Do Positive Psychologists Know More than Sunday School Teachers?
This last point in the previous section on research is extremely important. Sometimes research from positive psychology comes out with things that people say they already knew. Take for example the idea I mentioned earlier, that money cannot buy happiness. When research tells us what we already believe, we might be tempted to say that the research was a waste of time and money because we already knew that.
But conventional wisdom often contains conflicting claims. Take for example the two folk sayings, "Birds of a feather flock together" and "Opposites attract." So, which is true about what brings people together, their similarities or their differences? It takes research to sort out conflicting claims from common sense and conventional wisdom. It turns out that similarity in values forms the basis of strong friendships, while differences perceived to be exotic can form the basis of erotic attraction.
Back to the point concerning the well-known idea that money cannot buy happiness, we do often hear the contrary message that if you are rich and good-looking you will be happy. We will see what the research says about that.