The Positive Psychology
movement, spearheaded by Martin Seligman, is attempting to figure out what
makes people happy. We have idiosyncratic conceptions of what constitutes
happiness. Indeed, happy has many
synonyms: content, lucky, fortunate, delighted, glad... To be a happy human may
entail many different states. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
provides a starting point. It seems reasonable to suggest that people need to
have food, water, shelter, and security before they can start to assess whether
or not they are happy. But beyond this foundation, what really matters? Is it
your outlook on life? Your income? Relationships with friends and family?
Happiness is multi-faceted and is certainly a gradable emotion.
Firstly, what exactly
separates joy-junkies from melancholy-mopers? An article by Lyubomirsky and
Boehm (2009) gives some pointers:
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Happy people:
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Unhappy people:
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evaluate experiences positively both
at the time and afterwards
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savour life experiences and consider
how much better off they are in the present
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see events more negatively at the
time and afterwards
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ruminate on negative experiences and
consider how much better off they were in the past
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When they don’t
get into the university they applied for:
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Happy people:
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Unhappy people:
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changed their opinions by favouring
the institutions that did accept
them and disfavouring the ones that rejected them
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did the opposite by retaining their
preferences for the institutions that rejected them and disfavouring their
accepted one
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In an experiment,
participants solved anagrams in the presence of a confederate who either
performed more quickly or more slowly than them. When the confederate
performed more quickly:
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Happy people:
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Unhappy people:
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didn’t change their perceptions of
their own skills and abilities
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demoted their own skills and
abilities
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Both of these groups of
people tend to have the same experiences, but the most significant difference
between them is the way they perceive the world and the strategies they use for
processing life events.
In day-to-day life, most
people have a baseline happiness level. Positive events provide a boost to
happiness, and negative ones cause it to drop, but sooner or later it returns
to its original level. This is known as Hedonic Treadmill Theory. In other
words, people become adapted or habituated to their new circumstances, although
negative circumstances pack more of a punch (known as a negativity bias).
Studies comparing the happiness of lottery winners with merely hopeful gamblers
found no significant differences, providing support for the short-lived effects
of (positive) life events on happiness.
Unfortunately Hedonic
Treadmill Theory is rather deterministic and therefore rather a hindrance when
considering happiness interventions. What’s the point in trying to improve your
happiness when it’ll only snap back into place like a laggy band?
Lyubomirsky and Boehm (2009)
discuss a Sustainable Happiness Model to explain what affects how jubilant we
are. According to the authors, happiness is dependent on three things:
- (1) Your set point. Some people are ‘chronically happy’ (sounds more like an ailment) while others are pessimistic and dour on a daily basis. This set point, or baseline, is genetically determined. Twin studies have illustrated that happiness is heritable, since identical twins are much more likely than fraternal twins to have similar levels of happiness. Fifty percent of variance in level of happiness is down to our genes.
- (2) Your life circumstances. Your income, education, gender, age, ethnicity, health, personal experiences, account for 10% of your happiness.
- (3) Intentional Activity. The remaining 40%, therefore, constitutes what actions you decide to take in your daily existence. This includes acts of kindness towards others and expressing gratitude.
Newman and Larsen 2012 are
critical of the idea that 40% of our happiness is within our hands (as am I).
In relation to (1), they point out that heritability rates estimate the
proportion of individual differences among
a group of people that can be attributed to their genes. Accordingly, they
cannot be applied to any one individual. Not everyone’s capacity to control their happiness is 50% determined by
their genes.
Lyubomirsky and Boehm have
been either sneaky or lazy by assuming that the leftover 40% must be entirely,
uniquely volitional actions. So two fifths of your happiness is determined by
intentional actions just... because... they need something to account for the
leftover 40%? That doesn’t seem very scientific. As Newman and Larsen note, the
list of states and events that fill this 40% is potentially limitless. And what
of destructive and pervasive life events beyond our control such as unplanned
pregnancies, evictions, bankruptcy... You can’t control whether or not these
happen and how they will affect you.
We’ve learnt that negative
affect has a more significant impact on happiness, so perhaps we should try to
remove or prevent this, rather than bolstering positive affect. The problem
here is that a lot of negative affect is caused by events that are out of our
control, so there is little we can do about them.
Lyubomirsky is well-known
within the branch of positive psychology and has published books and articles
based on the 50-10-40 proportion combination above. Her efforts are noble, but
the results are misguided and overgeneralised.
Psychology has demonstrated
that people like to be happy and in control – the public is eager to latch on
to any old book or article about how to improve (and by definition control)
your happiness, made all the more appealing by the words ‘science’, ‘research’ and
‘proven’ which, this case, appear to be misnomers.
