Happiness

The majority of my research career has been devoted to studying human happiness. Why is the scientific study of happiness important? In short, because most people believe happiness is meaningful, desirable, and an important, worthy goal, because happiness is one of the most salient and significant dimensions of human experience and emotional life, because happiness yields numerous rewards for the individual, and because it makes for a better, healthier, stronger society. Along these lines, my current research addresses three critical questions - 1) What makes people happy?; 2) Is happiness a good thing?; and 3) How and why can people learn to lead happier and more flourishing lives?

Martin Seligman, founder of the Positive Psychology movement, revives the concept that “happiness is an important, if not the most important, aim of human endeavor." He he coined the term positive psychology to describe the scientific study of happiness. He describes happiness as being based on three lives - the pleasurable life, the engaged life and the meaningful life. The better each of these lives is lived, the happier the person will be. 


There is a video about the set point of happiness

Sonja Lyubomirsky continued different projects to advance the happiness-increase interventions of positive psychology that Fordyce started.

Ed Diener, a precursor of Positive Psychology, author of "The Psychology of Happiness," and considered the "leading authority on happiness (?)", provided many scientific findings on well-being, its benefits and optimum levels as well as some causes for it like temperament, money attitudes, spirituality, good health and longevity.

Ruut Veenhoven describes happiness as "the degree in which an individual judges the overall quality of his life-as-a-whole favorably."

Psychologists in general, and positive psychology in particular, define happiness as nothing else that an emotion, a long-term sense of emotional well-being and contentment - a broad "feeling" that one is happy.

Of course there are temporary moods of happiness we all experience from time to time, but “happiness” as found in psychological researches is an overall feeling of satisfaction with life that pervades and abides over longer-time periods. (See: "chronic or habitual emotional level" in Human Emotions)

Happiness has been labeled "the most un-understood phenomenon in the world!" because everybody hopes to achieve it, but it seems no one knows anything about it.

Dr. Michael W. Fordyce working on the Psychology of Happiness have identify 14 fundamentals for happiness as presented in his work "Psychology of Happiness." These  are the following:

1)	Be more active and keep busy	8)	Get present oriented
2)	Spend more time socializing	9)	Work on a healthy personality
3)	Be productive at meaningful work	10)	Develop an ongoing, social personality
4)	Get better organized	11)	Be yourself
5)	Stop worrying	12)	Eliminate negative feelings and problems
6)	Lower your expectations	13)	Close relationships, #1 source of happiness
7)	Develop positive, optimistic thinking	14)	Place happiness as first priority

The Happiness Formula in Positive Psychology.

Dr. Martin Seligman, founder of the Positive Psychology movement, and many other positive psychologists like Dr. Michael Mercer, Dr. Tom Muha and Dr. Maryann Troiani present the following "Happiness Formula" as a scientific basis for understanding and elevating happiness:

                                                  H = S + E + I

H is your enduring level of happiness.

S represents your inherited set range of responsiveness.

E encompasses the external circumstances of your life, like:

·         Working in a wealthy democracy

·         Being married

·         Avoiding negative events and emotions

·         Acquiring a rich social network

·         Being religious/spiritual

·         Having a mentor   

I involves the internal factors under your voluntary control, like:

·         Positive view of the past

·         Optimism about the future

·         Satisfaction regarding the present

·         Commitment to good character

·         Utilization of signature strengths in work, love, play and purpose

·         Contributions to a higher purpose

Why Are Some People Happier Than Others?

I have always been struck by the capacity of some individuals to be remarkably happy, even in the face of stress, trauma, or adversity. Thus, in earlier research efforts had been focused on trying to understand why some people are happier than others and the research approach had been to explore the cognitive and motivational processes that distinguish individuals who show exceptionally high and low levels of happiness. These processes include social comparison (how people compare themselves to peers), dissonance reduction (how people justify both trivial and important choices in their lives), self-evaluation (how people judge themselves), and person perception (how people think about others).

All of these processes, it turns out, have hedonic implications - that is, positive or negative consequences for happiness and self-regard - and thus are relevant to elucidating individual differences in enduring well-being. It empirical findings over the years have revealed that chronically happy and unhappy individuals differ systematically and in a manner supportive of their differing temperaments in the particular cognitive and motivational strategies they use. For example, Students and his lecturer have found that truly happy individuals construe life events and daily situations in ways that seem to maintain their happiness, while unhappy individuals construe experiences in ways that seem to reinforce unhappiness. In essence, in the research shows that happy individuals experience and react to events and circumstances in relatively more positive and more adaptive ways. For example, we found that happy individuals are relatively more likely than their less happy peers to "endow" positive memories (i.e., store them in their emotional "bank accounts") but to "contrast" negative memories (i.e., "life is so much better now").

