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Creativity can be considered one of the key competencies for the twenty-first century. It provides us with the capacity to deal with the opportunities and challenges that are part of our complex and fast-changing world. The question as to what facilitates creative cognition—the ability to come up with creative ideas, problem solutions and products—is as old as the human sciences, and various means to enhance creative cognition have been studied. Despite earlier scientific studies demonstrating a beneficial effect of music on cognition, the effect of music listening on creative cognition has remained largely unexplored. The current study experimentally tests whether listening to specific types of music (four classical music excerpts systematically varying on valance and arousal), as compared to a silence control condition, facilitates divergent and convergent creativity. Creativity was higher for participants who listened to ‘happy music’ (i.e., classical music high on arousal and positive mood) while performing the divergent creativity task, than for participants who performed the task in silence. No effect of music was found for convergent creativity. In addition to the scientific contribution, the current findings may have important practical implications. Music listening can be easily integrated into daily life and may provide an innovative means to facilitate creative cognition in an efficient way in various scientific, educational and organizational settings when creative thinking is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of people's expectations in explaining their happiness? Most research in this area focuses on the impact of the realization of expectations on happiness. With micro-level data from Spain, this paper studies the impact of current expectations on current happiness. The paper uses an instrumental-variables approach to control for potential endogeneity problems in order to find out what role expectations play in explaining current happiness. Results show that having positive expectations contributes to people's current satisfaction with life. It was also found that people's expectations are related to their personality and the trend in their economic situation. The paper contributes to the literature about expectations and happiness and it shows that recommending people to keep their expectations low may not necessarily be good advice in terms of their current happiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the modern-life painting of English artist William Powell Frith. The author reflects on depictions of domestic happiness in Victorian life. Topics discussed include Frith's desire to paint everyday subjects, the painting series "Road to Ruin," and families in paintings. Paintings noted include "Evening Prayer," "Ramsgate Sands (Life at the Seaside)," and "Many Happy Returns of the Day."

Explores the representation of life and death in the operas Pelleas and Penelope by Gabriel Faure. Comparison with the works of musician Claude Debussy; Convergence of the dramas toward the joyous exclamation of Ulysses in the third act; Drama as a preface to happiness; Need for death to terminate distress and contradiction in the drama.