Philosophers, researchers, spiritual leaders - all argue about what makes life better. Is a life full of happiness or a life full of purpose and purpose? Is there a difference between the two?
Think of a human rights activist who fights oppression but ends up in prison - are we happy? Or a social animal that spends its nights (and certain days) jumping from one party to another - is that good health?
These are not just educational questions. They can help us decide where we should put our energy to lead the life we want.
Recently, some researchers have intensified their study of these questions, trying to distinguish between meaningful and happy life. Their research shows that there is more to life than happiness - and even contradicts previous findings in the field of constructive psychology, which earns a fair amount of media coverage and criticism.
The controversy surrounding it raises serious questions about what happiness really means: While there may be more to life than happiness, it is also possible that there is “happiness” rather than happiness.
Five differences between a happy life and a purpose:
"A happy life and a meaningful life are somewhat different," said Roy Baumeister, Professor of Psychiatry of Francis Eppes at Florida State University. He lays out what he wants in a paper he published last year in the Journal of Positive Psychology, which was co-authored with researchers at the University of Minnesota and Stanford.
Baumeister and colleagues surveyed 397 adults, looking for a link between their levels of happiness, meaning, and various aspects of their lives: their behavior, their emotions, their relationships, health, stress levels, work lives, creative activities, and more.
They find that a meaningful life and a happy life are often associated - but not always. And they were eager to learn more about the differences between the two. Their mathematical analysis attempts to distinguish what brings purpose to one's life but not happiness, and what brings happiness but not purpose.
Their findings suggest that meaning (different from happiness) has nothing to do with whether a person is healthy, has enough money, or feels comfortable in life, and happiness (different from meaning). Specifically, researchers found five major differences between a happy life and a purpose.
Happy people care for their needs and wants, but that does not seem to matter. Thus, life, wealth, and freedom in life were all linked to happiness, but not to purpose.
Happiness involves focusing on the present, and being reasonable includes thinking deeply about the past, the present, and the future - and the relationship between them. Moreover, the joy was seen as fleeting, and the sound seemed to last a long time.
Having a purpose is based on giving to others; happiness comes from what they give you. Although social media was linked to both happiness and meaning, happiness was closely linked to the benefits one receives from social relationships, especially friendships, while empathy was related to what one gives to others - for example, child care. In line with this, the self-described "self-described" were happier than the self-described "self-described", and spending time with friends was associated with happiness more than meaning, and spending more time with loved ones was linked with meaning but not happiness.
A meaningful life involves stress and challenges. High levels of anxiety, depression, and anxiety were associated with higher understanding but lower happiness, suggesting that engaging in more challenging or difficult personal situations or personal happiness promotes purpose but not happiness.
Self-expression is important in self-expression but not in happiness. Doing things to express your feelings and take care of personal identity and culture was linked to a meaningful but not happy life. For example, self-esteem or intelligence was associated with purpose but not happiness.
One of the most surprising findings in the study was that giving to others was associated with meaning, rather than happiness, while taking from others was related to happiness and not meaning. Although many researchers have found the connection between giving and happiness, Baumeister says that this connection is due to how one puts meaning into the act of giving.
"If we just look at helping others, the simple result is that people who help others are happier," Baumeister said. But if you take away the meaning of the meaning of happiness and vice versa, he says, "then help makes people less happy, so that all the benefits of helping in happiness come with meaningful growth."
Baumeister's research raises provocative questions about research in good psychology that links a kind, useful work — or "social networking" - to work with happiness and well-being. However, his research also dispelled the controversy over what psychologists - and all of us - mean when it comes to happiness.
What is happiness, anyway?
Investigators, like other people, disagree on the definition of "happiness" and how to measure it.
Some have compared happiness to temporary emotional states or worked with nails in the pleasure areas of the brain, while others have asked people to look for all their happiness or satisfaction in life. Some researchers, such as Ed Diener of the University of Illinois, a pioneer in the field of constructive psychology, have tried to combine these elements of happiness under the term "subjective well-being," which includes tests of positive and negative emotions and general satisfaction. These differences in definitions of happiness sometimes lead to confusing or contradictory discoveries.
For example, in Baumeister's study, family relationships - such as parenting - are often associated with the definition of happiness. Support for this finding comes from researchers such as Robin Simon of Wake Forest University, who looked at the happiness levels of 1,400 adults and found that parents often report worse and worse feelings than people without children. He concluded that, although parents may report greater purpose and purpose than non-parents, they are often happier than their childless peers.
This conclusion irritates researcher Sonja Lyubormirsky, of the University of California, Riverside, who opposes studies that "try hard to pull off all the excitement" from their analysis and yet happily reach conclusions.
"Think of all the good you can do to be a parent or a parent," Lyubomirsky said. "If you control that - if you subtract this figure - the parents will look very unhappy."
