What Research Shows Happiness Is

There is a lot of philosophical debate about what it really means to be happy, but if you’re looking for specific answers, it may leave you alone. Here’s what scientific research says about happiness and, more importantly, what it isn’t.

We all know what it feels like to be happy, but the actual source of our happiness has always been difficult to pinpoint. Can we be happier? If so, how? As Darrin M. McMahon, Ph.D., professor of history at Florida State University, explains , ancient people actually saw happiness as a sign of good luck:

It is an amazing fact that in all Indo-European languages ​​without exception, starting with ancient Greek, the word “happiness” is related to the word “luck” … What does this linguistic model suggest? For so many ancient peoples – and for many others much later – happiness was not something that could be controlled.

This kind of thinking is actually still quite common today. Many people believe that happiness means that you are lucky, your life is blessed, or that you are just one lucky son of a gun. We know that good luck can be brought , but positive psychology , combined with other scientific fields such as neuroscience , has made significant progress in figuring out what causes happiness , and that we have some control over it.

How we measure and study happiness

As abstract as the concept of happiness is, it is studied in the same way as any other scientific concept: with the help of a wide variety of experiments. Daher Keltner, Ph.D. and professor of psychology at the University of California , Berkeley , explains in his online course The Science of Happiness (which is free to take) that there are four main types of happiness research:

• Observation and sampling of experience: Capturing people in their moments of daily life. “What happiness do you feel when you wash the dishes, when at work, etc.”
• Cross-sectional / Correlation Studies: Studies in which people answer a series of questions about how they are feeling at a given point in time.
• Longitudinal Research: When people’s lives are studied over time to find the trajectory of a happy life.
• Experimental Research: Experiments to establish causal relationships between happiness and external sources.

This is great, but how do you actually measure happiness? The answer is surprisingly simple (and imperfect): self-worth. Typically, these studies ask questions such as “How satisfied are you with your life?” and “What positive and negative emotions do you experience on a daily basis?” There are no energy outputs to measure, or happiness to be quantified by the midichlorians in your bloodstream. They simply use surveys to ask research participants if they are happy at a particular point in time.

This may sound pointless, but this is the best we have. The only person who can tell if you are happy or not is you . This means that you are the most reliable tool for measuring your own level of happiness (at least for now). These self-reports can be compiled as a one-off survey, during a sample of experiences (randomly polling participants on their phones with the questions “what are you doing?” And “how happy are you now?”), Or sometimes reported by others using behavioral indicators (especially useful for the study of infants and children).

However, self-esteem is far from perfect. After all, feeling “happy” can mean several different things. This is why the Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D. , has developed “four levels of analysis of feelings.” With regard to happiness, it can be broken down into four conceptual areas to clarify what kind of happiness is being investigated. For instance:

1. Well-being: “Overall, my life is going well.”
2. Personality Traits: “I am a passionate and positive person.”
3. Emotions: “I feel gratitude and appreciation.”
4. Feelings: “Nice to sit in this hot bath.”

All four of these things are to some extent synonymous with happiness, and this allows study participants to more carefully determine what kind of happiness they are experiencing (or which is lacking). Typically, researchers use these methods most often to study someone’s overall life satisfaction and well-being, but to get a good idea of ​​someone’s happiness, all conceptual areas need to be considered. For example, knowing that someone with high life satisfaction also regularly feels grateful and spends time in the hot tub can be helpful in identifying correlations and, perhaps somewhere in the future, causal relationships.

To make it easier for researchers to measure happiness, Edward F. Diener, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , developed an index called subjective well-being . This allows psychologists to more accurately define your happiness as a combination of life satisfaction and the relative frequency of positive and negative emotions through a variety of self-report methods. There are two parts:

• Life Satisfaction Scale : This is a five-part questionnaire that quantifies your overall life satisfaction. If you’re interested, you can try it in the app at this link .
• Graph of positive influences and negative influences: PANAS is, again, a self-written questionnaire that asks what emotions you are experiencing at a given time. You can try one of them at this link .

The combination of these two factors makes up your subjective well-being. Your “happiness level” at any given time is equal to your Life Satisfaction score plus your PANAS score. Of course, your happiness fluctuates, so your score only measures how happy you are at the moment. You can fill out the questionnaires several times to get a higher average score for days or months. By knowing how science explores happiness, you can begin to paint a picture of how psychological science actually defines it (and how you can use that to help yourself become happier).

However, as you discuss this, be aware that there has been some controversy lately in the field of psychological research. A recent large-scale study known as the Reproducibility Project and published in full in Science has shown that very few psychological studies can be replicated with similar results. Of course, The New York Times notes that the focus of this study was on research conducted in the areas of learning, memory, and cognition, rather than research on happiness or other areas of positive psychology. It’s always good to remember that whatever research suggests, the results are never set in stone.

