The Trouble with Happiness Research by Bob Nozik, MD

I. Introduction -  Current Happiness Research:  Happiness research is a new phenomenon.  In the past, happiness was thought too subjective, too ‘touchy-feely’ to be researched.  However, with the advent of positive psychology, happiness is now being studied as never before.

One branch of happiness research is being conducted by scientists using brain imaging techniques such as fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging).  It is still too early to know if these imaging studies will help us know who is happy and why.   Therefore, this promising line of happiness research will not be discussed here.

          Positive psychologists have been very active in producing data for evaluating how happy different populations are and even appraising methods for increasing human happiness.  Their evaluations utilize various forms of self-evaluation for purposes of measuring their subjects’ happiness.  Some studies involve brief to involved questionnaires, personal interviews, and some even utilize mobile devices which require test subjects to rate their current happiness when the device emits a signal.  In some studies, friends, acquaintances, or family members are asked to evaluate the subjects’ happiness.  These subjective approaches, despite their flaws, form the gold standard for current happiness research.

                   Using these methods, most happiness studies are relatively consistent in reporting that approximately 70% of those surveyed claim to be happy or very happy.  While these results are reproducible, we should ask ourselves if they are reasonable and in keeping with our observations of friends and others we encounter in daily life. Consider that today there is almost an epidemic of people who regularly use antidepressants just so they can face the challenges of everyday life.

          Other factors also call into question the reliability of these subjective happiness data.  Recent favorable or unfavorable life circumstances may influence subjective responses, leading to artificially higher or lower self-scoring.  Also, subjects often compare their own happiness to that of their friends and acquaintances.  This could cause some to either over- or under-estimate their own happiness.   Also, some subjects, noting that they live in a free society with many material advantages, may feel they should be happy and thus over score their happiness.  Similarly, those subjects living under poor life circumstances may report falsely reduced scores.

          But an even greater problem than the weak gold standard being used for evaluating happiness is the question of: what is happiness?

II      What is happiness?

          There are two distinctly different kinds of happiness that humans can experience.  These are: Hedonic Happiness (HH) and Eudaimonic Happiness (EH).  Much of the difficulty confronting happiness research comes from the failure to clearly differentiate between these two.  

          Hedonic happiness is the common, ordinary happiness that every one of us experiences  multiple times every day of our lives.  This type of happiness occurs when we experience or encounter something that we like.  Small things like when our favorite football team wins a hard-fought game, or when we find a great parking spot in a crowded neighborhood.  Or it may be big things such as when the love of our life says ’Yes’, or should we win 10 million dollars in the lottery.  HH is experienced as an emotion and makes its appearance as a sudden burst of joy the moment we sense it.  However, we have little influence over when it appears and no control whatsoever over how long it lasts or its intensity; and once it’s over, it’s gone and we have no way for getting it back to enjoy again.  Clearly, as delightful as it is, HH cannot give us the long lasting, enduringly happy life we all crave.

          Eudaimonic happiness, is similar to HH in that if feels wonderful, but is different in almost every other way.  EH is not an emotion but rather a life path, a way of living.  In this sense it is similar to other life paths like optimism and pessimism, introversion and extroversion.  Although these may be changed through concerted effort, life paths don’t just come and go as emotions do, but rather form a consistent pattern characterizing who we are.  In contrast to HH, EH is rare in our society.  While there are no actual studies of its frequency, I would estimate that no more than one in a thousand of us live with EH.  Also, its relationship to external events is complex.  Whereas, HH is completely dependent upon external sources for its existence, EH develops entirely from within us.  It is similar, if not identical, to what has been called the happiness set point (Lykken, David, Happiness: What Studies on Twins Show Us About Nature, Nurture, and the Happiness Set Point, Golden Books, NY, 1999).  The happiness set point is genetically determined but not immutable.  Because it originates inside of us, we retain the capacity to change it through effective intentional activity.

EH differs in many other ways from HH.  While external events play upon EH, they don’t control it.  So, if something happens we either like or dislike, this causes our mood to rise or fall appropriately above or below our baseline (set point).  But soon, as always with hedonic happiness, this rise or fall is temporary and our mood promptly returns to its baseline level.   

Because it is internally generated, EH is subject to internal control once we learn how to do it.  Also, and most importantly, it is enduring, lasting in most cases an entire lifetime.  It is this sustainability which qualifies it as a Life Path or Way as opposed to a simple emotion.  It is also perceived differently from HH.  Instead of being felt as a sudden, joyous explosion, EH is experienced instead as deep, inner contentment.

