College aantekeningen
Science of Happiness lecture summary
- Instelling
- Universiteit Utrecht (UU)
Extensive summary of all lectures of the course Science of Happiness (Utrecht University).
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Voorbeeld 4 van de 39 pagina's
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Anne Ponsteensv lectures the science of happiness
Lecture 1 - Why happiness deserves scientific interest
- People tend to remember bad news over good news more easily (negativity bias)
- Negative events have bigger impact than positive events: people are more distressed
by the loss of $50 than they are made happy by finding $50
- negative info receives more attention and is processed more thoroughly in the brain
than positive information
- Evolutionary explanation: humans attuned to preventing bad things thrive more than
those oriented towards maximising good things (person who ignores the danger of
fire might not live to see the next day, evolutionary awareness)
- Around 2000, the positive psychology movement was launched, before that
psychology merely focussed on negative psychological phenomenons like
depression, anxiety, stress etc. → positive psychology changed this by looking into
positive mind-states like happiness, flow, fulfilment (at work) etc.
- All people want to be happy, making happiness an important mental state → a lot of
books are written about how one can improve their mental state/happiness
- Even governments/nations pay attention to the happiness of their inhabitants:
governments are interested in having ‘happy people’ because they contribute to
happier nations/help the nation strive, which is good for governments
- Examples of governments putting in effort to increase happiness, showing how
happiness isn’t only a personal issue:
- New-zealand’s wellbeing budget
- Bhutan’s happiness index & ministry (very poor country but quite happy)
- Welsh Wellbeing of Future Generations Act (= all laws need to dedicate attention to
their impact on future generations)
- United Nations World Happiness Report
- Diener & Seligman (2002): benefits of a happy population, happier people:
- are more productive
- are healthier and live longer
- contribute more to society (civic participation)
- have better social relationships (fewer divorces)
- Euba (2019): Evolution doesn’t want you to be happy or satisfied, we’re supposed to
survive and reproduce → people strive for happiness and see ‘being happy’ as a
realistic goal, even though we’re naturally inclined to always strive for more meaning
that this expectation/goal can never be truly fulfilled
- In science of happiness we focus on antecedents and consequences of happiness →
some scientific questions relating to happiness beyond individual experience:
- Is happiness more than a psychological state?
- Do circumstances and living conditions matter?
- Do material conditions have an influence?
- Is happiness one’s own responsibility?
- Can one increase their level of happiness?
- Should governments create conditions that make you happy (in their own interest)?
- happiness is a difficult concept to grasp, multiple definitions are given:
- a state of well-being and contentment
- the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being combined with a sense
, Anne Ponsteen
that one’s life is good, meaningful and worthwhile
- good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and negative,
that people make of their lives and the affective reactions to their experiences
- In essence, all definitions/approaches describe happiness as feeling good/the feeling
of pleasure and positivity, however, they do use different words for explaining this
core value
- When asking lay people the definition of happiness, the emphasis lies on harmony
rather than on positive affect or contentment (like scientists do)
- The definition of happiness is elusive and hard to grasp. When reading articles it’s
important to pay attention the meaning authors prescribe to happiness (often this isn’t
very explicitly mentioned)
- Hedonic subjective well-being approach = understanding of happiness in science, the
approach is a composite of three related but distinct faces (tripartite model):
1. 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 (e.g.) marriage, work, friendship, leisure, the weather etc.
2. Positive affect: a person’s positive feelings or emotional states, typically measured
with reference to a particular point in time (momentary), e.g. excitement, interest,
enthusiasm
3. Negative affect: a person’s negative feelings or emotional states, typically
measured with reference to a particular point in time, e.g. nervous, fear, irritation
- According to hedonic subjective well-being approach, happiness is the sum of level
of satisfaction (level of positive affect - negative affect)
- Why is it called hedonic subjective well-being?
- Subjective because it is measured from personal experiences
- Hedonic because it focuses on affect
- Eudaimonia = a sense of meaning and purpose in life, or good psychological
functioning
- Eudaimonic = the actualization of one’s potential by fulfilling one’s damion (= true
self) will lead to flourishing
- The eudaimonic well-being approach stems from the ancient Greek and is about
finding your true self, having meaningful activities, fulfilling your potential etc.
