Science of Happiness
Lectures and readings
2023
AANTEKENINGEN 1
, Lecture 1
Negative bias: bad is stronger than good
- Negative events have a bigger impact than positive events:
- Negative information receives more attention and is processed more thoroughly than positive
information
- Evolutionair explanation: humans are attuned to preventing bad things thrive more than toward
maximizing good things
—> Psychological research also had focused more on understanding ‘bad things’ —> 2000: Positive
psycholo y movement was launched.
Government wants us to be happy : Bene ts of a happy population
Diener & Seligman, 2002; Diener et al., 2018; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005)
Happier people…
- Are more productive, healthier and live longer, contribute more to society, have better social
relationships
De nitions of happiness
“A state of well-being and contentment”
“Happiness is a feeling of pleasure and positivity”
“The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense 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 a ective reactions of people to their experiences” (OECD, 2013)
Is happiness an elusive concept?
- Jingle : The very same term refers to di erent underlying conceptions: happiness refers to life
satisfaction, positive a ect, well-being
- Jangle : di erent terms are used to describe the very same underlying conceptions: happiness,
life satisfaction, meaning in life, well-being = ‘happiness’
AANTEKENINGEN 2
,Hedonic / subjective well-being as a composite of 3 related but distinct facets
- Cognitive life evaluation: a re ective assessment on a persons life or some speci c aspect of it:
General satisfaction with life or domain-speci c satisfaction with marriage, work, friendship,
leisure, the weather …
- Positive a ect - a person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with reference to a
particular point in time (momentary): e.g., excited, interested, enthusiastic
- Negative a ect - a person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with reference to a
particular point in time (momentary): e.g., nervous, afraid, irritable
Lucas (2018) Subjective wellbeing
that the subject's own evaluation is prioritized, which means that di erent people can evaluate
the same objective life circumstance in di erent ways and can weight di erent life domains
di erently
Eudaimonic well-being
Eudaimonnia: a sense of meaning and purpose in life, or good psychological functioning
Eudaimonic: actualisation of one’s potential by ful lling one’s damion (true self ) = ourishing
- What is the best indicator happiness hedonic is much more used.
Is the Study of Happiness a Worthy Scienti c Pursuit? Norrish
Flow is the state of engagement, optimal happiness and peak experience that occurs when an
individual is absorbed in a demanding and intrinsically motivating challenge.
Well-Being Concepts and Components. Tov
- Hedonistic point of view concerns the maximisation of pleasure and the minimisation of pain
and occurs when pleasurable experiences and sensory grati cations outweigh painful
experiences.
- It has been referred to as hedonic well-being (HWB) and consists of (i) frequent pleasant
feelings, (ii) infrequent unpleasant feelings, and (iii) an overall judgment that life is satisfying.
- A ective well-being (AWB) refers to the experience of pleasant and unpleasant feelings.
- Valence. A basic feature of a ective experience is the degree to which it is pleasant or
unpleasant.
- Cognitive well-being (CWB) is based on an evaluation of how well one’s life is going relative
to an ideal state of a airs.
- Top-down model
AANTEKENINGEN 3
,- Eudaimonic happiness results from the actualisation of individual potential and from ful lling
one’s daimon or true self. This perspective has psychological roots in Maslow’s (1968) concept of
the self-actualising individual and Roger’s (1961) concept of the fully functioning person.
- eudaimonic well-being (EWB). There are certain needs or qualities that are essential for one’s
psychological growth and development; the ful llment of these needs enables a person to
reach their full potential
- Psychological well-being
- Self-determination
- Meaning in life
Measurement of happiness
- Self-report (is subject to biases)
- Even a single item on satisfaction with life (Cantril’s ladder) produces reliable scores
comparable with multiple item scales
- Albeit somewhat lower mean scores than measures with multiple items; multiple items
reduce random error from ambiguity in single items
- Recording behaviors that involve gratitude or acts of kindness
- Note that disciplines di erent from psycholo y determine happiness not by examining
subjective experiences but by mapping conditions that will contribute to happiness
—> Not easy to tell. Happiness is a bias judgement: people estimate their own happiness level by
(too much) focus on one particular issue (typically something they don’t have): an easily observed
and distinctive element.
Does Objective Happiness exist?
