Science of happiness
HC1 - Why happiness deserves scientific interest 1
HC2 - Theories of well-being 5
HC3 - Very happy people: striving for greater happiness 9
HC4 - Does saving the planet make you happy 13
HC5 - Is improving happiness a task of the government? 18
HC6 - The philosophy of happiness 24
HC7 - Me, myself and I: happiness and social connectedness 25
HC8 - Can money buy happiness? 27
Theories and models 30
,HC1 - Why happiness deserves scientific interest
Negative events have a bigger impact than positive events.
- This is also the same for negative information; it receives more attention and is processed
more thoroughly than positive information.
● Evolutionary explanation: humans are attuned to preventing bad things thriving 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’.
● This was until 2000, when the positive psychology movement was launched.
● Side note: reflections on happiness exist since ancient times, but the empirical side
does not.
Frederickson posits that positive emotions may broaden people’s momentary thought-action
repertoires, which, in turn helps to build their personal resources.
- 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.
Broaden-and-build theory: experiencing positive emotions encourages individuals
to consider a broader range of actions, and negative emotions
encourage individuals to consider a narrower range of actions.
Many people want to be happy; it’s a general goal, so it’s
scientifically relevant.
● Governments also want people to be happy and they
sometimes measure this with a happiness index.
- ‘Our success as countries should be judged by the happiness of our people. This means
that national happiness can now become an operational objective for governments.’
There are several benefits of having a happy population, because happy 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 divorces).
Next to examining subjective experiences of happiness, science of happiness focuses on its
antecedents and consequences. Several scientific questions relating to happiness:
● Do circumstances and living conditions matter?
● 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)?
Happiness has different definitions: a state of well- being and contentment, feeling of
pleasure and positivity etc.
- The concept can be seen as an elusive concept. It has two components:
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, ● Jingle: the very same term refers to different underlying conceptions: happiness
refers to life satisfaction, positive affect, well-being.
● Jangle: different terms with slightly different meanings are used to describe the very
same underlying conceptions: happiness, life satisfaction, meaning in
life, well-being ≈ ‘happiness’
Hedonic/subjective well-being is a composite of three related but
distinct facets. It’s shown in the tripartite model:
1. Cognitive life evaluation: reflective assessment on a person’s life
or some specific aspect of it; general satisfaction with life or
domain-specific satisfaction with work, friendship, leisure etc.
2. Positive affect: a person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with
reference to a particular point in time (momentary): e.g., excited, interested, etc.
3. Negative affect: a person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with
reference to a particular point in time (momentary): e.g., nervous, afraid etc.
Another definition of happiness is eudaimonic well-being, which is a sense of meaning and
purpose in life, or good psychological functioning.
● It's the actualisation of one’s potential by fulfilling one’s daimon (true self), which can
be described as flourishing.
○ Thus, it focuses on purpose and meaning in life.
- This is different from hedonic/subjective well-being, which focuses on affect (maximization
of pleasure and minimization of pain) and cognition.
● Thus, it focuses on satisfaction with life, the presence of momentary positive affect
and the absence of negative affect.
There is consensus on these two main approaches, but also 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?
To know whether someone is happy, we ask people to self-report their happiness.
● This is not always useful, because happiness can be seen as a biased judgment.
○ People estimate their own happiness level by (too much) focusing on one
particular issue (typically something they don’t have), which can easily be
observed and is a distinctive element.
Examples of other ways of measurement:
● Duchenne smiling with your eyes as a genuine indicator of positive affect, which is
unfakeable.
○ Genuine smiles in college yearbook pictures predicted marital satisfaction
decades later.
● Recording behaviors that involve gratitude or acts of kindness.
- Note: different disciplines from psychology determine happiness not by examining
subjective experiences but by mapping conditions that will contribute to happiness.
Despite disadvantages of self-report, like social desirability and problems associated with
introspection, the ability of people to report on their feelings in metrics are valid.
● After all, happiness is about subjective well-being; so asking people themselves is
useful.
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, ● Even a single item on satisfaction with life (Cantril’s ladder) produces reliable scores
comparable with multiple item scales.
● Multiple items reduce random error from ambiguity in single items.
Multiple item questionnaires examples
The most relevant/used scales are:
Penn Authentic Happiness Inventory Measures Overall Happiness
● Positive and negative affect
Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire Measures Current Happiness
scale: there’s a stronger focus
Gratitude Survey Measures Appreciation about the Past
on momentary emotions rather
Grit Survey Measures the Character Strength of
than longer lasting moods. Perseverance
● Satisfaction with life scale Work-Life Questionnaire Measures Work-Life Satisfaction
● Psychological well-being scale PERMA Measures Flourishing
(eudaimonia)
Meaning In Life Questionnaire Measures Meaningfulness
● Subjective happiness scale
Oxford Happiness Questionnaire Includes self-esteem, sense of
(positive psychological) purpose and humor, social interest,
- The most useful measurement in sense of humor,aesthetic appreciation
public policy settings is recording the
nation’s happiness level by Cantril’s ladder or using other single item measures.
Satisfaction with life is mostly domain specific instead of general (e.g., finance, work,
marriage, friendship, leisure).
● Domain specific evaluations are strongly correlated (.60) and possibly influenced by
a 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.
Life satisfaction is a global retrospective judgment because it’s driven by comparisons with
other people and is therefore biased.
● True/objective happiness occurs in real time.
The case of objective happiness uses the day reconstruction method, which 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.
○ It provides unique information about what people do and how they feel in their
everyday lives.
○ Result: happiness is the temporal average of subjective experiences reported
in real time over an extended period.
There’s a discrepancy between real time experiences and our memories of the same
experiences.
- People experience many beautiful moments, but most of them are not preserved.
● Our memory collects parts of what happened to us and processes them into a story.
● These experiences and feelings are different when you are not in the moment itself.
○ Practicing gratitude and mindfulness is helpful. But most of the people just
want to do stuff that matters, so we can look back on life with satisfaction.
A satisfying life is not necessarily more enjoyable than experiencing happiness,vice versa.
Positive psychology has come to dominate the science of happiness. Those psychologists
try to convince people to be happy without making any changes in their situation: ‘To learn to
be happy. That fits well with political conservatism.’
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