Happiness Happiness is a mental or emotional state of
well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense
joy.
A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven
to define happiness and identify its sources.
Various research groups, including positive psychology, endeavor to apply the scientific
method to answer questions about what "happiness" is, and how it might be attained.
It is of such fundamental importance to the human condition that "life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness" were deemed to be unalienable rights by the United States Declaration of
Independence.
Philosophers and religious thinkers often define happiness in terms of living a good
life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion.
Happiness in this sense was used to translate the Greek Eudaimonia, and is still used in
virtue ethics.
Definition Happiness is a fuzzy concept and can mean
many different things to many people.
Part of the challenge of a science of happiness is to identify different concepts of happiness,
and where applicable, split them into their components.
Related concepts are well-being, quality of life and flourishing.
Some commentators focus on the difference between the hedonistic tradition of seeking
pleasant and avoiding unpleasant experiences, and the eudaimonic tradition of living life
in a full and deeply satisfying way.
The 2012 World Happiness Report stated that in subjective well-being measures, the primary
distinction is between cognitive life evaluations and emotional reports.
Emotional reports can be distinguished as of positive or negative affect.
Many but not all commentators regard positive and negative affect as carrying different
information, and needing to be separately measured and analyzed.
Happiness is used in both life evaluation, as in “How happy are you with your life
as a whole?”, and in emotional reports, as in “How happy are you now?,” and people
seem able to use happiness as appropriate in these verbal contexts.
Research results Research has produced many different views
on causes of happiness, and on factors that correlate with happiness, but no validated
method has been found to substantially improve long-term happiness in a meaningful way for
most people.
Sonja Lyubomirsky concludes in her book The How of Happiness that 50 percent of a given
human's happiness level is genetically determined (based on twin studies), 10 percent is affected
by life circumstances and situation, and a remaining 40 percent of happiness is subject
to self-control.
The results of the 75 year Grant study of Harvard undergraduates show a high correlation
of loving relationship, especially with parents, with later life wellbeing.
In the 2nd Edition of the Handbook of Emotions (2000), evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides
and John Tooby say that happiness comes from "encountering unexpected positive events".
In the 3rd Edition of the Handbook of Emotions (2008), Michael Lewis says "happiness can
be elicited by seeing a significant other".
According to Mark Leary, as reported in a November 1995 issue of Psychology Today, "we
are happiest when basking in the acceptance and praise of others".
Sara Algoe and Jonathan Haidt say that "happiness" may be the label for a family of related emotional
states, such as joy, amusement, satisfaction, gratification, euphoria, and triumph.
It has been argued that money cannot effectively "buy" much happiness unless it is used in
certain ways.
"Beyond the point at which people have enough to comfortably feed, clothe, and house themselves,
having more money - even a lot more money - makes them only a little bit happier."
A Harvard Business School study found that "spending money on others actually makes us
happier than spending it on ourselves".
Meditation has been found to lead to high activity in the brain's left prefrontal cortex,
which in turn has been found to correlate with happiness.
Psychologist Martin Seligman asserts that happiness is not solely derived from external,
momentary pleasures, and provides the acronym PERMA to summarize Positive Psychology's correlational
findings: humans seem happiest when they have Pleasure (tasty food, warm baths, etc.),
Engagement (or flow, the absorption of an enjoyed yet challenging activity),
Relationships (social ties have turned out to be extremely reliable indicator of happiness),
Meaning (a perceived quest or belonging to something bigger), and
Accomplishments (having realized tangible goals).
There have also been some studies of how religion relates to happiness.
Causal relationships remain unclear, but more religion is seen in happier people.
This correlation may be the result of community membership and not necessarily belief in religion
itself.
Another component may have to do with ritual.
Abraham Harold Maslow, an American professor of psychology, founded humanistic psychology
in the 1930s.
A visual aid he created to explain his theory, which he called the hierarchy of needs, is
a pyramid depicting the levels of human needs, psychological, and physical.
