The Science of Happiness - I have summarised it all here.

MonkeyBalls

...at least to the best of my knowledge. So, I'm interested generally in psychology (though I study anthropology), and I decided it would be interesting to see if the latest science on happiness provides any interesting insights. So, I've listened to lectures from Yale and TED talks, read books on it, and wrote a blog post that summarises the results from the science of happiness all as best I could. I want to add in as much as possible, without overloading it too much.

So if you're interested, check it out and let me know (in the comments if you wish) if you think I've missed anything important, and I'll add it in. My tone is cold and scientific and harsh, (but I'm friendly and open to criticism!), I want to get to the hard reductionistic truths and not fuzzy Oprah-esque kinds of stuff.

http://apesinelysium.blogspot.com/2011/03/fuzzy-science-of-happiness.html

Best to just read the bullet points - skip the rest, which veers away from the sturdy evidence into opinion

hotspur

Hey, I'm very interested in positive psychology, which positive psychology books did you read?

MonkeyBalls

hotspur wrote: »

Hey, I'm very interested in positive psychology, which positive psychology books did you read?

Hey Hotspur. Lemme see, from memory, I'll include not just the books:
I read UCLA biologist Jay Phelan's book Mean Genes which gives insights from evolutionary biology on what makes us happy (amongst other things). I watched a couple of TED lectures on the topic, such as one by Steven Pinker's ex-wife (whose name escapes me at the moment). I've read some work by Daniel Goleman on happiness, and Martin Seligman (though I'm not hugely impressed with Seligman tbh, though there is some great stuff to gleam from him), I read Paul Bloom's books (which include some stuff on happiness), Pinker and Kanazawa (the latter is mildly insane but interesting).

What else. Believe it or not I think Eckhart Tolle has some valuable stuff in this area. Jonathan Haidt has a book on happiness, though I haven't read the whole thing I'm pretty sure I got the gist of it.


In my blog post, I've tried to nail down the main points, in no-bull$hit bullet-point form. If you have any thoughts, please go leave a comment, and I'll add it in.

Most of my blog is just me amusing myself when I'm bored, but I put some effort into the happiness post, and might as well try to share it.

Cannibal Ox

You say at one stage that evolution is indifferent if you're happy. I think in a sense that's wrong, and I think you come to that statement because of the way you're approaching the problem of happiness. If we believe/think that human beings are in part driven by unconscious drives or instincts, and we argue that these drives or instincts are in part the product of evolution, then happiness, and the obsession with happiness, has to be fundamental to our evolutionary process and our psychological development both as individuals and as societies.

Let me put it another way. To me, the interesting thing about happiness is not what is it and what causes it, but that human beings have been and continue to be obsessed with it for centuries. Loose examples! Aristotle placed it at the center of his ethics, Christian theologians place the division between earthly (false) happiness and spiritual bliss at the heart of their debates, and the Utilitarians construct an entire political system around happiness. In other words, happiness has been at the heart of human society for centuries. The question then, I think, isn't what is it, but why is it, and the attainment of it, so valuable to human beings.

So instead of trying to define what happiness is and drawing up a set of causes and/or consequences, I think it'd more interesting to look at how human beings have considered happiness at different stages valuable, how they have defined it and what function happiness has played in their societies and on an individual level. By doing that, you'd start to look at what happiness means as a psychological drive or instinct for human beings. I think you'd find that happiness is fundamental to evolution in that case because it is such an overwhelming drive of individuals and society. Instead, what I think that you end up with a set of propositions and scientific statements that isn't so much a science of happiness as an ethics.

MonkeyBalls

Cannibal Ox wrote: »

You say at one stage that evolution is indifferent if you're happy. I think in a sense that's wrong, and I think you come to that statement because of the way you're approaching the problem of happiness. If we believe/think that human beings are in part driven by unconscious drives or instincts, and we argue that these drives or instincts are in part the product of evolution, then happiness, and the obsession with happiness, has to be fundamental to our evolutionary process and our psychological development both as individuals and as societies.

