Lecture 1: Introduction
Negativity bias: bad is stronger than good.
- Negative events have a bigger impact than positive events:
o People are more distressed by the loss of 50 euro than they are made happy
by finding 50 euro.
o Negative information receives more attention and is processed more
thoroughly than positive information.
o Evolutionary explanation: Humans are attuned to preventing bad things thrive
more than toward maximizing good things.
A person who ignores danger may not live to see the next day.
Psychological research also has focused more on understanding bad things. Until 2000, when
the positive psychology movement was launched. Science of happiness is a recent
phenomenon.
Broaden-and-build: theory of emotions: posits that positive emotions may broaden people’s
momentary thought-action repertoires, which in turn help to build their personal resources
(physical, social and psychological).
- Two people, one who tends to be negative and another who tends to be positive,
face a health threat.
- The person with negative emotions panics and suffers from ill physical health.
- The person with positive emotions stays calm and engages in health protective
behaviors – and deals with the health threat appropriately -> with positive health
outcomes as a result.
Does happiness deserve scientific interest?
Many people want to be happy, is a genuine goal. That is why it is important to learn more
about it. The government also wants us to be happy (happiness index -> measuring
happiness of society).
World happiness reports -> national happiness can now become an operational objective for
governments.
Benefits of being happy:
- Happier people:
o Are more productive.
o Are healthier and live longer.
o Contribute more to society (civic participation).
o Have better relationships.
Science of happiness focuses on its antecedents and consequences.
Scientific questions relating to happiness:
- Do circumstances and living conditions matter?
- Do material conditions have an influence?
- Can you increase your level of happiness?
, - Should the government create conditions that make you happy (in their own
interest).
Definitions of happiness
Some definitions:
- A state of well-being and contentment.
- Happiness is a feeling of pleasure and positivity.
Tone is that happiness is about feeling good. But people use different words.
Jingle: the very same term refers to different underlying conceptions: happiness refers to life
satisfaction, positive affect, well-being.
Jangle: different terms are used to describe the vary same underlying conceptions:
happiness, life satisfaction, meaning in life, well-being -> happiness.
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.
- Positive affect: a person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with
reference to a 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 = a sense of meaning and purpose in life, or good psychological
functioning.
- Eudaimonic = actualization of one’s potential by fulfilling one’s daimon (true self) =
flourishing.
As different from hedonic/subjective well-being = with a focus on affect (Maximization of
pleasure & Minimization of pain) and cognition.
A bit of consensus and quite a bit of controversy (what is the best approach)
- Consensus: 2 main approaches.
o Hedonic/subjective well-being = satisfaction with life/presence of momentary
positive affect/absence of negative affect.
o Eudaimonic: purpose and meaning in life.
- Controversy:
o What is the best indicator of ‘happiness’: hedonic or eudaimonic measures?
But note that in policy making focus lies on hedonic/subjective well-being.
o If and how do people account for their living conditions (financial and
immaterial) when reporting on happiness?
Measurement of happiness
We ask people to self-report how happy they are. For example, Likert scales.
Alternative measures of happiness:
- Duchenne smile with your eyes as a genuine indicator of positive affect (unfakeable).
, - Recording behaviors that involve gratitude or acts of kindness.
Difficult to tell if you are happy or not:
- People in the Midwest of the US think people living in California will be happier than
themselves – while in fact they are equally happy.
o Focus on something they don’t have in the Midwest: sunshine.
- Focus on the weather while sunshine doesn’t make you happy.
- 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): an easily
observed and distinctive element.
Focus on self-report:
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?
- Even a single item on satisfaction on life produces reliable scores comparable with
multiple item scales.
- Albeit somewhat lower mean scores than measures with multiple items; multiple
items reduce random error from ambiguity in single items.
There are a lot of multiple item questionnaires. Most relevant and most used scales:
- Positive and negative affect scales: listing of different kinds of emotions, momentary
states.
o Positive: active, alert, proud.
o Negative: hostile, irrigatable.
- Satisfaction with life scale:
o In most ways my life is close to ideal.
o The conditions of my live are excellent.
o I am satisfied with my life.
o So far, I have gotten the important things that I want in my live.
o If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.
Satisfaction with life -> is it general or domain specific?
- Domain specific evaluations are strongly correlated and possibly influenced by
common factor (e.g., personality or general circumstances).
- Overall satisfaction with life drives specific elements of domain satisfaction –
suggesting a top down rather than a bottom-up mechanism.
Although feedback loops may exist.
How do different scales compare? -> it matters which scale you use to assess happiness.
Depends on the purpose of your project.
Does objective happiness exist?
Life satisfaction is a global retrospective judgement – remembering is driven by comparisons
with other people: ‘biased’. True/objective happiness occurs in real time.
- 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 episodes, and describe each episode. 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.
Discrepancy between real time experiences and our memories of the same experiences.
- We experience many beautiful moments, but most of them are not preserved.
- We may forget about the fabulous moment that we were experiencing when
travelling – making pictures all the time.
- Our memory collects certain parts of what happened to us and process them into a
story.
- Is the story that we remember afterwards more important because it is near to
impossible to relive those fabulous moments?
A satisfying life is not necessarily more enjoyable, or the other way around. There is a
moderate correlation between life satisfaction and experienced happiness. Being satisfied
with life is reflection of life conditions. Is unrelated to moments of joy.
Positive psychology has come to dominate the science of happiness. Positive psychologists
are trying to convince people to be happy without making any changes in their situation: to
learn to be happy. That fits well with political conservatism’. People want to be satisfied with
their life – and this is driven by their life circumstances, not with momentary positive affect.
Hedonic adaptation and the happiness pie
Hedonic adaptation/treadmill: we have a basic level of
happiness.
- Example: lottery winners were not much happier
than a neutral control group a year later.
Paraplegics were a little less happy, but still more
happy than unhappy and expected to be equally
happy compared to the other groups in a couple
of years.
- People tend to return quite quickly to their setpoint (stable baseline level) of
happiness, both after positive and negative events. Such as imprisonment, childbirth,
accidents.
- Happiness levels tend to return to baseline after a major life event but may change
after lasting changes in life circumstances. Also depends in individual differences in
adaptation and prior levels of happiness -> hedonic adaptation does not insinuate….
Happiness pie: shows what determines happiness. This is at
population level, not in individual level.
