Happiness Excerpt

"How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive for all they do," observed William James (1902, p. 76). Understandably so, for one's state of happiness or unhappiness colors everything. People who are happy perceive the world as safer, make decisions more easily, rate job applicants more favorably, are more cooperative, and live healthier and more energized and satisfied lives (Lyukomirsky & others, 2002; Myers, 1993). When your mood is gloomy and your thinking preoccupied, life as a whole seems depressing. Let your mood brighten and your thinking broadens and becomes more playful and creative (Fredrickson, 2002). Your relationships, your self-image, and your hopes for the future also seem more promising. Positive emotions fuel upward spirals.

Moreover—and this is one of psychology's most consistent findings—when we feel happy we are more willing to help others. In study after study, a mood-boosting experience (finding money, succeeding on a challenging task, recalling a happy event) made people more likely to give money, pick up someone's dropped papers, volunteer time, and so forth.
feel-good, do-good phenomenon
people's tendency to be helpful when already in a good mood.
Psychologists call it the feel-good, do-good phenomenon (Salovey, 1990). Happiness doesn't just feel good, it does good.

Despite the significance of happiness, psychology throughout its history has more often focused on negative emotions. Since 1887, Psychological Abstracts (a guide to psychology's literature) has included, as of this writing, 10,735 articles mentioning anger, 70,845 mentioning anxiety, and 86,767 mentioning depression. For every 13 articles on these topics, only one dealt with the positive emotions of joy (1161), life satisfaction (7949), or happiness (3938). There is, of course, good reason to focus on negative emotions; they can make our lives miserable and drive us to seek help. But researchers are becoming increasingly interested in subjective well-being,
subjective well-being
self-perceived happiness or satisfaction with life. Used along with measures of objective well-being (for example, physical and economic indicators) to evaluate people's quality of life.
assessed either as feelings of happiness (sometimes defined as a high ratio of positive to negative feelings) or as a sense of satisfaction with life. A more "positive psychology" is rapidly on the rise.

On this subject, as on so many others, whatever psychological research reveals will have been anticipated by someone. We have inherited any number of contradictory maxims concerning happiness: that it comes from knowing the truth, or from preserving illusions; from living for the present, or from living for the future; from being with others, or from living in peaceful solitude (Tatarkiewicz, 1976). The list goes on, and the scientific task is clear: to ask which of these competing ideas fit reality. Sifting the actual predictors of happiness from the plausible hunches requires research.

In their research on happiness, psychologists have studied influences on both our temporary moods and our long-term life satisfaction.
"Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning."
Psalm 30:5
When studying people's hour-by-hour moods, David Watson (2000) discovered that positive emotion rises over the early part of most days and dissipates during the day's last several hours (Figure 1). Studying people's reports of day-to-day moods confirms that stressful events—an argument, a sick child, a car problem—trigger bad moods. No surprise there. But by the next day, the gloom nearly always lifts (Affleck & others, 1994; Bolger & others, 1989; Stone & Neale, 1984). If anything, people tend to rebound from bad days to a better-than-usual good mood the following day. When in a bad mood, can you usually depend on rebounding within a day or two? Are your times of elation similarly hard to sustain? Over the long ride, our emotional ups and downs tend to balance.



FIGURE 1 Moods across the day When psychologist David Watson (2000) sampled nearly 4500 mood reports from 150 people, he found this pattern of variation from average level of positive and negative emotion.

Apart from prolonged grief over the loss of a loved one or lingering anxiety after a trauma (such as child abuse, rape, or the terrors of war), even tragedy is not permanently depressing. Kidney dialysis patients recognize that their health is relatively poor, yet in their moment-to-moment experiences they report being just as happy as healthy nonpatients (Riis & others, in press). Those who become blind or paralyzed usually recover near-normal levels of day-to-day happiness (Gerhart & others, 1994; Myers, 1993).

