25 3 14 rusu hapiness 2014

Defining happiness

Alina S. Rusu alina.rusu@ubbcluj.ro

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Defining happiness…

• Enhancing Quality of Life (QoL) – a major goal for individuals, communities, nations, world (Constanza et al., 2008) • Definitions of QoL – many – all include happiness and satisfaction with life.

• ISI database search (last 10 years) - over 60.000 academic citations utilizing the association QoL&Happiness

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Defining happiness

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Defining happiness

• Common assumption (in the context of “economic growth”) - more income and consumption = better welfare, happier people - idea being challenged by recent psychological research (Diener & Lucas, 1999; Easterlin, 2003).

• Research on QoL has focused on two basic methodologies of measurement: 1. “subjective well-being” (SWB) = self-reported levels of happiness, pleasure, fulfillment and satisfaction (Diener and Lucas, 1999; Easterlin, 2003) 2. “objective” measurements of QoL— social, economic, and health indicators, that reflect the extent to which human needs are or can be met.

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Defining happiness

• QoL - multidimensional construct = a function of the degree to which each identified human need is met (“fulfillment”) and the importance of the need to the individual and/or to the group.

• Recent question – is happiness a part of the subjective wellbeing OR it is a human need itself?

• How do we identify the need?

• How do we fulfill the need for happiness? – in biology – happiness = safety from dangers.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Fulfilling one’s potential

Well-being and satisfaction

Physical, sensual needs

Need for Happiness

Positive Psychology v Martin Seligman launched Positive Psychology in 1998. v Positive Psychology - identifies and studies the factors that create and enhance well-being (happiness included) rather than at cures for psychological illnesses. v It proposes to make people happier and more fulfilled by using and developing their strengths - virtues, talents and meanings in life v It is evidence-based (controlled experiments and longitudinal studies) 8

Are you happy?

• A simple and a complicated question • the answer depends on how we define happiness • …and how the question is asked

How can one find out how happy you are?

• Indirectly – Look at your wealth/income – Look at your capabilities or your quality of life indicators • (More) Directly – Observe your behavior (smiles, laugh, charity actions, forgiveness acts etc.)

– Brain scans and neurological/endocrine correlates – Ask you (Likert scale, more complex questionnaires)

Are you Happy?

Looking at Income • Used by: – sociologists, economists, politicians – often considered an indicator of national progress

• Income – often seen an indicator of ability to satisfy preferences (and thereby make people happier) – not if they have too many preferences…

Are you Happy?

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Gap between what we have and what we expect/want to have

Two commonly proposed solutions to minimize the gap: 1) Give up wanting 2) Economic growth solution: increase possessions to be able to satisfy the expectations – but resources are limited…

Are we all capable of happiness (or unhappiness)?

• People report themselves as being happy, even though their living conditions are poor • Relativity of happiness (relative to income and living conditions) • Determinants of happiness – Evidence?

Lyubomirsky et al., 2005

Determinants of Happiness

Are you happy?

Observe the behavior • Used by: – Anthropologists, psychologists, behavioral scientists – by all the people in the world • Body language and behavioral elements (smile, laughing) – indicators of happiness • Benefits: easy to do (apparently) • Problems: impractical on large scale and…not always easy to recognize emotions.

Smile (behavioral indicator of happiness)

• Smiling - behavioural indicator of happiness… but only if they are real smiles (Duchenne smile) – see www.paulekman.com

Are you happy?

Scanning the brains • Activity in specific areas of the brain - measured and compared to other measures of happiness • Benefits: access to accurate brain images • Problems: very impractical on large scale and still difficult to interpret

Are you happy?

• If several brains show equal ‘happiness activity’, are those people equally happy?

• How do we know this?

Are you happy?

…by asking people (self-report) • Used by: – Psychologists, sociologists, physicians – all the people

• Benefits: Not too hard to calculate and (possibly) compare on large scale • Problems… it depends on the question.

Are you happy?

Pieter Desmet (IP 2013) – “sad-happy continuum”

Are you happy?

3 Types of Questions about happiness (3 Levels of happiness; Nettle, 2005) 1) Momentary feelings – How happy are you right now (from 1 to 7)? 1 = not at all; 7 = extremely happy – Introspection 2) Judgements about feelings - All things considered, how happy are you these days (from 1 to 7)?

– Introspection, comparative judgement 3) Quality of life - On the whole, how happy do you think your life is (from 1 to 7)?

– Introspection, comparative judgement, relative to conception of the good life

Happiness Continuum (Nettle, 2005) Level 1 - Momentary feelings - Mood - Pleasure or joy - Not suffering

Level 2

Level 3

- Judgements about feelings - Net level 1 happiness - Well-being - satisfaction

- Holistic evaluation of value of life - Flourishing

More emotional, sensual and reliable More cognitive, moral and easily biased

• What do people prefer - a long life of medium happiness or a medium life of great happiness?

• Should we focus on genetic technology and cognitive behavioral therapy or rather on circumstances?

• …a complementary (and simpler) way to become happy: focus on people around you.

Published 4 December 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2338 Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2338

Research Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study

James H Fowler, associate professor1, Nicholas A Christakis, professor2 1 Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA , 2 Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School, and Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Correspondence to: N A Christakis christak@hcp.med.harvard.edu

Fig 1 Happiness clusters in the Framingham social network. Graphs show largest component of friends, spouses, and siblings at exam 6 (centred on year 1996, showing 1181 individuals) and exam 7 (year 2000, showing 1020 individuals). Each node represents one person (circles are female, squares are male). Lines between nodes indicate relationship (black for siblings, red for friends and spouses). Node colour denotes mean happiness of ego and all directly connected (distance 1) alters, with blue shades indicating least happy and yellow shades indicating most happy (shades of green are intermediate)

• Happiness – a major objective of the World Health Organization – an essential component of health (individual, group or nation).

• it’s not only about one person = group phenomenon…

• Happiness = …rather a small group phenomenon

• Happiness = …a group phenomenon - the group can include other speciesJ

• Happiness = …rather a small group phenomenon

Thanks for your attention.