A group of psychologists from two universities in the United States have found that people who classified themselves as happy were also more talkative than their unhappy counterparts and their conversation had more substance.
Participants in the study were equipped with an Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) over a four-day period. 30 seconds of conversation were sampled by the device every 12 and a half minutes.
The study found that the happiest people to take part in the study spent 25% less time alone than the unhappiest people, and spent 70% more time talking. They also had twice as many substantive conversations and just a third of the small talk.
