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Which comes first, succeeding and then being happy, or being happy and then succeeding? Paul Lester, associate professor of management at the Naval Postgraduate School, Martin Seligman, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center, and Ed Diener, influential American psychologist, followed nearly 1 million US Department of Defense employees (the single largest employer in the world) for five years, measuring their relative happiness and optimism using 25 questions drawn from PANAS and the Life Orientation Test. The participants spanned across all job functions (infantry soldiers, office workers, pilots, engineers, truck drivers, medical professionals, logistics experts, etc.).

" While we expected that well-being and optimism would matter to performance, we were taken aback by just how much they mattered," said Lester," In short, not only do happiness and optimism matter to employee performance, but they matter a lot, and both predict how employees will do."