Science of Happiness
Course number: 201900028
Week 1 | Lecture - Why happiness deserves scientific interest
Negativity bias: Bad is stronger than good
Negative events have a bigger impact than positive events:
- People are more distressed by the loss of 50 euros than they are made happy by finding 50
euros
- Negative information receives more attention and is processed more thoroughly than positive
information.
- Evolutionary explanation: Humans attuned to preventing bad things thrive more than those
oriented toward maximizing good things.
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- A person who ignores the danger of fire may not live to see the next day.
→ Psychological research has focused more on understanding ‘bad things’ (Baumeister et al. 2001).
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Until 2000, the positive psychology movement was launched.
Part I - Does happiness deserve scientific interest?
We want to be happy. Moreover, the government wants us to be happy as well.
- New-Zealand’s well-being budget’ (Jacinda Ardern 2017)
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- Bhutan’s happiness index
- Welsh Well-being of future generations act
- OECD better life index
- United Nations world happiness report
Benefits of a happy population. Happier people are more productive, are healthier and live longer,
contribute more to society (e.g. civic participation), and have better social relationships (e.g. fewer
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divorces).
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“Evolution doesn’t want you to be happy or satisfied. We’re supposed to ‘survive and reproduce’.” |
Euba, 2019.
“A huge happiness and positive thinking industry has helped to create the fantasy that happiness is a
realistic goal. Chasing the happiness dream is a very American concept, exported to the rest of the
world through popular culture. Unfortunately, this has helped to create an expectation that real life
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stubbornly refuses to deliver.”
Science of happiness is a recent phenomenon
Ed Diener (1946-2021) aka Dr. Happiness.
- 400 publications on subjective Well-being: > 257.000 cities
Martin Seligman - positive psychology (2000)
Mihalyi Csikszentmihaliyi - flow (1990)
Barbara Fredrickson - Broaden & Build (2001)
Ruut Veenhoven - Our own Dutch professor of Happiness.
→ But note that reflections on happiness exist since ancient times.
Science of Happiness: Focus on the antecedents and consequences of happiness
,Scientific question relating to happiness beyond an individual experience. Do circumstances and living
conditions matter? For Diogenes (404-323 BC), living in a jar, they didn’t. But how about us?
- Do material conditions have an influence?
- Is happiness your own responsibility?
- Can you increase your level of happiness?
- Should the government create conditions that make you happy (in their own interest)?
Part II - Definition & measurement of happiness
What is Happiness?
- “A state of well-being and contentment” | Merriam-Webster 2018
- “The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s
life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile” | Lyubomirsky 2008
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- “Good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and negative, that people
make of their lives and the affective reactions of people to their experiences” | OECD 2013
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“Happiness is a feeling of pleasure and positivity.” → to put it into simple words.
Lay definitions of happiness
- N = 2799 adults living in urban areas of Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, Hungary, India, Italy, MExico,
New-Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, and the US.
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- Inner harmony rather than satisfaction or positive affect
Is happiness an elusive concept?
Jingle: Common terms refer to different underlying conceptions: happiness refers to life satisfaction,
positive affect, well-being. | Thorndike 1904
Jangle: Different terms are used to describe common underlying conceptions: happiness, life
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satisfaction, meaning in life, well-being. | Kelley 1927
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Hedonic / subjective well-being as a composite of 3 related, but distinct facets (tripartite model)
Cognitive life evaluation: A reflective assessment on a person’s life or some specific aspect of it:
general satisfaction with life or domain-specific satisfaction with marriage, work, friendship, leisure,
weather…
Positive affect: A person's feelings or emotional states, typically measured with reference to a
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particular point in time (momentary) - e.g. excited, interested, enthusiastic.
Negative affect: A person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with reference to a
particular point in time (momentary) - e.g. nervous, afraid, irritable.
Eudaimonic well-being
Eudaimonia is a sense of meaning and purpose in life, or good psychological functioning.
Eudaimonic is an actualisation of one’s potential by fulfilling one’s daimon (true self) ~ flourishing as a
different from hedonic / subjective well-being which is with a focus on affect (maximization of pleasure &
minimization of pain) and cognition.
A bit of consensus and (quite) a bit of controversy
Consensus: two main approaches:
, 1. Hedonic well-being: Satisfaction with life + presence of momentary positive affect + absence of
negative affect.