Similarly, learning that one is HIV-positive is devastating. But after five weeks of adapting to the grim news, those who tested positive felt less emotionally distraught than they had expected (Sieff & others, 1999). Likewise, faculty members up for tenure expect their lives would be deflated by a negative decision. Actually, 5 to 10 years later, those denied are not noticeably less happy than those who were awarded tenure, report Daniel Gilbert and colleagues (1998). The same is true of romantic breakups, which at the time may seem to have ruined one's life. The surprising reality: We overestimate the long-term emotional impact of very bad news and underestimate our capacity to adapt.

This finding—that we overestimate the duration of emotions—is shocking. Yet in less time than most people suppose, the emotional impact of significant events dissipates. The effect of dramatically positive events is similarly temporary. Once their rush of euphoria wears off, state lottery winners typically find their overall happiness unchanged (Brickman & others, 1978). Other research confirms that there is much more to well-being than being well-off. Many people (including most German citizens, and most new American collegians, as Figure 2 suggests) believe they would be happier if they had more money (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).



FIGURE 2 The changing materialism of entering college students From 1970 through most of the 1980s, annual surveys of more than 200,000 entering U.S. college students revealed an increasing desire for wealth. (From The American Freshman surveys, UCLA, 1966 to 2002.)

They probably would be—temporarily. Consider:

* Within most affluent countries, people with lots of money are somewhat happier than those with just enough to afford life's necessities (Di Tella & others, 2001).
* People in rich countries are also somewhat happier than those in poor countries (Steel & Ones, 2002).
* Those who have experienced a recent windfall from a lottery, an inheritance, or a surging economy often feel some elation (Diener & Oishi, 2000; Gardner & Oswald, 2001).

Yet in the long run, increased affluence hardly affects happiness. Even in Calcutta slums, people "are more satisfied than one might expect" (Biswas-Diener & Diener, 2002; Suhail, 2002). Wealth is like health: Its utter absence can breed misery, yet having it is no guarantee of happiness.

"Gross national happiness is more important than gross national product."
Jigme Singye Wangchuk, King of Bhutan
Most people agree that money can't buy happiness, but they do believe that a little more money would make them a little more happy, secure, and comfortable. So, over time, does our happiness grow, little by little, with our paychecks? If his government achieves its 4 percent economic growth rate goal, notes Australian researcher Richard Eckerskey (2001), its people will be twice as rich in 20 years, "and 10 times richer than we were 100 years ago. Can we be sure that this increasing wealth creation is beneficial to personal and social well-being?"

No, we cannot. During the last four decades, the average U.S. citizen's buying power more than doubled. The 1957 per-person after tax income, inflated to 1995 dollars, was $8500; by 2002, thanks partly to the rich getting richer and to women's increasing employment, it was $23,000. Did this more-than-doubled wealth—enabling twice as many cars per person, and TVs, DVD players, laptops, air conditioners, and cell phones—also buy more happiness? Are those of us who enjoy the abundance of the affluent Western world happier with its "fantastic fineness"—with little levers we can adjust to heat and cool our homes to precisely the desired degree, to release clean water for a warm shower or a cold drink, and to microwave our plentiful food? As Figure 3 shows, the average American, though certainly richer, is not a bit happier. In 1957, some 35 percent said they were "very happy," as did slightly fewer—30 percent—in 2002.



FIGURE 3 Does money buy happiness? It surely helps us to avoid certain types of pain. Yet, though buying power has more than doubled since the 1950s, the average American's reported happiness has remained almost unchanged. (Happiness data from National Opinion Research Center surveys; income data from Historical Statistics of the United States and Economic Indicators.)

Indeed, if we can judge from statistics—a doubled divorce rate, more-than-doubled teen suicide, and mushrooming depression—contemporary Americans seem to be more often miserable. The same is true of the European countries, Australia, and Japan: In these countries, people enjoy better nutrition, health care, education, and science, and they are somewhat happier than those in very poor countries (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Eckersley, 2000). Yet their increasing real incomes have not produced increasing happiness. Such findings lob a bombshell at modern materialism: Economic growth in affluent countries has provided no apparent boost to morale or social well-being.