The case of Objective Happiness Kahneman
Day Reconstruction Method records the prevalence of immediate positive a ect in everyday
experience: participants are instructed to think about the preceding day, break it up into episodes,
and describe each episode
Provides unique information about what people do and how they feel in their everyday lives
—> Happiness is the temporal average of subjective experiences reported in real time over an
extended period
Collect experiences or collect memories?
We experience many beautiful moments, but most of them are not preserved
We may forget about the fabulous moments that we were experiencing when traveling - making
pictures all the time
Our memory collects certain parts of what happened to us and processes them into a story
AANTEKENINGEN 4
, Is the story that we remember afterwards more important because it is near to impossible to relive
those fabulous moments?
Hedonic adaptation and the happiness pie
Hedonic treadmill
- Base level of happiness, adapt to changes in the environment
People tend to return (quite quickly) to their setpoint (stable baseline level) of happiness, both
after positive and negative events. Which is a great advantage in itself.
- Happiness levels tend to return into baseline after a major life event but may change after lasting
changes in circumstances
- Also depends on individual di erences in adaptation and prior levels of happiness
- Hedonic adaptation does not insinuate that e orts to increase happiness are futile
Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Ed Diener
Revision 1: Nonneutral set points : above neutral in well-being
Revision 2: Individual Set Points : individuals di erent levels of well-being / set points
Revision 3: Multiple Set Points : there is not a constant global set point that remains stable
Revision 4: Happiness Can Change : long-term levels of happiness do change for some individuals
—> set point change
Revision 5: Individual di erences in adaptation : individual di erences in adaptation
Happiness pie
- Not applicable at an individual level
- Genetic setpoint (50%), intentional activity (40%), circumstances (10%)
- In a formula: H = S + C + V
- S = genetic Set point
- C = individuals Circumstances
- V = Voluntary factors that are under the individuals control
- V = Intentional activities: a meaningful life
- A happy life results from engaging in intentional activities that one is passionate about
and that contribute to the greater good
- People return to base line happiness levels more rapidly after changes in life
circumstances than after changes in intentional activities
- Positive psycholo y acknowledges the importance of set point and life circumstances but
emphasized that happiness can be actively pursued by addressing the factors that are
under ones control
AANTEKENINGEN 5
Lectures and readings
2023
AANTEKENINGEN 1
, Lecture 1
Negative bias: bad is stronger than good
- Negative events have a bigger impact than positive events:
- Negative information receives more attention and is processed more thoroughly than positive
information
- Evolutionair explanation: humans are attuned to preventing bad things thrive more than toward
maximizing good things
—> Psychological research also had focused more on understanding ‘bad things’ —> 2000: Positive
psycholo y movement was launched.
Government wants us to be happy : Bene ts of a happy population
Diener & Seligman, 2002; Diener et al., 2018; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005)
Happier people…
- Are more productive, healthier and live longer, contribute more to society, have better social
relationships
De nitions of happiness
“A state of well-being and contentment”
“Happiness is a feeling of pleasure and positivity”
“The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense 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 a ective reactions of people to their experiences” (OECD, 2013)
Is happiness an elusive concept?
- Jingle : The very same term refers to di erent underlying conceptions: happiness refers to life
satisfaction, positive a ect, well-being
- Jangle : di erent terms are used to describe the very same underlying conceptions: happiness,
life satisfaction, meaning in life, well-being = ‘happiness’
AANTEKENINGEN 2
,Hedonic / subjective well-being as a composite of 3 related but distinct facets
- Cognitive life evaluation: a re ective assessment on a persons life or some speci c aspect of it:
General satisfaction with life or domain-speci c satisfaction with marriage, work, friendship,
leisure, the weather …
- Positive a ect - a person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with reference to a
particular point in time (momentary): e.g., excited, interested, enthusiastic
- Negative a ect - a person’s feelings or emotional states, typically measured with reference to a
particular point in time (momentary): e.g., nervous, afraid, irritable
Lucas (2018) Subjective wellbeing
that the subject's own evaluation is prioritized, which means that di erent people can evaluate
the same objective life circumstance in di erent ways and can weight di erent life domains
di erently
Eudaimonic well-being
Eudaimonnia: a sense of meaning and purpose in life, or good psychological functioning
Eudaimonic: actualisation of one’s potential by ful lling one’s damion (true self ) = ourishing
- What is the best indicator happiness hedonic is much more used.