When a human being ascends the steps of the pyramid, he reaches self-actualization.
Beyond the routine of needs fulfillment, Maslow envisioned moments of extraordinary experience,
known as peak experiences, profound moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture,
during which a person feels more whole, alive, self-sufficient, and yet a part of the world.
This is similar to the flow concept of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.
Self-determination theory relates intrinsic motivation to three needs: competence, autonomy,
and relatedness.
Religious perspectives Buddhism
Happiness forms a central theme of Buddhist teachings.
For ultimate freedom from suffering, the Noble Eightfold Path leads its practitioner to Nirvana,
a state of everlasting peace.
Ultimate happiness is only achieved by overcoming craving in all forms.
More mundane forms of happiness, such as acquiring wealth and maintaining good friendships, are
also recognized as worthy goals for lay people (see sukha).
Buddhism also encourages the generation of loving kindness and compassion, the desire
for the happiness and welfare of all beings.
Catholicism The primary meaning of "happiness" in various
European languages involves good fortune, chance or happening.
The meaning in Greek philosophy, however, refers primarily to ethics.
In Catholicism, the ultimate end of human existence consists in felicity, Latin equivalent
to the Greek eudaimonia, or "blessed happiness", described by the 13th-century philosopher-theologian
Thomas Aquinas as a Beatific Vision of God's essence in the next life.
Human complexities, like reason and cognition, can produce well-being or happiness, but such
form is limited and transitory.
In temporal life, the contemplation of God, the infinitely Beautiful, is the supreme delight
of the will.
Beatitudo, or perfect happiness, as complete well-being, is to be attained not in this
life, but the next.
Philosophical views The Chinese Confucian thinker Mencius, who
2300 years ago sought to give advice to the ruthless political leaders of the warring
states period, was convinced that the mind played a mediating role between the "lesser
self" (the physiological self) and the "greater self" (the moral self) and that getting the
priorities right between these two would lead to sage-hood.
He argued that if we did not feel satisfaction or pleasure in nourishing one's "vital force"
with "righteous deeds", that force would shrivel up (Mencius,6A:15 2A:2).
More specifically, he mentions the experience of intoxicating joy if one celebrates the
practice of the great virtues, especially through music.
Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) the Muslim Sufi thinker wrote the Alchemy of Happiness, a manual of
spiritual instruction throughout the Muslim world and widely practiced today.
The Hindu thinker Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, wrote quite exhaustively on the
psychological and ontological roots of bliss.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, written in 350 BCE, Aristotle stated that happiness (also
being well and doing well) is the only thing that humans desire for its own sake, unlike
riches, honor, health or friendship.
He observed that men sought riches, or honor, or health not only for their own sake but
also in order to be happy.
Note that eudaimonia, the term we translate as "happiness", is for Aristotle an activity
rather than an emotion or a state.
Thus understood, the happy life is the good life, that is, a life in which a person fulfills
human nature in an excellent way.
Specifically, Aristotle argues that the good life is the life of excellent rational activity.
He arrives at this claim with the Function Argument.
Basically, if it's right, every living thing has a function, that which it uniquely does.
For humans, Aristotle contends, our function is to reason, since it is that alone that
we uniquely do.
And performing one's function well, or excellently, is one's good.
Thus, the life of excellent rational activity is the happy life.
Aristotle does not leave it that, however.
For he argues that there is a second best life for those incapable of excellent rational
activity.
This second best life is the life of moral virtue.
Many ethicists make arguments for how humans should behave, either individually or collectively,
based on the resulting happiness of such behavior.
Utilitarians, such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, advocated the greatest happiness
principle as a guide for ethical behavior.
Also according to St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, man's last end is happiness: "all
men agree in desiring the last end, which is happiness."
However, where utilitarians focused on reasoning about consequences as the primary tool for
reaching happiness, Aquinas agreed with Aristotle that happiness cannot be reached solely through
reasoning about consequences of acts, but also requires a pursuit of good causes for
acts, such as habits according to virtue.
