WASHINGTON - Does misery really love company?
An intriguing new study suggests that may be the case.
Researchers who study how people's sense of well-being varies from place to place decided to compare their findings with suicide rates.
The surprising result: The happiest places sometimes also have the highest suicide rates.
"Discontented people in a happy place may feel particularly harshly treated by life," suggested Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England.
Or, put another way by co-author Stephen Wu of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., those surrounded by unhappy people may not feel so bad for themselves.
But Wu urged caution in drawing conclusions, saying: "I don't think that means if you are unhappy you should be around others who are unhappy."
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Their study ranked Utah as the No. 1 state for residents' sense of well-being, but it also scored a high No. 9 in suicide rate. By contrast New York State ranked a low 45th in well-being, but an even lower 50th in suicides.
The researchers came up with their rankings from a federal survey of behavioral risk factors and U.S. Census Bureau numbers on suicide rates.
Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, who wasn't involved in the research, agreed that living around people who are, on average, pretty satisfied with their lives, when you are not, can make you feel more miserable.
The idea is, "If you're unhappy there, you conclude, 'something must be really wrong with me,' or 'nothing will make me happy,' so you're more likely to get depressed and take your life," said Lyubomirsky, who researches happiness and well-being.
The new study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, looked at the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
It lists the top 10 states for well-being as Utah, Louisiana, Colorado, Minnesota, Wyoming, Hawaii, Arizona, Delaware, Florida and Nevada.
Four of those states also are in the top 10 for suicide rates, with Nevada ranked third; Wyoming, fifth; Colorado, sixth; and Utah, ninth. Among the others, Arizona was 11th and Florida, 15th.
