Happiness

File:Joyful kid.jpg

People often show that they are happy by smiling.

For other uses, see Happiness (disambiguation).

Happiness is a prolonged or lasting emotional or affective state that feels good or pleasing. Overlapping states or experiences associated with happiness include wellbeing, joy, sexual pleasure, delight, health, safety and love, while contrasting ones include suffering, sadness, grief, and pain.

Societies, religions, and individuals have various views on the nature of happiness and how to pursue it.

Societal theories of happiness

Western society

Western society takes its concept of happiness, at least in part, from the Greek concept of 'Eudaimonia.' Eudaimonia(Greek: εὐδαιμονία) is a classical Greek word commonly translated as 'happiness'. Etymologically, it consists of the word "eu" ("good" or "well being") and "daimōn" ("spirit" or "minor deity", used by extension to mean one's lot or fortune). Although popular usage of the term happiness refers to a state of mind, related to joy or pleasure, eudaimonia rarely describes a state of mind, and the less subjective "human flourishing" is therefore currently preferred as a translation.

In modern western society, especially in North America, it is widely believed that happiness is attained through being successful, healthy, and having beautiful family; creating monetary wealth and success; being physically attractive even through old age; and maintaining one's intelligence and wit. Some of these are not supported by empirical evidence; for example, money does not appear to increase happiness (other than for the impoverished), and having children does not on average increase or decrease happiness.

As well, a portion of the uneducated population believes that happiness is achieved by following the latest cultural fads, such as keeping one's clothes in fashion or keeping them in fashion as much as humanly possible, going to the latest clubs, restaurants or bars, buying consumer products seen as trendy or cool, or changing a hair style so that it is current. However, most people disagree with these preceding ideals because they consider them too superficial, consumerist and unsatisfying.

For Americans, the happy or ideal life is sometimes referred to as the American dream, which can be seen as the idea that any goal can be attained through sufficient hard work and determination, birth and privilege nonwithstanding. While many artists, writers, scholars, and religious leaders can and do consider their work to fall within the American dream, it is usually thought of as relating to financial success. Writers such as Horatio Alger promoted this idea, and many writers, such as Arthur Miller, criticized it.

Psychological view

Positive psychology

Martin Seligman in his book Authentic Happiness gives the positive psychology definition of happiness as consisting of both positive emotions (like comfort) and positive activities (like absorption). He presents three categories of positive emotions:

• past: feelings of satisfaction, contentment, pride, and serenity.
• present (examples): enjoying the taste of food, glee at listening to music, absorption in reading, and company of people you like e.g. friends and family.
• future: feelings of optimism, hope, trust, faith, and confidence.

There are three categories of present positive emotions:

• bodily pleasures, e.g. enjoying the taste of food.
• higher pleasures, e.g. glee at listening to music.
• gratifications, e.g. absorption in reading.

The bodily and higher pleasures are "pleasures of the moment" and usually involve some external stimulus. An exception is the glee felt at having an original thought.

Gratifications involve full engagement, flow, elimination of self-consciousness, and blocking of felt emotions. But when a gratification comes to an end then positive emotions will be felt. Gratifications can be obtained or increased by developing signature strengths and virtues. Authenticity is the derivation of gratification and positive emotions from exercising signature strengths. The good life comes from using signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in, for example, enjoying work and pursuing a meaningful life.

Mechanistic view

Biological basis

While a person's overall happiness is not objectively measurable this does not mean it does not have a real physiological component. The neurotransmitter dopamine, perhaps especially in the mesolimbic pathway projecting from the midbrain to structures such as the nucleus accumbens, is involved in desire and seems often related to pleasure. Pleasure can be induced artificially with drugs, perhaps most directly with opiates such as morphine, with activity on mu-opioid receptors. There are neural opioid systems that make and release the brain's own opioids, active at these receptors. Mu-opioid neural systems are complexly interrelated with the mesolimbic dopamine system. New science, using genetically altered mice, including ones deficient in dopamine or in mu-opioid receptors, is beginning to tease apart the functions of dopamine and mu-opioid systems, which some scientists (e.g., Kent C. Berridge) think are more directly related to happiness.

