New articles on happiness
I have been reading the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ). The AMJ is considered to be the no 1 journal in management worldwide. Anyway, there are a couple of articles that relate to happiness. In particular, Judge & Kammeyer-Mueller (2011) point out that happiness is an important issue in management (although we use terms like 'job satisfaction' because it sounds better) and with many practical implications at work. In particular, they note that most interventions are 'ephemeral' (i.e. short-term effect and then decays). My focus is now on intervention and measuring the long-term effect of the assignment 1 & 2. My observation to date is that many Muslim students have specific misunderstandings about Islam. These misunderstandings a) prevent them from fully appreciating Islam and b) creates cognitive dissonance. In many cases, students report that assignment 1 allows them to remove some misunderstandings about Islam and that makes them happy. Presumably, that kind of intervention is NOT ephemeral. I am toying with the idea of a Theory of Specific Religious Misunderstanding (TSRM). TSRM would assume that all Muslims have some specific misunderstanding about their religion. Until that misunderstanding is cleared up, they cannot progress. I will give an example. One student that I observed knew that if you don't pray, you go to Hell. However, he believed that Muslims who pray also go to Hell. So of course, he did not see the point in praying. Having clarified that misunderstanding, he is now praying much more regularly than before. He also reports being more at peace than before. Anyway, I need to collect more data before I go developing a new theory ;)
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