Article summary with Scientific answers to the timeless philosophical question of happiness by Kesebir

What is this article about?

This is an introduction to the science of happiness. It provides a catalogue of the main questions that have been posed about happiness across millennia. By doing this, it can explain why we look at happiness from a scientifical standpoint, not just from a philosophical standpoint. First, it will be explained what happiness is and how it can be measured. After that, the possibility, desirability, and justifiability of happiness will be explored. Lastly, this article will try to answer the question of how to be happy.

What is happiness?

In philosophy, there are roughly two ways of understanding happiness. Hedonic theories of happiness suppose happiness is "feeling good". Eudaimonic theories of happiness on the other hand, suppose happiness is "doing good". But there are still many ways to interpret feeling and doing good. Hedonic and eudaimonic happiness also overlap in a lot of ways. Empirical attempts to distinguish hedonic happiness from eudaimonic happiness have proved to be challenging and tend to yield inconsistent findings.

It is difficult to define happiness, but we need a single definition of happiness to be able to study it scientifically. Psychologists that started the study of happiness, were set to this test of defining happiness. They came up with the concept of subjective well-being. Subjective well-being refers to people's evaluations of their lives and encompasses both affective and cognitive elements. People's own evaluations are important in this definition, so that we can study it by self-report measures. Also important is that psychologists look at both affective and cognitive elements, so that they look at both hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. 

What are the possibility, desirability, and justifiability of happiness?

Is happiness possible and for whom?

If we want to find out if happiness is possible or not, we need to make the definition of happiness even clearer. If we see happiness as a perfect, pure, and perpetual state, a complete absence of negativity and constant positivity, it is impossible. Searching for this kind of happiness is even unhealthy, because it sets you up for disappointment, making you less happy in the long run. 

But if we look at happiness in a more realistic way, it seems entirely possible for people to experience predominantly positive emotions and be satisfied with their lives. This is what recent findings in the science of happiness suggest.

Happiness is thus possible, but for whom? There is an important second question in the possibility of happiness. Can anybody who sets their mind to it become happy? Early answers to this question were not very encouraging. But this comes from the fact that people used to see happiness as something that was bestowed on a person on the basis of fortune, fate, or God. You can see this in the etymology of the word happiness in most Indo-European languages. Think of the Dutch word "geluk" that means both luck and happiness. Happiness was not thought of as something that we can control ourselves. 

Recent studies have found that luck is an important part of happiness, but there is also a part of happiness that we can control. Lyubomirsky et al. thought that 50% of someone's happiness was genetically determined, 10% determined by life circumstances and 40% could be achieved with intentional activities. Different psychologists have used different numbers, but we can at least conclude that happiness is partly attainable for everyone. Someone with genes that make them very negative and sad, may never reach the same happiness as someone with "happy genes", but they can make themselves happier than they were before. 

Is happiness desirable?

Even though we are able to control our happiness to some extent, some people think we should not try to pursue happiness. The idea here is that the search for happiness is self-defeating; the harder we strive for happiness, the further we will retreat from it.

It is easy to see that the pursuit of happiness could thwart happiness under certain circumstances. We have already discussed the unrealistic versions of happiness that only disappoint people when they reach for it. Obsessions with happiness are not healthy. And no one will be happy all the time. It is much healthier and more effective for your overall happiness to accept negative feelings as well. 

But interventions to increase happiness do work. This suggests that deliberately pursuing happiness does not necessarily have to be self-defeating. Happiness can be desired and pursued, but we need to have and accurate understanding of what happiness entails. This is why the science of happiness is so important. It helps us to understand what exactly happiness is and to give people more realistic expectations in their pursuit of happiness. 

Is happiness justifiable?

Happiness might be possible and desirable, but is the pursuit of happiness also justifiable? Some people think that happy people are stupid, self-centered, or insensitive. But this is not backed up by scientific evidence. Happiness even helps people be more productive, form better social relationships and be more altruistic. Also, our personal happiness is deeply connected with other people's happiness. Happiness is not egocentric, but social. So yes, happiness is also justifiable.

How to be happy?

Now that we know that happiness is desirable, possible, and justifiable, we want to know where and how we can find it. There are some ideas about this that have been proven to be wrong by the science of happiness. These are the places we can not find happiness in:

• Pleasure. Seeking fulfillment in sensory, bodily pleasures, is not the way to reach true happiness. We also find happiness in having a meaningful life. We don't just want to have pleasant sensations, but we also want to have meaningful experiences that sometimes cost us unpleasant sensations. Think about the fears of being a parent, or the stress of having an important job, or the sadness of losing a loved one. We accept these pains because what we gain is worth much more. Another reason why chasing pleasures is a suboptimal happiness strategy lies in the fact that pleasures are fleeting. We can never keep having pleasant sensations, so the pursuit of this would be tiring and unfulfilling. 
• Money and consumption. Money can have a beneficial effect on well-being to a certain point. But valuing and wanting too much has a detrimental effect on our happiness. An adequate amount of money, having enough money to take care of yourself and your family and a little bit more to do fun things and to know that you will be all right even if something bad happens, helps a lot in making you happy. But after this amount, money does not make you happier. Materialism has been consistently linked to lower well-being.
• Fulfillment of desires. Desire fulfillment theories of well-being hold that well-being consists in the satisfaction of the desires or preferences of a person. But research suggests that people who believe fulfillment of their desires will make them happy, are only delaying their sense of happiness. People might think "I will be happy when I finish my studies." But after that, they have new desires, and so they think "I will be happy when I get a job." and after that "when I get a nice house", or "when I start a family", etc. With this mindset, you are never happy in the moment, because you will always have desires that can be met in the future. Furthermore, research shows that happiness is not the result of good things happening. It is not what happens to us, but how we deal with whatever happens, that makes us happy.

Now that we know where we should not search for happiness, we can take a look at the effective ways of achieving happiness:

• Health. Working on physical health by eating well, exercising, and getting enough sleep, makes people healthier in both their body and in their mind and is shown to make people happier.
• Self-esteem and self-compassion. A healthy relationship with oneself, makes people happier.
• Connection. A healthy relationship with others, also makes people happier.
• Virtues. The feeling of doing well and being a good person, is an important aspect of happiness. 
• Faith. The idea that there is a larger beyond, makes people happier. This can be religious faith, but it does not have to be. The mere idea that there is something bigger that we are a part of, can help us become happier.