Turns out, people who like their work aren’t happier on the weekend.
A new study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that people who fall into the category of “workers reporting favorable workplace environment” — translation: those that love their work and workplace — are just as happy on weekdays as on weekends.
Researchers at NBER looked at Gallup/Healthways US Daily Poll surveys over the last four years, which consisted of 1.77 million respondents, to see how seven kinds of emotions changed during the week for both full-time and part-time workers. They dubbed the joy people got from their Saturdays and Sundays “the weekend effect” and, as expected, those two days affected worker’s emotions in positive ways.
But the paper also explained that the weekend effect was much smaller for those “with good workplace social contexts, as indicated by high workplace trust and partner-like boss.” The reason? If you really enjoy socializing in a work setting, chances are that you’re in much less need of a weekend away from your colleagues and boss: “The workplace social environment and social time together almost completely account for the weekend effects for happiness, laugher, enjoyment and sadness,” the report concluded.
“The whole idea of people liking weekends better than weekdays because work is hell, that isn’t necessarily the case,” John Helliwell, lead researcher in the study and senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, told Bloomberg. “Why should it be? If you’re doing something important and interesting that you like, that sounds more fun than watching a movie or reruns on TV.”
This comes after a recent study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that most Americans spend more than three hours of their weekend in front of the TV.