          Of course, the two types of happiness are not mutually exclusive and we can enjoy the explosive, episodic, soaring HH superimposed upon an abiding, pervasive, EH.

          The majority of people who live with EH were just fortunate to be born with a high happiness set point.  These people are happy from the get-go; to quote a phrase: ‘They just popped-out happy.’  They have no idea why they are happy almost all the time, they just are.

III    So how does the existence of two kinds of happiness affect happiness research?

          Because HH is common and EH rare, studies involving large, random groups will inevitably be composed primarily of individuals whose sole experience of happiness is of the hedonic variety.  For example, if only one in a thousand people lives with EH, not an unreasonable assumption, that means a study involving 1000 subjects will contain, on average, just one individual with EH.  This would be too few to influence any study results.

          Also, because the definition of happiness is fuzzy and usually unstated in research studies, the large majority of people are likely to assume that their experience of HH is what happiness is all about.  Additionally, this limited view is reinforced by the fact that all or most of the friends and acquaintances of the study participants have the same limited experience of happiness.

IV      Potential new research approaches for studying EH.

          We can look to clinical medical research for some ideas to help us.  Research of clinical diseases may proceed in any one of a number of different directions.  One direction might be to study what it is about those with the disease that allows that disease to develop.  Another approach might be to study the disease process itself.  But often the most fruitful path will be to study those who do not have or do not get the disease in order to discover what is different about them that keeps them from developing it.

          In keeping with our happiness metaphor, the “disease,” in this case, would be a lack or absence of EH.  Current research has focused on studying those with the “disease,” that is those who experience only HH, not EH.  Although there is some rationale for this approach, it is unlikely to bear fruit in no small part because few of this category of research subjects will understand the nature of what it is that they lack.  In fact, this approach makes about as much sense as trying to understand vision by studying those who were born blind, or attempting to study hearing by surveying the congenitally deaf.  I am reminded of the story of the man searching for his lost car keys under a lamp post one dark evening.  His friend hurries over to help and after searching a while asks the man where he thinks he lost them.  The man points over to bushes some way off.  His friend says, “So, why are we looking here and not there?”  The man replies: “Because the light‘s better over here.”

          Happiness research needs to change course.  What’s needed is less study of those with ’the disease’ (those who do not experience EH) and instead, design studies aimed at those who are free of ‘the disease,‘ those living with EH.  

V        Identifying those individuals living with EH for research

          This is no simple task.  As previously noted, there are few people today who live their lives with the experience of EH.  Adding to this difficulty is the fact that most of those enjoying EH have learned to hide their nearly constant happiness from others.  Those who do not experience EH often find those exhibiting ‘too much’ happiness to be irritating and assume their ’excessive’ display of happiness to be due either to stupidity or of being out of touch with reality.  This may, in part, be a form of jealousy, but for whatever reasons, those who experience EH learn to tone down their public expression of their nearly constant happiness.

          Still, with careful interviewing techniques, the differences between Eudaimonic and Hedonic happiness should help researchers identify those who live with EH.

          Another promising source for subjects with EH would be the authors who have published books aimed at helping others develop sustainable happiness.  There are two categories of people who write happiness books: scientists who study happiness, and non-scientists who write books on happiness because they have found their way to EH and now wish to help others to get there, too.  I refer to this latter group as the ‘Happiness Practitioners.’  It’s ironic but true that many of the scientists who study happiness are not especially happy themselves.  The happiness practitioners, on the other hand, are people who, either through fortunate genetics or intensive effort, actually live with and experience EH.  This self-identified group of Eudaimonic happiness practitioners would be available for study.

Conclusions

          Current happiness science is flawed for three reasons.  First, the current definitions of happiness do not clearly differentiate between HH and EH.  Second, the gold standard for determining who is happy and who is not is very weak, relying almost exclusively on surveys of large groups of people who are asked to evaluate and score their own level of happiness.  And, finally, because Hedonic happiness is universal and Eudaimonic happiness rare, all current happiness research is centered on the hedonic variety.

          Happiness science now needs to identify and study those people who are already living with Eudaimonic happiness: how discover how this group differs from the majority of people who experience only the Hedonic variety of happiness?  This approach is much more likely to help the vast majority of those who now only dream of living lives of sustained happiness.

          It is a big task for happiness science to undertake, but well worth the effort if we are to make real progress in our pursuit of happiness.