Creative Activities Better for Self-Worth than Work
Many people enjoy spending their free time painting, drawing and being creative.
And these people probably won't be surprised to learn that, according to a new study, arts and crafts can make us happier.
Researchers from Anglia Ruskin University in the UK found that doing creative things like arts and crafts make us more likely to feel that our lives are worthwhile.
In fact, the effect of arts and crafts was more strongly associated with the feeling that our lives are worthwhile than the effect of having a job.
Helen Keyes, one of the researchers, said this was interesting because people often get their sense of self-worth from their jobs.
She said this may mean that people are not happy at work or that they feel more control when they're doing creative things of their own.
The researchers asked more than 7,000 people about their creative activities.
About 37% of people said they'd done at least one creative activity in the past year. These activities included things like painting and photography.
The people who took part in these activities reported higher levels of happiness, life satisfaction and a stronger sense that life is worthwhile.
Keyes said, while the effect was quite small, the results could still be very useful. Many creative activities are quite cheap to do and it's clear that people enjoy doing them.
Encouraging people to spend time on arts and crafts could be an easy way to improve their mental health, she said.
However, the study did not look at the effect of different types of creative activities, and it was not possible to prove that it was only arts and crafts that caused people's higher levels of happiness.