In a recent study, she and her colleagues measured levels of happiness and meaning for parents, both in a “worldly” way - enabling them to assess their overall happiness and satisfaction in life - and while engaging in their daily activities. The results showed that, overall, parents were happier and more satisfied with their lives than non-parents, and parents found happiness and meaning in child care activities, even if they did those jobs.
"Being a parent leads to all these good things: It gives you a purpose in life, it gives you goals to pursue, it can make you feel more connected to your relationship," Lyubomirsky said. "You can't talk about happiness without engaging all of them."
Lyubomirsky feels that researchers who try to separate meaning from happiness may be heading in the wrong direction, since purpose and happiness are inextricably linked.
"When you feel happy, and you pull out part of the definition of happiness, it's not real happiness," she said.
However, this is how Baumeister and his colleagues describe happiness for the purpose of their learning. So even if the study was talking about "happiness," said Lyubomirsky, we may have actually been looking at something like "hedonic pleasure" - part of happiness that involves positive emotions other than part that involves deep satisfaction in life.
Is there happiness without pleasure?
But does it really make sense to separate meaning from happiness?
Some researchers have gone so far as to claim that happiness is based on the so-called "daimonic joy," or happiness found in the pursuit of purpose, and the "hedonic pleasure" - the joy that comes from having fun or fulfilling goals.
A recent study by Steven Cole of UCLA School of Medicine, and Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that people who reported greater eudaimonic pleasure had a stronger immune system than those who reported greater hedonic pleasure, suggesting that Meaningful Life could be better in our lives than a life that seeks pleasure.
Similarly, a 2008 article published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found several positive health effects associated with eudaimonic pleasure, including depression, low insulin resistance (meaning less chance of developing diabetes), and cholesterol higher HDL ("good") levels, better sleep, and patterns of brain activity linked to lower levels of stress.
But happiness researcher Elizabeth Dunn thinks that the difference between eudaimonic and hedonic happiness is not clear.
"I think the difference that makes you intuitively make a lot of sense but doesn't really hold on to science," said Dunn, an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.
Dunn has written numerous studies showing that giving helps to increase happiness, both in the present, as well as in the positive outcomes of life. In a recently published paper, he and his colleagues examined data from several countries and found supporting evidence for this connection, including findings showing randomly given articles to purchase charities reported higher levels of positive emotions — a hedonic level of happiness — than participants assigned to purchase similar items, even spending money does not build or strengthen social ties.
"I think my work really supports the idea that eudaimonic and hedonic well-being are surprisingly similar and not as different as one might expect," Dunn said. To say that there is only one path to meaning, and that it is different than the path to happiness is a lie. "
Like Lyubomirsky, he emphasizes that purpose and happiness go hand in hand. He points to the work of researchers who have found that positive emotions can help build deeper social relationships - which many say are the most meaningful part of life - and a study by University of Missouri psychologist Laura King, which finds that positive emotions help people see the “big picture” and notification patterns. that he strives to make sense of things and to interpret his knowledge as meaningful.
In addition, he argues that the criteria used to differentiate eudaimonic and hedonic pleasure are very closely related to being classified in this way - mathematically, doing so would make your results unreliable.
As University of Pennsylvania psychologist James Coyne - according to Dunn, a "heavy head" of statistics - wrote in a blog post in 2013, trying to differentiate eudaimonic well-being by controlling hedonic well-being and other things that leave you with something that is not really eudaimonia for all. Comparing and photographing siblings who look alike, remove all of their identities, and still refer to the photos as representing their siblings.
He writes: "If we were to talk about people, we would probably not even be able to see the similarities between the two."
In other words, the fact that it is statistically possible to remove the influence of diversity does not mean that what you end up with is a different meaning.
Dunn observes: “When you put forth the effort to find happiness, you become a part of it. “But, based on people's daily experience, is it really so that people are dealing with the true trade between happiness and meaning? I do not think so. "
Can you have it all?
Baumeister, however, clearly believes that it helps to make a difference between meaning and happiness - in part by encouraging more people to look for the good in life even if doing so makes them feel happy. However, you can see that these are bound together.
He says: “A meaningful life contributes to happiness and happiness and can contribute to a meaningful life. "I think there's evidence for both of them."
But one warning: If you are aiming for hedonic pleasure, you may be on the wrong path to happiness. "For centuries traditional wisdom has been that the pursuit of happiness for the sake of man does not bring happiness over time," he said.
In fact, the pursuit of happiness without explanation can be frustrating, powerful, and frustrating, says Baumeister.
Instead, when you wish for a healthier life, it would make more sense to focus on the things you find meaningful - deep relationships, self-sacrifice, and meaningful self-expression, for example - rather than seeking happiness alone happiness even if happiness increases one's sense of meaning, as the Lord suggests.
“Work to achieve long-term goals; do things that society considers most important - achievement or ethical reasons, ”he said. "You get the meaning in a big context, so you have to look beyond your own to find purpose in what you do."
Chances are you will experience the sweetness - and happiness - that go with it.