What Research Says Happiness Is n’t

Perhaps the best way for science to try to define happiness, or anything for that matter, is through a process of elimination. If you know what happiness is, you can at least narrow down the questions of what happiness is. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., scientific director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, explains that there are some ground rules that research has defined over the years. Bottom line? There is no happiness:

• Meeting all your personal needs
• Always happy with life
• Constant pleasure
• I never feel negative

Surprised? If so, your definition of happiness may be skewed slightly in the wrong direction. The University of California Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center has found through its research that true happiness has more to do with overall peace of mind and a focus on the common good . Happiness is not about wanting more, always feeling “good,” or even being satisfied with every aspect of your life. Hedonism , or the pursuit of pleasure and indulgence, has been proven to bring temporary bouts of happiness, but as Kahneman’s study explains, it is ineffective in maintaining overall happiness over time .

A particularly important part of the happiness equation is the negative feelings you may be experiencing right now. As good as it sounds, happiness is not the absence of negative feelings . As Dr. Vanessa Buote, Ph.D. student in social psychology , explains , true happiness is a combination of good and bad:

One of the misconceptions about happiness is that happiness is about being cheerful, joyful, and content all the time; always with a smile on his face. This is not true – being happy and living a rich life means combining good with bad and learning to rethink the bad.

You can experience negative feelings and general happiness in your life at the same time. In fact, in order to become a happier person, you need to learn how to do it.

Limitations of the pursuit of happiness

So we know how science defines happiness, but that’s only the first half of the equation. The more important question is: can you be happier? The short answer is yes, but with the exception of prescription drugs designed to correct chemical imbalances, there is no magic pill for that. It takes some effort, but even then there are some limitations.

First, you probably have a genetically defined range of happiness. This means that, as Sonia Lubomirsky, Ph.D. at UC Riverside, explains, inherited genes may be what keeps you in your current or “chronic” state of happiness. If you come from a long family of melancholic people, you might just be melancholic. Your genes can also set a maximum limit on how happy you can ever be. Basically, your happiness is part of your personality, part of who you are.According to Lubomirsky , longitudinal studies have shown that people’s happiness remains fairly stable throughout their lives, so nothing can turn you from an unhappy person to the happiest person in the world.

Second, you may place unnecessary constraints on yourself by trying too hard to be happy. Lanna I. Catalino, Ph.D. from the University of California, San Francisco, suggests that over-pursuing happiness can backfire. Catalino warns that you should avoid extremes about your happiness. Do not set yourself unrealistic goals and do not try to experience only positive emotions all the time. You are guaranteed to lose, which, ironically, will lead to unhappiness. Michael Bennett, psychiatrist and co-author of F * ck Feelings , notes the importance of staying on earth in the pursuit of happiness:

The important thing is not what therapy you follow, but that you stick to common sense, and whichever therapy or treatments you choose, you constantly ask yourself, have I reached my limit? It got me this far, how am I going to get it? So that you don’t get stuck with questions like “if I did it better”, “if I did it longer” or “did I find a better therapist”. And even more: “Has this achieved what I am going to do, and what should I do now?”

Remember, you have a limit that you cannot control. Don’t berate yourself for this, you just remain yourself. Rather than trying to force yourself to be happy, Catalino advises to simply reflect on the moments and activities that bring you joy. So stop trying so hard.

Common Factors of Happiest People

In truth, true happiness and contentment are not the same thing. It is the culmination of genetics, feelings, personality, emotions, and other life variables and circumstances. The dirty little secret to happiness is that researchers are still debating it and we don’t know what it is. But the study, at least give us a pretty good idea of what it looks like happiness. While everyone has their own limitations, there are things you can do to maximize your personal happiness .

In particular, getting off to a good start is exercising (especially with a goal in mind), getting plenty of sleep , developing emotional intelligence, and gaining experience over material wealth . If you are still not sure what to strive for, remember “PERM”. Created by Dr. Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology , and published in his book Flourish , PERMA epitomizes the five key elements that make up well-being:

• P ositive Emotion: Peace, gratitude, satisfaction, joy, inspiration, hope, curiosity, and love fall into this category.
• E ngagement: Losing yourself with a task or project that gives us the feeling of “time gone” because we have been so highly engaged.
• R elationships: People who have meaningful, positive relationships with others are happier than those who don’t.
• M eaning: Meaning comes from outgoing reasons more than ourselves. Whether it’s a religion or a cause that helps humanity in one way or another, we all need meaning in our lives.
• Ccomplishment / Achievement: In order to feel significant life satisfaction, we must strive to better ourselves in some way.

There is still a lot to learn when it comes to the science of happiness, but research so far proves that it’s not all about luck. Yes, you may have a worse hand than others, but how you play it is really up to you. In fact, many researchers argue that it’s not just how you play the cards, but finding a way to enjoy the game no matter what.

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