Lecture notes Science of Happiness

Science of happiness
LECTURES


Lecture 1 – Why happiness deserves scientific interest......................................................1
Lecture 2 – The psychology of happiness: Theories of well-being.......................................4
Lecture 3 – Very happy people: Striving for greater happiness...........................................7
Lecture 4 – Does saving the planet make you happy?......................................................11
Lecture 5 – Is improving happiness a task of government?..............................................16
Lecture 6 – Philosophy and happiness..............................................................................20
Lecture 7 – Happiness & Social connectedness................................................................24
Lecture 8 – Can money buy happiness?............................................................................27


Lecture 1 – Why happiness deserves scientifi c interest
Bad is stronger than good: negativity bias. Negative events have a bigger impact than
positive events:
- People are more distressed by the loss of $50 than they are made happy by
finding $50
- Negative information receives more attention and is processed more thoroughly
than positive information
Evolutionary explanation
Humas are attuned to preventing pad things towards maximizing good things:
- A person who ignores danger may not live to see the next day
Evolution doesn’t want to be happy or satisfied. We’re supposed to survive and reproduce
“A huge happiness and positive thinking industry has helped to create the fantasy that
happiness is a realistic goal. Chasing the happiness dream is a very American concept,
exported to the rest of the world through popular culture. Unfortunately, this has helped
to create an expectation that real life stubbornly refuses to deliver.”
The government wants us to be happy
Benefits of a happy population
- More productive
- Healthier and live longer
- Contribute more to society
- Better social relationships
World happiness reports
Published annually since 2012 by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network,
based on data from the Gallup World Poll.
In 2011, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 65/309Happiness: Towards a
Holistic Definition of Development inviting member countries to use data on the
population’s well-being to guide public policy
In 2012, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/281, proclaiming 20 March as
International Day of Happiness to highlight the importance of well-being as an aspiration
for people all around the world



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,“Our success as countries should be judged by the happiness of our people. This means
that national happiness can now become an operational objective for governments”
Does happiness deserve scientific interest?
Chemist Ashutosh Joglekar
- Happiness research is a great example of why psychology isn’t a science. The
meaning of that world differs from person to person and especially between
cultures. Psychologists can’t use a ruler or a microscope, so they invent an
arbitrary scale.
Science of happiness is a recent phenomenon
- Ed Diener  Dr Happiness
o 400 publications on subjective Well-Being
- Martin Seligman  positive psychology
- Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi  Flow
- Barbare Frederikson  Broaden & Build
- Ruud Veenhoven  Dutch professor of happiness
Science of happiness focuses on the subjective experience of happiness, its antecedents
and consequences.
Science of happiness is a multidisciplinary effort
- Psychology is the main discipline in the science of happiness
- Other disciplines are also involved: neuroscience, philosophy, economics, politics
Definitions of happiness
Different types of definitions:
- “a state of well-being and contentment” (Merriam-Webster, 2018)
- “The experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a
sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile” (Lyubomirsky ,2008)
- “Good mental states, including all of the various evaluations, positive and
negative, that people make of their lives and the affective reactions of people to
their experiences” (OECD, 2013)
Study that asks people what they believe is happiness. Result: inner harmony that
satisfaction or positive affect.
Jingle-Jangle
Jingle  the very same term refers to different underlying conceptions: happiness refers
to life satisfaction, positive affect, well-being
Jangle  Different terms are used to describe the very same underlying conceptions:
happiness, life satisfaction, meaning in life, wellbeing = happiness
Hedonic/Subjective Well-being
Composite of three related but distinct facets
- Life Satisfaction (‘cognitive evaluation)  a reflective assessment on a person’s
life or some specific aspect of it: general satisfaction with life or domain-specific
satisfaction with marriage, work, friendship, leisure, the weather …
- Positive Affect  a person’s feelings or emotional states, measured with reference
to a particular point in time (momentary): e.g., excited, interested, enthusiastic
- Negative Affect  a person’s feelings or emotional states, measured with
reference to a particular point in time (momentary): e.g., nervous, afraid, irritable
General but untested idea: affect drives life satisfaction (rather than the other way
around)
Eudaimonic well-being


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, Eudaimonia  a sense of meaning and purpose in life, or good psychological functioning
Eudaimonic = actualization of one’s potential by fulfilling one’s daimon (true self) ≈
flourishing
More like having a meaning in life
Consensus en controversy between HWB en EWB
Consensus: two main approaches
- Hedonic/subjective well-being = a pleasant life (Satisfaction with Life / Presence of
momentary positive affect / Absence of negative affect)
- Eudaimonic: Purpose and Meaning in Life
Controversy
What is the best indicator of ‘happiness’: hedonic or eudaimonic measures? But note that
in policy making focus lies on hedonic/subjective well-being
If and how do people account for their living conditions (financial and immaterial) when
reporting on happiness?
Measurement of happiness
In generally, we ask people to self-report on how happy they are.
Alternative measures of happiness
- Duchenne smiling with your eyes as a genuine indicator of positive affect
(unfakeable): Genuine smiles in college yearbook pictures predicted marital
satisfaction decades later
- Real-time recording of feelings of happiness (‘objective happiness’ in the moment)
– Lecture 2
Note that disciplines different from psychology determine happiness not by examining
subjective experiences but by mapping conditions that will contribute to happiness
Focus on self-report
- Despite the disadvantages of self-report (social desirability, problems associated
with introspection),
- People can report on their feelings in metrics (different from what Joglekar
assumes)
- After all, happiness is about subjective well-being - so why not ask people
themselves?
- Even a single item on satisfaction with life (Cantrill’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
Most used measures
- Positive and negative affect scale
- Satisfaction with life scale
o General or domain specific
o Domain specific evaluations are strongly
correlated and possibly influenced by
common factors
o Overall satisfaction with life drives specific elements of domain satisfaction
– suggesting a top down rather than a bottom-up mechanism
- Psychological well-being scale
- Subjective happiness scale
How do different scales compare
- Satisfaction with Life and Net Affect .38


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