A further bombshell comes from studies showing that individuals who strive most for wealth tend to live with lower well-being, a finding that "comes through very strongly in every culture I've looked at," reports Richard Ryan (1999). This is especially so for those seeking money to prove themselves, gain power, or show off rather than support their families (Srivastava & others, 2001). Ryan's collaborator, Tim Kasser (2000, 2002), concludes from their studies that those who instead strive for "intimacy, personal growth, and contribution to the community" experience a higher quality of life. Ryan and Kasser's research echoes an earlier finding by H. W. Perkins (1991): Among 800 college alumni surveyed, those with "Yuppie values"—preferring a high income and occupational success and prestige to having very close friends and a close marriage—were twice as likely as their former classmates to describe themselves as "fairly" or "very" unhappy. A similar correlation appears among 7167 college students surveyed in 41 countries. Those who value love more than money report much higher satisfaction with life than do their money-hungry peers (Figure 4).



FIGURE 4 Values and life satisfaction Among college and university students worldwide, those who report high life satisfaction give priority to love over money. (From Diener & Oishi, 2000.)

Pause a moment to consider: What was your most satisfying moment in the past week? Kennon Sheldon and his colleagues (2001) asked that question of American and South Korean collegians, then asked them to rate how much this peak experience had satisfied various needs. In both countries, the satisfaction of self-esteem and relatedness/belonging needs were the top two contributors to the peak moment. And in both countries, the satisfaction of money-luxury needs contributed least. Similar results were obtained when asking others to reflect on the last month or last semester. Another study found that very happy university students are not distinguished by their money but by their "rich and satisfying close relationships" (Diener & Seligman, 2002). The need to belong runs deeper, it seems, than any need to be rich.

"No happiness lasts for long."
Seneca, Agamemnon, A.D. 60
Two psychological principles explain why, for all but the very poor, more money buys no more than a temporary surge of happiness and why our emotions seem attached to elastic bands that pull us back from highs or lows. In its own way, each principle suggests that happiness is relative.

The Adaptation-Level Principle: Happiness Is Relative to Our Prior Experience

The adaptation-level phenomenon describes our tendency to judge various stimuli relative to those we have previously experienced.
adaptation-level phenomenon
our tendency to form judgments (of sounds, of lights, of income) relative to a "neutral" level defined by our prior experience.
As psychologist Harry Helson explained, we adjust our "neutral" levels—the points at which sounds seem neither loud nor soft, temperatures neither hot nor cold, events neither pleasant nor unpleasant—based on our experience. We then notice and react to variations up or down from these levels.

Adaptation researcher Allen Parducci (1995) recalls a striking example: "On the Micronesian island of Ponope, which is almost on the equator, I was told of a bitter night back in 1915 when the temperature dropped to a record-breaking 69 degrees [Fahrenheit; 21 degrees Celsius]!" In the United States, Midwesterners, perhaps after watching too many "Baywatch" reruns, see sunny California as a happy place to live. But contrary to Midwesterners' intuitions, Californians—much as they may prefer their climate—are no happier (Schkade & Kahneman, 1998).

Thus, if our current condition—income, grade-point average, or social prestige, for example—increases, we feel an initial surge of pleasure. We then adapt to this new level of achievement, come to consider it as normal, and require something even better to give us another surge of happiness. From my childhood, I can recall the thrill of watching my family's first 12-inch, black-and-white television set.
"Continued pleasures wear off. . . Pleasure is always contingent upon change and disappears with continuous satisfaction."
Dutch psychologist Nico Frijda (1988)
Now, if the color goes out on our 26-inch TV, I feel deprived. Having adapted upward, I perceive as negative what I once experienced as positive. The point to remember: Satisfaction and dissatisfaction, success and failure—all are relative to our recent experience. Satisfaction, as Richard Ryan (1999) says, "has a short half-life."