Difficulties in defining internal experiences

It is probably impossible to objectively define happiness as we know and understand it, as internal experiences are subjective by nature. It is almost as pointless as trying to define the color green such that a completely color blind person could understand the experience of seeing green. While we can not objectively express the difference between greenness and redness, we can certainly explain which physical phenomena cause green to be observed, and can explain the capacities of the human visual system to distinguish between light of different wavelengths, and so on. Likewise, in the following sections, we will not attempt to describe the internal sensation of happiness, but will instead concentrate on defining its logical basis. Importantly, we will try to avoid circular definitions -- for instance, defining happiness as "a good feeling", while "good" is defined as being "something which causes happiness".

In non-human animals

For non-human animals, happiness might be best described as the process of reinforcement, as part of the organism's motivational system. The organism has achieved one or more of its goals (pursuit of food, water, sex, shelter, flowers etc.), and its brain is in the process of teaching itself to repeat the sort of actions that led to success. By reinforcing successful decision paths, it produces an equilibrium state not unlike positive-to-negative magnets. The specific goals are typically things that enable the organism to survive and reproduce.

By this definition, only animals with some capacity to learn should be able to experience happiness. However, at its most basic level the learning might be extremely simple and short term, such as the nearly reflexive feedback loop of scratching an itch (followed by pleasure, followed by scratching more, and so on) which can occur with almost no conscious thought.

In humans

When speaking of animals with the ability to reason (generally considered the exclusive domain of humans), goals are no longer limited to short term satisfaction of basic drives. Nevertheless, there remains a strong relationship of happiness to goal fulfillment and the brain's reinforcement mechanism, even if the goals themselves may be more complex and/or cerebral, longer term, and less selfish than a lower animal's goals might be.

Philosophers observe that short-term gratification, while briefly generating happiness, often requires a trade-off with negative repercussions in the long run. Examples of this could be said to include developing technology and equipment that makes life easier but over time ends up harming the environment, causing illness or wasting financial or other resources. Various branches of philosophy, as well as some religious movements, suggest that "true" happiness only exists if it has no long-term detrimental effects. Utilitarianism is a theory of ethics based on quantitative maximization of happiness.

From the observation that fish must become happy by swimming, and birds must become happy by flying, Aristotle points to the unique abilities of man as the route to happiness. Of all the animals only man can sit and contemplate reality. Of all the animals only man can develop social relations to the political level. Thus the contemplative life of a monk or professor, or the political life of a military commander or politician will be the happiest.

In contrast, Zhuangzi points out that only man is endowed with the ability necessary to generate complex language and thought—language and thought that can be used to distinguish between things and form dichotomies. These dichotomies then formed, man tries to find reasons to like one side of things and hate the other. Hence, he loses his ability to rove freely, in true happiness, unlike the rest of his animal brethren.

In artificial intelligence

The view that happiness is a reinforcement state can apply to some non-biological systems as well. In artificial intelligence, a program or robot could be said to be "happy" when it is in a state of reinforcing previous actions that led to satisfaction of its programmed goals. For instance, imagine a search engine that has the capacity to gradually improve the quality of its search results by accepting and processing feedback from the user regarding the relevance of those results. If the user responds that a search result is good (i.e. provides positive feedback), this tells the software to reinforce (by adjusting variables or "weights") the decision path that led to those results. In a sense, this could be said to "reward" the search engine. However, even if the program is made to act like it is happy, there is little doubt that the search engine has no subjective sense of being happy. Current computing technology merely implements abstract mathematical programs which lack the causal and creative power of natural systems. This does not preclude the possiblity that future technologies may begin to blur the distinction between such machine happiness and that experienced by an animal or human.

Mystical (religious, spiritual, and mythological) view

Explanation of happiness in mystical traditions, especially in advanced spiritual techniques is related to full balance (conjunction, union, "secret marriage") of so called inner energy lines (energy channels of a soul or deepest dimension of the human): nadi (ancient indian), gimel kavim (hebrew), pillars, columns, gnostic ophis or caduceus. In balanced state two main lines (left & right, Ida & Pingala) form third line, called Shushumna or lashon hakodesh (hebr.). Speaking technically (full) activity of this third or central line is happiness. Left and right lines include all aspects of normal human life: sleep and awake, body and mind, physical and spiritual and so on. To attain balanced state of these 2 lines is a main task of life - a paradoxical result of all kinds of activities and endeavours combined with full relax or tranquillity at the same time.