Let me put it another way. To me, the interesting thing about happiness is not what is it and what causes it, but that human beings have been and continue to be obsessed with it for centuries. Loose examples! Aristotle placed it at the center of his ethics, Christian theologians place the division between earthly (false) happiness and spiritual bliss at the heart of their debates, and the Utilitarians construct an entire political system around happiness. In other words, happiness has been at the heart of human society for centuries. The question then, I think, isn't what is it, but why is it, and the attainment of it, so valuable to human beings.

So instead of trying to define what happiness is and drawing up a set of causes and/or consequences, I think it'd more interesting to look at how human beings have considered happiness at different stages valuable, how they have defined it and what function happiness has played in their societies and on an individual level. By doing that, you'd start to look at what happiness means as a psychological drive or instinct for human beings. I think you'd find that happiness is fundamental to evolution in that case because it is such an overwhelming drive of individuals and society. Instead, what I think that you end up with a set of propositions and scientific statements that isn't so much a science of happiness as an ethics.

Excellent, intelligent input, really like it. I have a reply to that but I've gotta head off for the day. In a nutshell: for sure, I'm not denying that evolution is inherently connected to our drives for happiness; in fact, I think the desire for happiness stems entirely from natural selection, but my point is that evolution isn't teleological, i.e. it doesn't give a damn how happy you are - it only cares about replicating DNA (to simply), and happiness happens to overlap with that evolutionary imperative. I'll be back later - if you wish you could you post that on the blog when you get a chance, and I'll hit you back with a reply later (perhaps tomorrow at the latest).

hotspur

Cannibal Ox wrote: »

Let me put it another way. To me, the interesting thing about happiness is not what is it and what causes it, but that human beings have been and continue to be obsessed with it for centuries. Loose examples! Aristotle placed it at the center of his ethics, Christian theologians place the division between earthly (false) happiness and spiritual bliss at the heart of their debates, and the Utilitarians construct an entire political system around happiness. In other words, happiness has been at the heart of human society for centuries. The question then, I think, isn't what is it, but why is it, and the attainment of it, so valuable to human beings.

I think the questions of definition, delineation, and discovery of routes to it is of paramount importance. We may have been talking about eudemonia, well being, flourishing, happiness in one form or another for millennia, but it is only in the very recent few years that we have taken a scientific approach to it. What it is is still a very current issue as can be seen even in the shift of language in the dozen or so years of the positive psychology field from happiness towards well being and flourishing - to illustrate Marty Seligman's 2002 general book on it was called Authentic Happiness, his eagerly awaited new book out next week is called Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being.

His new model has the acronym PERMA for what is included: Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment / Achievement. I think all of the research and applied protocols in the area are fascinating. I can't agree that the question should not be what is it. Not that I'm saying that the question of its central importance is not a valuable and interesting question too, but I think you are confounding what you are interested in with what others (especially the scientific community) ought to be interested in.

The descriptive science of positive psychology is an excellent thing, and a long overdue remediation of the utter empirical failure of humanistic psychology that condemned us to decades of Tony Robbins and the like.

You might come from a comparative culture, history, or critical theory background of some sorts, but for scientists the past cultural understandings of a concept are mainly of historical academic interest rather than speaking to what is understandable about the phenomenon in the present and how that knowledge can be usefully applied. How could what some society thought about happiness as a global concept in the middle ages be more useful than what we are currently engaged in? I think the current findings from Ed Diener and the Gallop surveys are more important than the total history of it up to that point.

You sound like you may be interested in this paper:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=12cf06e2370b0eef&mt=application/pdf&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui%3D2%26ik%3D325069d3af%26view%3Datt%26th%3D12cf06e2370b0eef%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dattd%26zw&sig=AHIEtbTC4d6IvNJU4-kRAoUu-GgKzfjVLA&pli=1

As for recommendations of anyone wants to find out more about the field. Seligman's work is a great place to start (Authentic Happiness, Learned Optimism, and I assume his new book). If you can torrent download Tal Ben Shahar's Harvard lecture series on positive psychology you won't regret watching it, it's amazing. Csikszentmihalyi on flow. Fredrickson on the broaden and build theory - her book:
Positivity: Discover the Groundbreaking Science to Release Your Inner Optimist and Thrive (speaking of her theory read this excellent paper on upward spirals: http://www.unc.edu/peplab/publications/upward_spirals_CPR_inpress.pdf). Lyubomirsky, her book The How of Happiness: A Practical Guide to Getting The Life You Want.

