Researchers Use iPhone to Study Happiness

A pair of Harvard researchers have used an iPhone app to track the moods of thousands of participants in a study about happiness. Querying over two thousand iPhone users at random points in the day, the psychologists found people are happiest when they are focused on what they're doing than when they are spacing out, even if they are having pleasant thoughts.

The researchers knew that studying people's states of mind during their normal lives would be difficult and problematic. Calling people several times a day would be extremely time consuming as well as counter-productive: most people would probably report less happiness after being bothered by phone calls asking if they were happy. So Harvard doctoral student Matthew Killingsworth and psychology professor Daniel Gilbert set up TrackYourHappiness.org to contact 2,250 iPhone users, ages 18 to 88, at random times of day and ask three simple questions: "How are you feeling right now?" "What are you doing

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