2. Eudaimonic: Purpose and meaning in life
Controversy
- What is the best indicator of ‘happiness’: hedonic or eudaimonic measures? But note that in
policy making focus lies on hedonic / subjective well-being.
- If and how do people account for their living conditions (financial and immaterial) when
reporting on happiness?
How can we know someone is happy?
Generally, we ask people to self-report how happy they are. Alternative measures of happiness:
- Duchenne smiling with your eyes as a genuine indicator of positive affect (unfakable).
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- Genuine smiles in college yearbook pictures predicted marital satisfaction decades later.
- Recording behaviours that involve gratitude or acts of kindness.
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Easy to tell?
People in the Midwest of the US think people living in California will be happier than themselves - while
in fact they are equally happy. Focus on the weather while sunshine doesn’t make you happy - case of
Finland.
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Happiness is a biased judgement: People estimate their own happiness level by (too much) focus on
one particular issue (typically something they don’t have) → This is a bias.
Or they underestimate other people’s happiness
Horizontal axis: people saying they are ‘rather / very happy’.
Vertical axis: people guessing the share of people reporting to be ‘rather / very happy’ in their country.
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If respondents would have guessed the correct share, observations would fall on the red 45-degree
line. But, all countries are below the 45-degree line. Thus, people underestimate the self-reported
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happiness of others. People tend to be positive about themselves, but negative about other people they
don’t know. They may be optimistic about their own future, while at the same time being pessimistic
about the future of their nation.
Focus on self-report
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Despite disadvantages of self-report (social desirability, problems associated with introspection). People
are able to report on their feelings in metrics. After all, happiness is about subjective well-being. So,
why not ask people themselves?
Single items
Systematic comparison of various measures in the World Happiness Report (Helliwell et al. 2012)
showed nearly identical results for several measures. Cantril’s ladder (single item) produced somewhat
lower mean scores than measures with multiple items. Multiple items reduce random error from
ambiguity in single items.
Multiple item questionnaires
Examples are: PERMA measures flowing, The 1-10 happiness scale, Be happy index (BHI), and more.
, Most relevant / used
Positive and negative affect scale | Satisfaction with life.
- Psychological well-being scale (eudaimonia): e.g. I lead a purposeful and meaningful life
- Subjective happiness scale (positive psychology): e.g. In general, I consider myself: not a very
happy person 1-7 a very happy person.
- In public policy settings (recording the nation’s happiness level): e.g. Cantril’s ladder or other
single item measures.
Life satisfaction
In most ways my life is close to my ideal. The conditions of my life are excellent. I am satisfied with my
life. So far, I have gotten the important things that I want in my life. If I could start over, I would change
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almost nothing.
- Strongly disagree to strongly agree
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Satisfaction with life
General or domain specific (e.g. work, marriage, friendship, leisure).
Domain specific evaluations are correlated (.60) and possibly
influenced by common factors (e.g. personality). Overall satisfaction
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with life drives specific elements of domain satisfaction (being
satisfied with your financial situation) - suggesting a top down rather
than a bottom-up mechanism. Although feedback loops may exist.
Beyond subjective happiness? The case of Objective Happiness
Life satisfaction is a global retrospective judgement - remembering is driven by comparisons with other
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people: ‘biased’.
- True / objective happiness occurs in real time.
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Day reconstruction method records the prevalence of immediate positive affect in everyday experience:
participants are instructed to think about the preceding day, break it up into pieces, and describe each
episode. It provides unique information about what people do and how they feel in their everyday lives
→ Happiness is the temporal average of subjective experiences reported in real time over an extended
period.
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Discrepancy between real time experiences and our memories of the same experiences
What about the man listening to a symphony he loves - “absolutely glorious music”. But at the end there
was a ‘dreadful screeching sound’ that ruined the whole experience for him. Was the man happy
because he enjoyed the music while listening? The dreadful sound ‘only’ ruined his memory or the
experience. Or, was he unhappy because his recollection of the music had a negative tone?
Collect experiences or collect memories?
We experienced many beautiful moments, but most of them are not preserved. We may forget about
the fabulous moments that we were experiencing when travelling - making pictures all the time. Our
memory collects certain parts of what happened to us and processes them into a story. Is the story that
we remember afterwards more important because it is near to impossible to relive those fabulous