For more academic:
Designing Positive Psychology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward by Sheldon, Kashdan, Steger
Positive Psychology: The Scientific and Practical Explorations of Human Strengths by Snyder, Lopez, Pedrotti
Alan Carr has a 2nd edition of his Positive Psychology book coming out in June.
A Primer in Positive Psychology by Christopher Peterson
Positive Psychology in Practice by Linley and Joseph

And too many others, the area really has exploded in terms of publications over the last while. I find it a great area and a welcome respite from reading deficit model material all the time on depression, anxiety, personality disorders, psychosis etc. I hope to be able to do the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology in London soon enough. But flying to another country to catch lectures seems like a very pre-recession idea

Waking-Dreams

Good read that.

Ironically, it’s because of our hardwired instant gratification instinct that allows all these self-help gurus and motivational speakers to peddle the aforementioned new age dross to the masses.

‘Kluge’ by Gary Marcus is a great read if you haven’t come across it before.

MonkeyBalls wrote: »

I've read some work by Daniel Goleman on happiness.

Is that Daniel Gilbert (author of Stumbling on Happiness) you mean or the psychologist Daniel Goleman, who has also written books (Emotional Intelligence, etc.)?

Cannibal Ox

@hotspur,

(I'm going to be a little loose with some of the words and concepts I use, because I'm doing this off the top of my head and if I say something like change, adapt or evolve, it's because I'm not sure which is appropriate yet!)

One of my reasons for asking what a society two hundred or a thousand years ago thought of happiness is that by doing so, I think you'd be able to show that happiness cannot be disentangled from society, or that how human beings feel and how they understand those feelings is continually changing/adapting/evolving and the need for understanding particular feelings is linked to that understanding. And that includes the present as much as the past. Which sounds like your traditional sociological approach, but to be clear, that wouldn't be to say happiness is solely a cultural or social phenomenon.

Rather, it'd be to say that the value we place on happiness is linked to our psychology, that our psychology is linked to our present circumstances, and that how we understand and feel happiness is always developing (or evolving). In other words, you could start to show how human beings emotions, values, needs change over time, what they react to, what they cause and how they are understood. Admittedly, it isn't something that you could prove in any scientific sense at the moment, but you could start to develop a method of enquiry that, in a hundred or two hundred years time, could be used to look back over what we know now and what we will know, and produce something more...er...acceptable to a scientific conference.

For the present, I think that kind of approach could inform a study that asks what is it now, what causes it, because it places it within changes in human thought and action. The danger, as I see it, is that you assume that what happiness is now, and what causes it, has always been and always will be what happiness is. That even if you hold that human beings develop, change, or evolve, you make the mistake of presuming the phenomena you are investigating are distinct from that process. The truth, and I'm not disputing that point, of what happiness is now for particular people, might get confused with the truth of what happiness has been, and most, most, most importantly, will be, for other people.

I can understand how a scientist would shy away from that kind of approach. If for nothing else then that the only methods I can think of to do that kind of study aren't scientific. But equally, I can understand how a historian, or a sociologist, would shy away from a scientists study of happiness. But I think there has to be some kind of middle ground here. Even if in some way the scientist turns to the sociologist, and the sociologist turns to the scientist, and they try to disassociate the other from their results. To put it another way, when it comes down to it, I'd rather sit and talk with a positivist psychologist about happiness then I would a cultural theorist because I think it'd be far, far more productive for myself at least.

There's more I could write, didn't really go into the point about asking about the importance of the value of happiness for human beings, I probably showed some stunning ignorance at the odd point, and I think there's a fair bit going on in the background. Definitely a difference of how you approach a problem, what question you ask and how legitimate the methods you use are, but I think these are the sort of things that'll be solved before happiness is.