Personal happiness forms the centerpiece of Buddhist teachings and the Eightfold Path that will lead it's practitioner to Nirvana, a state of everlasting happiness.

American Buddhist monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu gave a guided meditation: “Close your eyes and think thoughts of good will. Thoughts of good will go first to yourself, because if you can't think good will for yourself — if you can't feel a sincere desire for your own happiness — there's no way you can truly wish for the happiness of others. So just tell yourself, "May I find true happiness." Remind yourself that true happiness is something that comes from within, so this is not a selfish desire. In fact, if you find and develop the resources for happiness within you, you're able to radiate it out to other people. It's a happiness that doesn't depend on taking away anything away from anyone else.” Source

Positive effect study

Self-reported positive effect during the day by 909 employed women

	Positive effect	Hours/day	Reporting
Activities
Intimate relations	5.10	.2	.11
Socializing	4.59	2.3	.65
Relaxing	4.42	2.2	.77
Pray/Worship/Meditate	4.35	.4	.23
Eating	4.34	2.2	.94
Exercising	4.31	.2	.16
Watching TV	4.19	2.2	.75
Shopping	3.95	.4	.30
Preparing food	3.93	1.1	.62
On the phone	3.92	2.5	.61
Napping	3.87	.9	.43
Taking care of my children	3.86	1.1	.36
Computer/Email/Internet	3.81	1.9	.47
Housework	3.73	1.1	.49
Working	3.62	6.9	1.00
Commuting	3.45	1.6	.87
Interaction partners
w/ friends	4.36	2.6	.65
w/ relatives	4.17	1	.38
w/ spouse/SO	4.11	2.7	.62
w/ children	4.04	2.3	.53
w/ clients/customers	3.79	4.5	.74
w/ co-workers	3.76	5.7	.93
w/ boss	3.52	2.4	.52
alone	3.41	3.4	.90
from A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method [1]

Recent Developments

Recent research conducted by Daniel Gilbert and others has unearthed several new elements about the business of happiness as concerns humans. The first element being that the major events of our lives have a minimal affect on our overall long-term happiness. Did you get married this year, or not? Have you been involved in a war lately? Regardless as to your answer, it is a fair bet that your happiness will be more or less the same in the long term. The second element of happiness is the terrible truth that we are awful at predicting what will give us happiness. Do you expect that a new car or home will give you happiness? Certainly it will, just not as much as you expect. The same is evident in the opposite. Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University.

References

• Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Analysis of Happiness, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.

Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness", Knopf, 2006

See also

• Emotion
• Hedonistic imperative
• Paradox of hedonism
• Utopia
• Smile

Other concepts related to happiness are bliss, cheerfulness, cheeriness, enjoyment, euphoria, exhilaration, ecstasy, and light-heartedness.

External links

• The World Database of Happiness — a register of scientific research on the subjective appreciation of life
• Journal of Happiness Studies - a social psychology journal with studies largely based on subjects' self-reports
• Understanding Happiness
• The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry "Pleasure" - concentrates on the quesion "What is pleasure?", including historical and recent, philosophers' and neuroscientific, approaches to happiness, with a long bibliography.
• The Sunday Times Magazine — article on the scientific study of happiness
• Science & Spirit — "The Search for Happiness" by Robert Biswas-Diener — Science tells us that a moderated, mildly positive outlook on life is our natural balance. Which means that wherever we go and whatever we do, the high's the limit.
• Happiness has a rational basis -- Articles about how happiness comes from the way you use your mind.
• Science & Spirit — "Set Point Match" by Nancy Etcoff — Studies of idential twins suggest the blueprint for joy is in our genes. Yet brain images show our happiness levels can change according to circumstance, activities, and patterns of thought. Is the pursuit of positive emotions a mixed-up game of nature and nurture.
• The science of happiness - BBC News looks at the newest research from around the world to find out what could it be that makes us happy, 30 April 2006.