Other research in laboratory are exploring additional cognitive and motivational processes that support the differing worlds of enduring happiness versus chronic unhappiness. For example, several investigations have revealed that unhappy individuals are more likely than happy ones to dwell on negative or ambiguous events. Such "dwelling" or rumination may drain cognitive resources and thus bring to bear a variety of negative consequences, which could further reinforce unhappiness. These findings demonstrate some of the maladaptive by-products of self-reflection, suggesting that not only is the "unexamined life" worth living, but it is potentially full of happiness and joy.

To cast our work on happiness in a broader framework, we have also been exploring the meaning, expression, and pursuit of happiness across cultures, subcultures, and age groups. We are currently carrying out happiness-increasing interventions among Japanese technical workers, Korean undergraduates, Spanish professionals, Australian blue collar workers, and Canadian elementary school students, and British teens.

What Are the Benefits of Happiness?

A recent interest has steered me from the search of the roots of happiness to an examination of its consequences. Is happiness a good thing? Or, does it just simply feel good? A recent review of all the available literature has revealed that happiness does indeed have numerous positive byproducts, which appear to benefit not only individuals, but families, communities, and the society at large. The benefits of happiness include higher income and superior work outcomes (e.g., greater productivity and higher quality of work), larger social rewards (e.g., more satisfying and longer marriages, more friends, stronger social support, and richer social interactions), more activity, energy, and flow, and better physical health (e.g., a bolstered immune system, lowered stress levels, and less pain) and even longer life. The literature, my colleagues and I have found, also suggests that happy individuals are more creative, helpful, charitable, and self-confident, have better self-control, and show greater self-regulatory and coping abilities. On-going and future experimental and longitudinal studies that attempt to increase the long-term happiness of students and working adults will give us the opportunity to assess whether increases in durable happiness predict changes in other positive outcomes, such as altruistic behavior, creativity, work performance, physical health, and social relationships. We are investigating whether both happiness and generosity propagate across social networks, and whether happiness is associated with more physical movement and greater social interactions.

The Architecture of Sustainable Happiness

An ongoing program of research Lyubomirsky and collaborator Ken Sheldon is asking the question, "How can happiness be reliably increased?" Despite pessimism from the current literature that the pursuit of happiness may be largely futile, his colleagues and he believe that durable increases in happiness are indeed possible and within the average person's reach. Thus, following my construal theory of happiness, he is exploring how the cognitive and motivational processes and biases associated with relatively greater happiness can be nurtured, acquired, or directly taught. To this end, his current research is investigating the mechanisms by which a chronic happiness level higher than one's genetically-determined set point can be achieved and sustained. his colleagues and he believe that sustainable increases in happiness are possible through the practice of intentional cognitive, motivational, and behavioral activities that are feasible to deploy but require daily and concerted effort and commitment.

We are presently conducting multiple experimental intervention studies in which participants' cognitive and behavioral strategies are systematically retrained. For example, intervention studies with students, community members, workers, depressed individuals, and hospital patients are testing the efficacy of six cognitive and behavioral volitional strategies: 1) regularly setting aside time to recall moments of gratitude (i.e., keeping a journal in which one "counts one's blessings" or writing a gratitude letter), 2) engaging in self-regulatory and positive thinking about oneself (i.e., reflecting, writing, and talking about one's happiest and unhappiest life events or one's goals for the future), 3) practicing altruism and kindness (i.e., routinely committing acts of kindness), 4) pursuing significant, intrinsic life goals (e.g., listing and taking action on "baby steps" towards goals), 5) savoring positive experiences (e.g., using one's five senses to relish daily moments), and 6) practing one's signature strengths in new ways. Most important, we are testing whether the benefits of such activities differ across cultures (see above), and whether they are influenced by such factors as person-activity "fit," motivation, persistence, social support, social comparison, face-to-face delivery, variety, timing, and expectations. We are also examining the "why" of happiness-boosting interventions by testing the mediating role of positive experiences, need satisfaction, flow, intrinsic motivation, and positive thoughts. Finally, our newest and forthcoming projects involve investigating genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in responses to happiness-increasing interventions, as well as imaging changes in the brain that occur before and after such interventions.

Source : C.Compton, William. 2005. An Introduction to Positive Psychology. USA : Thomson Learning.