DaWozzMan

I have to say the blog post had a lot of useful information but I found one piece of advice to be counter-productive. I tried this bit:

Bad moods are largely influenced by the fickle whim of neurochemistry, but you can take steps to recognise them and snap out of them. If a ****ty mood or thought floats into the ether of your mind, cut it off. Blank it. Think of something else. Don't indulge it. Life is too short to dwell on unproductive useless negative ****.

To be honest I tried it when the bad mood had taken hold. I guess I would have to recognise it as it arose to make use of this.

What I found much more useful was examining the sources of the bad mood and what my emotions were saying to me generally/what issues were involved. Couldn't get any good sleep till I did this.

MonkeyBalls

Quality reply from hotspur. I want to respond properly later when I get a chance.

@DaWozzMan, you've astutely pointed out the weakest point on the list - it wasn't explained well, and it's hard to do.

If I were to briefly rephrase it, I would say that it's often counterproductive to indulge every thought that floats into your head. A little cognitive dissonance reduction is required for sanity.
If we were brutally honest with ourselves and about the existence of pain and suffering in the world, we would literally be debilitated with depression. A little selective emotional filtering goes a long way. For example, if someone close to you is a constant source of anguish to you (e.g. a depressed friend/sibling), and they're very needy and unconsciously pour their misery and negativity into you, it's best for your own sanity - and not selfish - to maintain healthy boundaries. Likewise, if you're in a great mood, it doesn't take much to become miserable - the world is objectively full of it, you just have to tune into the news. And this frequency of negativity just destroys your mood and sense of calm if you let it. (Of course, I don't mean bury your head in the sand, lest anyone misunderstand me).

I risk sounding all Dr Phil-y about this, but I'm just trying to paraphrase what I've read before.

MonkeyBalls

Waking-Dreams wrote: »

Is that Daniel Gilbert (author of Stumbling on Happiness) you mean or the psychologist Daniel Goleman, who has also written books (Emotional Intelligence, etc.)?

Yeah, my bad - a typo. I have both those guys' books and every now and then I still mix their names up.

Waking-Dreams

Ah, for a moment I was kinda hoping that Goleman had written a new book/paper or something on happiness. I like his style.

psycjay

I'm going to be the bad guy here and point out that there aren't enough references to the source material to call this scientific. Upon reading the article, how does the reader know what has been studied and what is just speculation? I know positive psychology is much softer then other areas of psychology, but you did have sources so it would be good to refer to them to give your article more weight and clarity.

MonkeyBalls

psycjay wrote: »

I'm going to be the bad guy here and point out that there aren't enough references to the source material to call this scientific. Upon reading the article, how does the reader know what has been studied and what is just speculation? I know positive psychology is much softer then other areas of psychology, but you did have sources so it would be good to refer to them to give your article more weight and clarity.

You're 100% correct. I should have referenced each point, and I've been meaning to do that. So, I'll get to it later.

psycjay

Cool, cas it would be very useful for exam purposes as I have just started reading about positive psyc myself

Although, it must have felt good not having to reference evey point you made. I long for that day, I really do!

hotspur

psycjay wrote: »

Cool, cas it would be very useful for exam purposes as I have just started reading about positive psyc myself

Although, it must have felt good not having to reference evey point you made. I long for that day, I really do!

Do you have positive psychology as a subject? If so can I ask who is your lecturer?

Valmont

I don't like Kanazawa; he has authored some truly diabolical research papers. I recall reading one a while back outlining how liberals are of a higher intelligence than conservatives.

Excellent blog post by the way, I enjoyed it.

hotspur

Valmont wrote: »

I don't like Kanazawa; he has authored some truly diabolical research papers. I recall reading one a while back outlining how liberals are of a higher intelligence than conservatives.

I agree that Kanazawa's evolutionary speculations in respect of novelty are pretty sketchy, but my understanding of the research on the issue is that conservatism is clearly negatively correlated with intelligence.

psycjay

hotspur wrote: »

Do you have positive psychology as a subject? If so can I ask who is your lecturer?

