The Science behind the Happiness
It ’s only recent ly t hat scient ist s realized t hey could marry one of our oldest quest ions—“What is t he nat ure of human happiness?”—t o our newest way of get t ing answers: SCIENCE. Unt il just a f ew decades ago, t he problem of happiness was mainly in t he hands of philosophers and poet s. Psychologist s have always been int erest ed in emot ion, but in t he past t wo decades t he st udy of emot ion has exploded, and one of t he emot ions t hat psychologist s have st udied most int ensively is happiness. Recent ly economist s and neuroscient ist s joined t he part y. All t hese disciplines have dist inct but int ersect ing int erest s: Psychologist s want t o underst and what people f eel, economist s want t o know what people value, and neuroscient ist s want t o know how people’s brains respond t o rewards. Having t hree separat e disciplines all int erest ed in a single t opic has put t hat t opic on t he scient if ic map. Papers on happiness are published in Science, people who st udy happiness win Nobel prizes, and government s all over t he world are rushing t o f igure out how t o measure and increase t he happiness of t heir cit izens. Harvard psychology prof essor Daniel Gilbert is widely known f or his 2006 best seller, „Stumbling on Happiness” . His work reveals, among ot her t hings, t he syst emat ic mist akes we all make in imagining how happy (or miserable) we’ll be. In an int erview f rom Harvard Business Review, Harvard psychology prof essor Daniel Gilbert answers t o some quest ions about science view over happiness. T hese answers help us t o underst and ourselves, t o realize t he happiness origins and t o f ind out t he f ut ure in happiness research. How is it possible to measure something as subjective as happiness? Measuring subject ive experiences is a lot easier t han you t hink. It ’s what your eye doct or does when she f it s you f or glasses. She put s a lens in f ront of your eye and asks you t o report your experience, and t hen she put s anot her lens up, and t hen anot her. She uses your report s as dat a, submit s t he dat a t o scient if ic analysis, and designs a lens t hat will give you perf ect vision—all on t he basis of your report s of your subject ive experience. People’s real-t ime report s are very good approximat ions of t heir experiences, and t hey make it
possible f or us t o see t he world t hrough t heir eyes. People may not be able t o t ell us how happy t hey were yest erday or how happy t hey will be t omorrow, but t hey can t ell us how t hey’re f eeling at t he moment we ask t hem. “How are you?” may be t he world’s most f requent ly asked quest ion, and nobody’s st umped by it . T here are many ways t o measure happiness. We can ask people “How happy are you right now?” and have t hem rat e it on a scale. We can use magnet ic resonance imaging t o measure cerebral blood f low, or elect romyography t o measure t he act ivit y of t he “smile muscles” in t he f ace. But in most circumst ances t hose measures are highly correlat ed, and you’d have t o be t he f ederal government t o pref er t he complicat ed, expensive measures over t he simple, inexpensive one. But isn’t the scale itself subjective? Your f ive might be my six.
Imagine t hat a drugst ore sold a bunch of cheap t hermomet ers t hat weren’t very well calibrat ed. People wit h normal t emperat ures might get readings ot her t han 98.6, and t wo people wit h t he same t emperat ure might get dif f erent readings. T hese inaccuracies could cause people t o seek medical t reat ment t hey didn’t need or t o miss get t ing t reat ment t hey did need. So buggy t hermomet ers are somet imes a problem, but not always. For example, if I brought 100 people t o my lab, exposed half of t hem t o a f lu virus, and t hen used t hose buggy t hermomet ers t o t ake t heir t emperat ures a week lat er, t he average t emperat ure of t he people who’d been exposed would almost surely be higher t han t he average t emperat ure of t he ot hers. Some t hermomet ers would underest imat e, some would overest imat e, but as long as I measured enough people, t he inaccuracies would cancel t hemselves out . Even wit h poorly calibrat ed inst rument s, we can compare large groups of people.
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