There are good reasons to pursue happiness, but psychologists have been sceptical that happiness can be lastingly increased. What arguments have been advanced to explain why happiness cannot be increased for individuals or for groups of individuals, like the citizens in a given nation? What are the counter-arguments? With actual evidence that the happiness of both individuals and groups can and does increase, this article suggests that the pursuit of happiness is an achievable goal; though requiring lifestyle changes for individuals and economic and political changes for nations.
Happiness is desirable in and of itself. It is also desirable because of its demonstrated benefits for the individual – better social relationships, academic and occupational success, good health, and even long life (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005). Given that happiness has so many valuable consequences, can we deliberately boost it in a lasting way? There is a great deal of pessimism here, and psychologists over the years have pointed to several reasons why happiness cannot be increased.
Like trying to be taller?
There are several good reasons for thinking happiness cannot be increased, in the long-term. First, adaptation to pleasure is an unfortunately familiar experience. We all know that new jobs, new cars, new houses or new loves – no matter how exhilarating they may be in the first place – eventually lose their magic. Undaunted, we seek a new source of pleasure, hoping against all past experience that this one will last for ever. It never works. Adaptation to pleasure is so widespread that theorists have proposed that we live on a hedonic treadmill, meaning that we continually adapt to improving circumstances to the point that we always return to a point of relative neutrality, and often quite quickly (Brickman & Campbell, 1971).
Second, happiness – more specifically positive mood – is influenced by genetics, leading theorists to propose a genetically determined set-point for happiness above which one cannot rise. For example, Lykken and Tellegen (1996) did a twin study of happiness and found evidence for substantial heritability. In presenting their findings, they addressed the possibility of boosting happiness and offered the dour conclusion that ‘Trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller’ (p.189).
Third, happiness is inherently relative. The typical way that researchers ascertain happiness is by asking someone to rate their own happiness, satisfaction or well-being on a numerical scale. Remember the old vaudeville joke: ‘How’s your wife?’ ‘Compared to what?’ Happiness is a comparative judgement anchored in the individual’s experience – in particular, whatever is salient at the time the judgement is made.
Here is a study that should give pause to all of us who use self-report rating scales to study happiness (Strack et al., 1988). Young adults were asked to rate how satisfied they were with their lives, and then they were asked to rate how frequently they dated. A correlation was computed between these two ratings, and it was minimal in size. Other young adults were asked to make the same ratings except in the opposite order, and a substantial correlation was found. If people are reminded that they date frequently or infrequently – presumably a ‘fact’ that informs how happy one should be – then the ensuing judgement of happiness is influenced by this now salient information.
When asking research participants to report on their happiness, researchers usually provide at best a vague frame (‘In general…’). Judgements are still relative, and people presumably make a comparison between what they believe about themselves and what they believe about other people who are in their immediate vicinity or who are otherwise relevant. This may explain a pervasive finding, that most people rate themselves as somewhat above the midpoint of a happiness scale, whether they are multimillionaires in the United States (Diener et al., 1985) or homeless prostitutes in Calcutta (Biswas-Diener & Diener, 2001). These findings are usually presented as showing that ‘most people are happy’, but another way to describe them is to say that ‘most people judge themselves to be happier than they think other people are’ (cf. Diener & Diener, 1998).
Fourth, where the data exist, the average happiness of people in given nations appears remarkably constant over recent decades. There are differences across nations in terms of the average happiness of citizens, with rich nations typically having happier residents than poor nations. But the average happiness apparently stays much the same in a given nation, despite sometimes dramatic changes in affluence.
Consider the United States, where citizens today have much more economic power and many more material comforts than their counterparts a generation ago (Myers, 1993). But on average, Americans have not become any happier, a finding that has been described as a paradox (Easterbrook, 2003). But there may be no paradox at all if happiness ratings are viewed as relative judgements. When reporting on their own happiness, people are probably not thinking about the earlier lives of their parents or grandparents, or even their own earlier life.