How to be happy - #1

2005-11-24T17:00:00.000Z

Now and again, I'm going to look at what various people and institutions say about how to be happy. I think it's a safe bet that a number of common themes will be emerging from these posts. Later on, we'll come back to them and see what it is about these things that makes us happy.

According to the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago there are four things that really matter.

1. Social links - people who have five or more non-family friends that they would describe as 'close' are 50% more likely to describe themselves as 'very happy' than someone with fewer.

2. Happy marriages - 40% of married Americans describe themselves as 'very happy', compared to 26% of unmarried Americans.

3. Good health

4. A connection with a commnunity - religious groups, or an active society or community organisation.

Technorati: happiness,happy,flow,community

The cost of happiness

2005-11-18T22:31:00.000Z

It's a truism that money doesn't buy happiness. Then again, it's a truism that you're better off being rich and miserable than poor and miserable.

But research suggests that another cliche perhaps holds the truth: that how rich or how poor you are is less important than the fact that you're not just keeping up with the Joneses - you're ahead of them. And that this explains why although rich people are, on average, happier than poor people, societies don't grow happier as they gorw richer.

Although having an income above a certain level does play a part, what appears to be more important than how much you have in absolute income is how much you have relative to those around you.

And that's why despite the fact that many societies have increased in wealth over the last fifty years, there has not been a corresponding increase in happiness. Some posit a certain income level, below which happiness is harder to achieve, above which easier, but gains in income beyond this level don't give comparable gains in happiness.

Sociologists Glenn Firebaugh and Laura Tach researched this issue and argued that the level of happiness related to income depends on it compares to that of other people in the same age group. They found evidence that absolute income did play a part, but was not as important as relative income.

Which provokes an interesting thought. How much richer we all get doesn't do very much for our happiness. But if we get richer compared to them, we take more satisfaction from it. Which means that in order for one person to be happier, someone else has to do less well.

"We find with and without controls for age, physical health, education, and other correlates of happiness," said Firebaugh, "that the higher the income of others in one's age group, the lower one's happiness."

The economist Richard Easterlin writes that the relationship between happiness and income is a puzzling one. On average, at a particular point in time, those with more income are happier than those with less. But measured over time, happiness stays constant despite a growth in income - or when income levels off or declines in retirement. Easterlin believes that changes in material aspirations over time explains some of this apparent paradox: a rise in income means that a person can buy more stuff, which makes them happy - however, their aspirations rise with their income, and so they are always in a position of then wanting more stuff - causing their happiness to level out. You can read more of his argument in his paper "Income and Happiness: Towards a Unified Theory".

Richard Layard, the director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE, points to two reasons for this. One is habituation - the new toys seem shiny at first, but before long we are used to them, to the new car, the larger house, and they lose something of their sparkle. Habituation is something we'll come back to another time, to look to see whether the claim is true that we tend to return to a base level of happiness with our lives - whether we have good fortune or bad. Either way, we get used to it.

The other reason Layard terms rivalry. He quotes a study of graduate students in public health at Harvard, who were asked which world they would prefer - one in which they get $50k a year, and other people get half that, or one in which they get $100k a year, and others more than double that. The majority opted for the first. They preferred to be less well off in absolute terms, if it meant being better off in relative terms. Layard argues that this is one of the reasons why when East Germany was reunited with West Germany, happiness levels declined even though material wealth rose. The East Germans were no longer comparing themselves to the Bulgarians, the Poles, or other Warsaw Pact countries, but to affluent West Germany. Read more in the transcript of his lecture, What Causes Happiness?

The portrait of aspiration as Tantalus's grapes is an interesting one, and something that I will return to in later posts. If getting and acquiring makes us happy, can happiness be found in this way if it only triggers a new cycle of wanting? This phenomenon has been called 'the hedonic treadmill'. Another time, I want to look at what Buddhist thinking on the phenomenon of desire has to say about this, and how this compares to what research is telling us about ourselves.

Technorati: happiness,psychology,hedonic

Welcome to The Science Of Happiness

2005-11-17T14:42:00.000Z

Welcome to The Science of Happiness. I want to use this blog to look at something that interests me a lot: what makes us happy - and what makes us not happy.

What might make us happier? And why is often not what we think? Are we useless at recognising the things that might give us true and lasting happiness? Or is there no such thing as true and lasting happiness, just an occasional hummock in a slough of despair? Was Freud right when he said "the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of creation"?

Science seems to be taking an interest in happiness, and what I stumble across about that will provide much of the content here. But I also want to look at what philosophy, religion and other sources might contribute too.

Happiness is sold in pills, in creeds, and in books with accompanying dvd and wallchart. But does any of this work? Is any of it more effective than a good walk though the autumn leaves, or a long conversation with a close friend. What is flow, and why does it seem to be important to happiness?

I'd welcome any contributions, or suggestions for subjects to blog, or sites of interest to link to, as well as comments on any of the posts.

Technorati: happiness,psychology,flow