So, could we ever create a permanent social paradise? Donald Campbell (1975) answered no: If you woke up tomorrow to your utopia—perhaps a world with no bills, no ills, all As, someone who loves you unreservedly—you would feel euphoric, for a time. But before long, you would soon recalibrate your adaptation level. Before long you would again sometimes feel gratified (when achievements surpass expectations), sometimes feel deprived (when they fall below), and sometimes feel neutral. That helps explain why, despite the realities of triumph and tragedy, million-dollar lottery winners and people who are paralyzed report roughly similar levels of happiness. It also explains why material wants can be insatiable—why many a child "needs" just one more Nintendo game. Or why Imelda Marcos, surrounded by poverty while living in splendor as wife of the Philippines' president, bought 1060 pairs of shoes. When the victor belongs to the spoils and the possessor is possessed by possessions, adaptation level has run amuck.

"The mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquillity. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it."
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759
Seeking happiness through material achievement requires an ever-increasing abundance of things. At the end of his Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis depicts heaven as a place where good things do continually increase, where life is a never-ending story "in which every chapter is better than the one before." Here on Earth the unavoidable ups and downs of real life preclude a perpetual high.

The Relative Deprivation Principle: Happiness Is Relative to Others' Attainments

Happiness is relative not only to our past experience but also to our comparisons with others (Lyubomirsky, 2001). We are always comparing ourselves with others. And whether we feel good or bad depends on who those others are. We are slow-witted or clumsy only when others are smart or agile.

An example: To explain the frustration expressed by U.S. Air Corps soldiers during World War II, researchers formulated the concept of relative deprivation
relative deprivation
the perception that one is worse off relative to those with whom one compares oneself.
—the sense that we are worse off than others with whom we compare ourselves. Despite a relatively rapid promotion rate for the group, many soldiers were frustrated about their own promotion rates (Merton & Kitt, 1950). Apparently, seeing so many others being promoted inflated the soldiers' expectations. And when expectations soar above attainments, the result is disappointment. News of Alex Rodriquez's $252 million, 10-year baseball contract surely diminished other star players' satisfaction with their lesser, multimillion-dollar contracts.

"I have also learned why people work so hard to succeed: It is because they envy the things their neighbors have. But it is useless. It is like chasing the wind. . . . It is better to have only a little, with peace of mind, than be busy all the time with both hands, trying to catch the wind."
Ecclesiastes 4:4
Such comparisons help us understand why the middle- and upper-income people in a given country, who can compare themselves with the relatively poor, tend to be slightly more satisfied with life than their less fortunate compatriots. Nevertheless, once people reach a moderate income level, further increases do little to increase their happiness. Why? Because as people climb the ladder of success they mostly compare themselves with peers who are at or above their current level (Gruder, 1977; Suls & Tesch, 1978). "Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful," noted Bertrand Russell (1930, p. 90).
"Our poverty became a reality. Not because of our having less, but by our neighbors having more."
Will Campbell, Brother to a Dragonfly, 1977
Thus, "Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed. You cannot, therefore, get away from envy by means of success alone, for there will always be in history or legend some person even more successful than you are" (pp. 68–69).

Just as comparing ourselves with those who are better off creates envy, so counting our blessings as we compare ourselves with those less well off boosts our contentment. Marshall Dermer and his colleagues (1979) demonstrated this by asking University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee women to study others' deprivation and suffering.
Studies of chimpanzees in zoos reveal that happiness in chimpanzees, as rated by 200 employees, is also genetically influenced (Weiss & others, 2000, 2002).
After viewing vivid depictions of how grim life was in Milwaukee in 1900, or after imagining and then writing about various personal tragedies, such as being burned and disfigured, the women expressed greater satisfaction with their own lives. Similarly, when mildly depressed people read about someone who is even more depressed, they feel somewhat better (Gibbons, 1986). "I cried because I had no shoes," states a Persian saying, "until I met a man who had no feet."

Predictors of Happiness

If, as the adaptation-level phenomenon implies, our emotions tend to balance around normal, why do some people seem so filled with joy and others so gloomy day after day? What makes one person normally happy and another less so? The answers vary somewhat by culture. Self-esteem matters more to individualistic Westerners, acceptance by others matters more to those in communal cultures (Diener & others, 2003). But across many countries, research does reveal several predictors of happiness (Table 1).

