Study: Happiness Improves Developers' Problem Solving Skills

itwbennett writes "Researchers at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy have found that happier programmers (or, more specifically, computer science students at the university) were significantly more likely to score higher on a problem solving assessment. The researchers first measured the emotional states of study participants using a measure devised by psychologists called the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience Affect Balance (SPANE-B) score. They then tested participants' creativity (ability to write creative photo captions) and problem-solving ability (playing the Tower of London game). The results: happiness didn't affect creativity, but did improve problem-solving ability."

I can buy that

[Snotnose]

I've worked 2 stints at Qualcomm, 4 years as a consultant in the late 90s, and 4 years as an employee in the mid 00's. I've never worked so hard, put in more hours, got more stuff done, cranked out more code, etc, as I have in my QCOM time. Why? In meetings my ideas were listened to. I had a ton of freedom in my job to Get Things Done. I was recognized for Stuff I Got Done. I was not bogged down in daily staff meetings, weekly department meetings, etc. I had input on who to hire for my team. Most of all, I Had A Door I Could Close (but never did). Treat your employees like intelligent people, give them the tools they need, get out of the way, and they will not only be happy, but productive as fuck. And why the fuck can't I format this in any way except for 1 paragraph? Cuz that ain't how I wrote it, none of my html tricks are doing squat, and I'm prolly off to Soylent News soon anyway.