Is the Study of Happiness a Worthy Scienti c Pursuit? Norrish
Flow is the state of engagement, optimal happiness and peak experience that occurs when an
individual is absorbed in a demanding and intrinsically motivating challenge.
Well-Being Concepts and Components. Tov
- Hedonistic point of view concerns the maximisation of pleasure and the minimisation of pain
and occurs when pleasurable experiences and sensory grati cations outweigh painful
experiences.
- It has been referred to as hedonic well-being (HWB) and consists of (i) frequent pleasant
feelings, (ii) infrequent unpleasant feelings, and (iii) an overall judgment that life is satisfying.
- A ective well-being (AWB) refers to the experience of pleasant and unpleasant feelings.
- Valence. A basic feature of a ective experience is the degree to which it is pleasant or
unpleasant.
- Cognitive well-being (CWB) is based on an evaluation of how well one’s life is going relative
to an ideal state of a airs.
- Top-down model
AANTEKENINGEN 3
,- Eudaimonic happiness results from the actualisation of individual potential and from ful lling
one’s daimon or true self. This perspective has psychological roots in Maslow’s (1968) concept of
the self-actualising individual and Roger’s (1961) concept of the fully functioning person.
- eudaimonic well-being (EWB). There are certain needs or qualities that are essential for one’s
psychological growth and development; the ful llment of these needs enables a person to
reach their full potential
- Psychological well-being
- Self-determination
- Meaning in life
Measurement of happiness
- Self-report (is subject to biases)
- Even a single item on satisfaction with life (Cantril’s ladder) produces reliable scores
comparable with multiple item scales
- Albeit somewhat lower mean scores than measures with multiple items; multiple items
reduce random error from ambiguity in single items
- Recording behaviors that involve gratitude or acts of kindness
- Note that disciplines di erent from psycholo y determine happiness not by examining
subjective experiences but by mapping conditions that will contribute to happiness
—> Not easy to tell. Happiness is a bias judgement: people estimate their own happiness level by
(too much) focus on one particular issue (typically something they don’t have): an easily observed
and distinctive element.
Does Objective Happiness exist?
The case of Objective Happiness Kahneman
Day Reconstruction Method records the prevalence of immediate positive a ect in everyday
experience: participants are instructed to think about the preceding day, break it up into episodes,
and describe each episode
Provides unique information about what people do and how they feel in their everyday lives
—> Happiness is the temporal average of subjective experiences reported in real time over an
extended period
Collect experiences or collect memories?
We experience many beautiful moments, but most of them are not preserved
We may forget about the fabulous moments that we were experiencing when traveling - making
pictures all the time
Our memory collects certain parts of what happened to us and processes them into a story
AANTEKENINGEN 4
, Is the story that we remember afterwards more important because it is near to impossible to relive
those fabulous moments?
Hedonic adaptation and the happiness pie
Hedonic treadmill
- Base level of happiness, adapt to changes in the environment
People tend to return (quite quickly) to their setpoint (stable baseline level) of happiness, both
after positive and negative events. Which is a great advantage in itself.
- Happiness levels tend to return into baseline after a major life event but may change after lasting
changes in circumstances
- Also depends on individual di erences in adaptation and prior levels of happiness
- Hedonic adaptation does not insinuate that e orts to increase happiness are futile
Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Ed Diener
Revision 1: Nonneutral set points : above neutral in well-being
Revision 2: Individual Set Points : individuals di erent levels of well-being / set points
Revision 3: Multiple Set Points : there is not a constant global set point that remains stable
Revision 4: Happiness Can Change : long-term levels of happiness do change for some individuals
—> set point change
Revision 5: Individual di erences in adaptation : individual di erences in adaptation
Happiness pie
- Not applicable at an individual level
- Genetic setpoint (50%), intentional activity (40%), circumstances (10%)
- In a formula: H = S + C + V
- S = genetic Set point
- C = individuals Circumstances
- V = Voluntary factors that are under the individuals control
- V = Intentional activities: a meaningful life
- A happy life results from engaging in intentional activities that one is passionate about
and that contribute to the greater good
- People return to base line happiness levels more rapidly after changes in life
circumstances than after changes in intentional activities
- Positive psycholo y acknowledges the importance of set point and life circumstances but
emphasized that happiness can be actively pursued by addressing the factors that are
under ones control
AANTEKENINGEN 5
