii. A-III, B-I, C-II, D-IV
iv. A-I, B-III, C-IV, D-II
Ans iv
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 19
13. While driving to the office in the morning, a man sees a dog accidentally fall down in the
deep canal beside the road and struggle to save itself from drowning. He suddenly gets out
of the car and slides down the canal wall to help the dog. Once he carries the dog out of
the gushing water to the edge of the canal, he finds himself unable to climb up the canal
wall with the dog wrapped in his arms. Watching this, a few other people come forward to
help the man. They form a human chain by holding each other’s hands along the canal wall
and pull back the man and the dog into safety. Although the man missed an important
meeting at the office because of being late, he was very happy to be able to save the dog.
This is a classic example of __________. (Fill in the blank)
A. Hedonism
B. Altruism
C. Senseless act of beauty
D. Euphoria
Ans c
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 20
14. Please arrange the three concepts—compassion, empathy, and transcendence—from lower
to higher orders of belongingness.
A. Compassion → Empathy → Transcendence
B. Empathy → Compassion → Transcendence
C. Transcendence → Compassion → Empathy
D. Empathy → Transcendence → Compassion
Ans b
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 20
15. In Abraham Maslow’s theory about the hierarchy of needs, he mentioned five types of
needs of humankind arranged in the shape of a pyramid according to their priorities in the
context of survival. Please arrange the following five needs from the bottom of the pyramid
to the top.
A. Self-actualisation
B. Safety
C. Esteem
D. Belongingness
E. Physiological
i. B-1, E-2, C-3, D-4, A-5
ii. E-1, B-2, D-3, C-4, A-5
iii. A-1, B-2, E-3, D-4, C-5
iv. D-1, E-2, B-3, A-4, C-5
Explanation: Please refer to Lecture 20
Ans ii