Table 1HAPPINESS IS . . .
Researchers Have Found That Happy People Tend to However, Happiness Seems Not Much Related to Other Factors, Such as
Have high self-esteem (in individualistic countries) Age
Be optimistic, outgoing, and agreeable Gender (women are more often depressed, but also more often joyful)
Have close friendships or a satisfying marriage Education levels
Have work and leisure that engage their skills Parenthood (having children or not)
Have a meaningful religious faith Physical attractiveness
Sleep well and exercise

Source: Summarized from DeNeve and Cooper (1998), Myers (1993, 2000), and Myers and Diener (1995, 1996).

The effect of comparison with others helps explain why students of a given level of academic ability tend to have a higher academic self-concept if they attend a school where most other students are not exceptionally able (Marsh & Parker, 1984). If you were near the top of your class in high school, you might feel inferior upon entering a college where everyone was near the top of their class.

Satisfying tasks and relationships affect our happiness, but always within the limits imposed by our genetic leash. From their study of 254 identical and fraternal twins, David Lykken and Auke Tellegen (1996) estimated that 50 percent of the difference among people's happiness ratings is heritable. Even identical twins raised apart are often similarly happy. Depending on our outlooks and recent experiences, our happiness fluctuates around our "happiness set point," which disposes some people to be ever upbeat and others down. But happiness, though genetically influenced, can be influenced by factors under our control. (See Close-Up: How to Be Happier.)

CLOSE-UP: HOW TO BE HAPPIER

Happiness, like cholesterol level, is a genetically influenced trait. Yet as cholesterol is also influenced by diet and exercise, so our happiness is to some extent under our personal control. Here are some research-based suggestions for improving your mood and increasing your satisfaction with life.

1. Realize that enduring happiness doesn't come from financial success. People adapt to changing circumstances—even to wealth or a disability. Thus wealth is like health: Its utter absence breeds misery, but having it (or any circumstance we long for) doesn't guarantee happiness.
2. Take control of your time. Happy people feel in control of their lives, often aided by mastering their use of time. It helps to set goals and break them into daily aims. Although we often overestimate how much we will accomplish in any given day (leaving us frustrated), we generally underestimate how much we can accomplish in a year, given just a little progress every day.
3. Act happy. We can sometimes act ourselves into a frame of mind. Manipulated into a smiling expression, people feel better; when they scowl, the whole world seems to scowl back. So put on a happy face. Talk as if you feel positive self-esteem, are optimistic, and are outgoing. Going through the motions can trigger the emotions.
4. Seek work and leisure that engages your skills. Happy people often are in a zone called "flow"—absorbed in a task that challenges them without overwhelming them. The most expensive forms of leisure (sitting on a yacht) often provide less flow experience than gardening, socializing, or craft work.
5. Join the "movement" movement. An avalanche of research reveals that aerobic exercise not only promotes health and energy, it also is an antidote for mild depression and anxiety. Sound minds reside in sound bodies. Off your duffs, couch potatoes.
6. Give your body the sleep it wants. Happy people live active vigorous lives yet reserve time for renewing sleep and solitude. Many people suffer from sleep debt, with resulting fatigue, diminished alertness, and gloomy moods.
7. Give priority to close relationships. Intimate friendships with those who care deeply about you can help you weather difficult times. Confiding is good for soul and body. Resolve to nurture your closest relationships: to not take those closest to you for granted, to display to them the sort of kindness that you display to others, to affirm them, to play together and share together.
8. Focus beyond self. Reach out to those in need. Happiness increases helpfulness (those who feel good do good). But doing good also makes one feel good.
9. Be grateful. People who keep a gratitude journal—who pause each day to reflect on some positive aspect of their lives (their health, friends, family, freedom, education, senses, natural surroundings, and so on.) experience heightened well-being.
10. Nurture your spiritual self. For many people, faith provides a support community, a reason to focus beyond self, and a sense of purpose and hope. Study after study finds that actively religious people are happier and that they cope better with crises.

Digested from David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness (Avon Books)