- Eudaimonic well-being is a distinct concept from happiness; one can be happy while
living a simple lazy life, but in this case eudaimonic well-being isn’t high
- differs from the hedonic subjective well-being approached (= focus on maximisation
of pleasure & minimization of pain) as it focuses more on self fulfilment
- In short:
-Hedonic well-being approach = satisfaction with life + presence of monetary positive
affect & absence of monetary negative affect
- Eudaimonic approach = purpose and meaning in life
- The approaches are distinct and can’t be used simultaneously (but it’s not one or the
other)
- Controversy about which one is the best indicator of happiness, but in public policy/
on the governmental level the focus lies on hedonic/subjective well-being because
it’s easier to measure (easier to ask people if they’re satisfied than to ask if they
reached their full potential)
- When reporting on the level of happiness, should people account for their living
conditions (financial & immaterial)? If so, how? → controversy on this question
, Anne Ponsteen
- How can we know someone is happy? There are lots of quizzes that claim to
measure happiness. In social sciences we use questionnaires using self-report
- When we talk about measuring happiness, all measurement instruments are based
on the assumption that happiness can be measured (and improved)
- Are also alternative measures of happiness (but they’re used less often), like:
- smiling with your eyes as indicator if positive affect
- genuine smiles in college yearbook pictures predicted material satisfaction years
later
- researchers recording behaviours that involve gratitude or acts of kindness
- Is it hard to tell how happy you are compared to others → study asking people in
midwest US if they consider themselves happier than people in California, most
thought Californians would be happier because of better weather while in fact they
are equally happy (humans like comparing and grass is always greener on the other
side)
- The weather/more sunshine doesn’t make you more happy (Finland as happiest
country in the world with very little sun)
- Happiness is a biassed judgement, people tend to estimate their own happiness level
by focussing (too much) on one particular issue (typically being something they don’t
have)
- Even though we have biases and comparisons with others often doesn’t give the
best/most realistic results, there aren’t much better ways of measurement available
→ despite disadvantages of self-report (social desirability, problems associated with
retrospection), it enables people to report on their feelings in metrics + happiness is
all about subjective well-being after all, so does it matter?
- It’s quite special that people can express such complex feelings (like happiness) on a
simple scale
- Multiple item measures are more accurate than single item measures as they reduce
random errors from ambiguity in single items
- There are a lot of multiple item questionnaires on happiness, most used/tested are
‘Positive and negative affect scale’ and ‘satisfaction with life scale’
- When measuring life satisfaction, should we focus on rating general or domain
specific satisfaction (life as a whole or specific elements of life)?
- Domain specific evaluations are correlated and possibly influenced by a common
factor (e.g. personality). Overall life satisfaction drives specific elements of domain
satisfaction suggesting a top-down mechanism (rather than bottom-up) → people
with higher general life satisfaction tend to rate domain specific evaluations higher.
Important to note that feedback loops might exist
- Happiness questionnaires differ quite a lot so it really matters which scale you use to
assess happiness. Components do compare a little but they are also quite distinct as
single-item significance isn’t very high
- Does objective/’true’ happiness exist? → Kahneman et al. (2004) We have measures
like life satisfaction and positive/negative affect, but do these concepts actually
capture the experience of happiness?
- True/objective happiness occurs real time (still subjective but no/less recall bias) →
Kahneman et al. used a day reconstruction method that records the prevalence of
immediate positive affect in everyday experience. Participants were instructed to
think about the preceding day, break it up into episodes, and describe each episode.
The research provides unique information about what people do and how they feel in
, Anne Ponsteen
their daily lives. Kahneman et al. defined happiness as the temporal average of
subjective experiences reported in real time over an extended period
- Our memory of how happy we were about something in the past can differ from how
we experienced that situation in the moment → e.g. going to a concert you really love
but hearing a false note in the end. If true/objective happiness occurs real-time one
would argue you’re happy for the most part, but if the memory of an event is more
important this evaluation might differ
- Another example are vacations and the pictures we take during them, should one
focus on collecting experiences (live in the moment & enjoy) or memories (take many
pictures): we experience beautiful moments but most are not preserved, but we might
also miss out/forget beautiful moments because we’re too busy preserving them. Our
memory collects certain parts of what happened to us and processes them into a
story. Is the story we remember afterwards more important than actual experiences
because it’s nearly impossible to revive those moments?
- Kahneman preferred the ‘real time’/objective definition of happiness but years later
he stated that “happiness feels good in the moment, but eventually what you’re left
with are your memories. Memories stay with you meanwhile the reality of life is gone
and instant. Most of us don’t want to just feel good in the moment, we also want to do
stuff that matters, so we can look back on our lives with satisfaction.”
- Most people want to be satisfied (that is smart): there’s a difference between
experiencing happiness and life satisfaction, happiness is more futile.
- Life satisfaction and experienced happiness are differently related to joyful events in
the moment → a satisfying life is not necessarily enjoyable (also the other way
around)
- For life satisfaction living conditions are more important (income, partner, children,
age, BMI etc.) whereas these conditions barely matter for happiness during
experiences in real life.
- Moments of joy are nice and people like to experience them once in a while but they
don’t say much about life happiness overall → intuitively we like to think so as we
associate happiness with these specific nice moments
- Positive psychology has grown to dominate the science of happiness and focuses on
‘learning to be happy’. According to positive psychologists people themselves are
responsible for their lives, becoming happier can be done through learning/ practising
gratitude. You can become happy without making any actual changes to your
situation
- People want to be satisfied with their life, this is mostly driven by their life
circumstances/conditions and not monetary positive affect
- → this also has implications for policy, because it insinuates that if you’re unhappy it
means you don’t take enough action to make yourself happy, should create your own
circumstances in which you can be happy (own responsibility, not government)
- Hedonic treadmill/hedonic adaptation = we all have a base level of happiness which
differs per person (based on genetics, personality, evidence is contested).
Regardless of one’s base level, you can move up and down this base level
depending on positive/negative events, but eventually after some time you’ll return to
your base level of happiness
- People tend to return (quite quickly) to heir setpoint (stable baseline level) of
happiness, both after positive and negative (big) life events → remarkable resilience
to adjust, which is a great advantage in itself
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