No, it's just one part of a social psychology module we do in final year in NUIM. We also have a general exam, where questions relating to happiness tend to pop up, which is why I'm interested myself.

The lecturer is Dr Brian Roche, one of my fav lecturers in the college, if you can keep up with him!

Valmont

hotspur wrote: »

but my understanding of the research on the issue is that conservatism is clearly negatively correlated with intelligence.

http://ironshrink.com/2010/04/are-liberals-more-intelligent-than-conservatives-another-broken-study-says-it-is-so/

This is a critique of Kanazawa's 2010 paper and it is much better than my own issues with the subject. I cottoned on to Kanazawa using an incredibly reductive measure of intelligence in his study but the article above goes into much more detail. If you have time to read it I would like to hear what you think, I can't see such studies as being anything other than ideologically motivated attacks on one's perceived political opponents.

Also, Kanazawa's study is the only one I'm aware of at the moment.

krd

DaWozzMan wrote: »

I have to say the blog post had a lot of useful information but I found one piece of advice to be counter-productive. I tried this bit:

Bad moods are largely influenced by the fickle whim of neurochemistry, but you can take steps to recognise them and snap out of them. If a ****ty mood or thought floats into the ether of your mind, cut it off. Blank it. Think of something else. Don't indulge it. Life is too short to dwell on unproductive useless negative ****.

That is, in my opinion, a very wrong and very solipsistic take on the world.

All thoughts can be reduced to neurochemistry and electrical activity in the brain. This does not mean they are just chemical reactions or electrical noises. The idea that the problem exists only in the brain, or in the perception of objective reality and not in objective reality itself is very wrong.

On philosophical level it explains nothing. Or leads to a dangerous dead end.

Bad moods and negative thoughts are essential if our external environment is bad and negative, and we need a motivation to change the external world. Putting negative thoughts out of your head can be simply put as brushing the problem under the carpet.

Solipsistic happiness is simply to block out negative aspects of objective reality - instead of making a effort to change them or have a dialogue with reality. A best it's social freeloading, at worst it's complicity in social injustice by turning a blind eye. And at the very worst, it is engaging in acts of extreme injustice - and denying that engagement. It's the concentration camp guard, with a smile on his face, whistling a happy tune, and repeating over and over again in their head, "I'm not here, this is not happening, I'm not doing any of this".

Happiness is not something that can exist in itself by itself. There are other factors that are essential: Justice, absence of fear and suffering, as well as pleasures and gratifications. Attempting to short circuit the brain when faced with real world problems, is as good a piece of advice as being advised to take heroin for all of lives little problems. A drug free inebriation.

To be honest I tried it when the bad mood had taken hold. I guess I would have to recognise it as it arose to make use of this.

It's Orwellian Doublethink. You need to practice it.

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

What I found much more useful was examining the sources of the bad mood and what my emotions were saying to me generally/what issues were involved. Couldn't get any good sleep till I did this.

Makes a lot more sense than smiling like an idiot and clapping your hands.

Life is complicated. The world is complicated.

matamoros1965

For me, the first thing that should be considered where mood is concerned is physiology. Diet, physical fitness and rest amongst others should be adjusted for first before gauging a person's self report of happiness.

Ask a person walking out of a gym after a workout about their mood or a person sitting at home tired after a killer day at work about their happiness. There of course, will be some difference.

It's my belief that if there was an increase in physical activity amongst our fellow citizens then the benefits would be seen not only in the figures of self reported happiness but also in many other metrics.

Secondly, I feel that some knowledge of certain Philosophies would help to alleviate some of the strain that people feel on a daily basis. By this I mean, practising meditation and considering the Buddhist concept of ' grasping ', basically the torment of things stressing us because they aren't working as we hoped or would like. I am not a Buddhist myself but have found some comfort in the above ideas. The Stoics have something to say on this subject which can be useful.

I realise that these elements will help the fairly normal person and not the individual with more serious issues which need attention from healthcare professionals.