In turn, which habits and acts that normally lead to happiness is according to Aquinas
caused by laws: natural law and divine law.
These laws, in turn, were according to Aquinas caused by a first cause, or God.
According to Aquinas, happiness consists in an "operation of the speculative intellect":
"Consequently happiness consists principally in such an operation, viz. in the contemplation
of Divine things."
And, "the last end cannot consist in the active life, which pertains to the practical intellect."
So: "Therefore the last and perfect happiness, which we await in the life to come, consists
entirely in contemplation.
But imperfect happiness, such as can be had here, consists first and principally in contemplation,
but secondarily, in an operation of the practical intellect directing human actions and passions."
Economic views Common market health measures such as GDP
and GNP have been used as a measure of successful policy.
On average richer nations tend to be happier than poorer nations, but this effect seems
to diminish with wealth.
This has been explained by the fact that the dependency is not linear but logarithmic,
i.e., the same percentual increase in the GNP produces the same increase in happiness
for wealthy countries as for poor countries.
Libertarian think tank Cato Institute claims that economic freedom correlates strongly
with happiness preferably within the context of a western mixed economy, with free press
and a democracy.
According to certain standards, East European countries (ruled by Communist parties) were
less happy than Western ones, even less happy than other equally poor countries.
It has been argued that happiness measures could be used not as a replacement for more
traditional measures, but as a supplement.
According to professor Edward Glaeser, people constantly make choices that decrease their
happiness, because they have also more important aims.
Therefore, the government should not decrease the alternatives available for the citizen
by patronizing them but let the citizen keep a maximal freedom of choice.
It has been argued that happiness at work is one of the driving forces behind positive
outcomes at work, rather than just being a resultant product.
Measures of happiness Several scales have been used to measure happiness:
The Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) is a four-item scale, measuring global subjective
happiness.
The scale requires participants to use absolute ratings to characterize themselves as happy
or unhappy individuals, as well as it asks to what extent they identify themselves with
descriptions of happy and unhappy individuals.
The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is used to detect the relation between
personality traits and positive or negative affects at this moment, today, the past few
days, the past week, the past few weeks, the past year, and generally (on average).
PANAS is a 20-item questionnaire, which uses a five-point Likert scale (1 = very slightly
or not at all, 5 = extremely).
A longer version with additional affect scales is available in a manual.
The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) is a global cognitive assessment of life satisfaction.
The SWLS requires a person to use a seven-item scale to state their agreement or disagreement
(1 = strongly disagree, 4 = neither agree nor disagree, 7 = strongly agree) with five
statements about their life.
The UK began to measure national well being in 2012, following Bhutan which already measured
gross national happiness.
Happiness and health Richard Davidson's 2012 bestseller The Emotional
Life of Your Brain argues that positive emotion and happiness benefit your long-term health.
From a study conducted in 2005 by Andrew Steptow and Michael Marmot, findings have found that
happiness is clearly related to biological markers that play an important role in health.
At University College London, Steptow and Marmot collected health and well-being data
from 116 men and 100 women.
All 216 participants were middle-aged, British civil servants between the ages of 45 and
59.
The researchers aimed to analyze whether there was any association between well-being and
three biological markers: heart rate, cortisol levels, and plasma fibrinogen levels.
Interestingly, the participants who rated themselves the least happy had cortisol levels
that were 48% higher than those who rated themselves as the most happy.
The least happy subjects also had a large plasma fibrinogen response to two stress-inducing
tasks: the Stroop test, and tracing a star seen in a mirror image.
In Happy People Live Longer, Frey reports that happy people live 14% longer, increasing
longevity 7.5 to 10 years.
Steptow and Marmot furthered their studies by using their participants three years later
to repeat the physiological measurements.
They found that participants who scored high in positive emotion continued to have lower
levels of cortisol and fibrinogen, as well as a lower heart rate.