A new app is actually some psychology research being performed by Matt Killingsworth at Harvard, and it's designed to tackle one of nature's most ephemeral and yet fascinating questions:What is it that makes people happy?
It's a "new scientific research project that aims to use modern technology to help answer this age-old question. Using this site in conjunction with your iPhone, you can systematically track your happiness and find out what factors--for you personally--are associated with greater happiness."
"Essentially you sign up for the program, and then give the software a slew of personal information to give the researches some meaty data to think about later-- like how satisfied with your life you are, how much money you make, whether you're married, how liberal your political leanings are. Then, at repeated periods throughout the day you'll be pinged by your iPhone either by email or by SMS, and prompted to answer a short one-minute survey.
... After 50 successful survey answers you'll get a Happiness Report from the system, which will apparently help you work out the factors that contribute most to your levels of happiness. Or, I suppose, there's the flipside conclusion: You can learn what things make you most unhappy. "
having the iPhone as the chief input device will bias the survey? I understand it's a Web-connected gizmo you tend to have nearby at all times, making it ideal for the time-related part of the study...but Apple users tend to report high levels of satisfaction with their products, and using the iPhone is a constant reminder of how cool it is. That's going to skew things a bit.
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