The science of happiness (and your mum is not always right!)

I have often had this thought “Why can one not be happy always?” We tend to be joyful for a while and then continue our quest for something new and there goes happiness out of the window. 

Recently, I stumbled on some literature on the theme by Seligman and Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University—both of whom have spent a lifetime researching and raising questions on the nature of happiness, and whether it can be measured and researched scientifically in much the same way global warming and cancer are. The questions they’re working on are interesting. For instance, what happens to people after they get something they’ve always wanted? Are they happier for it? Or is it possible they remain unhappy after getting what they want? While on unhappiness, Gilbert’s hypothesis is that most people are that way for one of two reasons. Either because they are surrounded by people who offer the wrong advice; or they aim for the wrong things. By way of example on wrong advice, he talks of his younger days when newspapers and magazines were pummeled by advertisements that encouraged people to smoke, drink cola and watch television as a family. By engaging in all of these activities, ads promised, everybody would be happier. With the benefit of hindsight and contemporary research, we now know smoking can kill, cola is bad and unfettered television makes zombies out of people. 

“Is happiness elusive?” Gilbert asks. “Well, of course we don’t get as much of it as we want. But we’re not supposed to be happy all the time. We want that, but nature designed us to have emotions for a reason. Emotions are a primitive signalling system. They’re how your brain tells you if you’re doing things that enhance—or diminish—your survival chances. What good is a compass if it’s always stuck on north? It must be able to fluctuate. You’re supposed to be moving through these emotional states. If someone offers you a pill that makes you happy 100 percent of the time, you should run fast in the other direction. It’s not good to feel happy in a dark alley at night. Happiness is a noun, so we think it’s something we can own. But happiness is a place to visit, not a place to live. It’s like the child’s idea that if you drive far and fast enough you can get to the horizon—no, the horizon’s not a place you get to.”

Then, there are mothers across all cultures who offer three pieces of unsolicited advice. They think it timeless and hopelessly true.

• Get married to a good girl (or man)

• Find a good job and stick to it

• Have children

Thing is, as much as mum’s advice sounds commonsensical, it hadn’t been measured scientifically. Among other things, that is pretty much what Gilbert and Seligman do for a living—question fondly held assumptions and try to understand if they stand up to scrutiny in the face of scientific data. Let’s take one thing at a time, beginning with marriage. Without getting into the various complexities and variables that govern this dynamic relationship, their research indicates that all other things remaining the same, when the number of years spent in a marriage are plotted on the X-axis against happiness on the Y-axis, the bell curve that emerges shows a consistent pattern. For a majority of the population, happiness begins to show an upward trend when they get hitched to somebody. The trend continues upwards until years five and six on the outside, and begins to decline until it plateaus around year 10 to finally rest at the same point it was at before you got married.

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             All research indicates money can indeed buy you happiness. Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman and his compatriot Angus Deaton computed this number at a per capita income of $75,000. “We suspect that this means, in part, that when people have a lot more money, they can buy a lot more pleasures, but there are some indications that when you have a lot of money you will savour each pleasure less,” Kahneman said. “Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals’ ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure.” In India’s case, even when measured in terms of purchasing power parity, the per capita gross national income is a wretched $5,350. But if I were to subject myself to definitions provided by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), I am rich—like practically every reader of this blog is—with an annual income in excess of Rs.1.5 lakh. I suspect everybody who is rich as defined by NCAER, will agree this isn’t the kind of number exactly conducive to happiness. So, any spike in income matters until I can afford a nice home in a plush neighbourhood or a car that suits my fancy, much like a citizen of a wealthy Arab nation or Switzerland. To get there though, I have a long way to go and ought to look at every opportunity that comes my way until I reach the global average of $75,000. In doing that, mum’s advice to stick to a decent job at a nice place for as long as you can ought to be trashed.

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    Then there are children. This may break your heart. But the question must be faced. “Why do we have an intuition children make us happy when data suggests they don’t?” asks Gilbert. By way of explanation, he says, “Basic theory in economics suggest you love what you pay a lot for.” “Children are creatures you invest in with blood, sweat and tears and money. So you go around telling people you must have children too because it will make you happy. There is data to suggest this,” says Gilbert. To prove the point, he talks of an experiment where parents were brought into a laboratory and given two articles to read. One suggested how happy children make you feel and the other how expensive children are to rear. That done, both sets of parents were questioned. The ones who read the piece that argued children are expensive to rear argued explosively that the joy children bring outweighs the costs. This, however, is the kind of reaction heroin induces, Gilbert argues. It makes you feel so good that it crowds out every other thing in your life. The net effect is that it will ruin your life. “Looking at a baby is much like having heroin. They crowd out every pleasure from life and demand more of your time. The net effect of having children is that they reduce happiness,” he says. The way people remember memories is by keeping track of the highs. That is how it works with children. All they have to do is say one cute thing and it brings us joy and compels us to go around telling everybody why having children is great. But those moments are rare and when clinically tracked, few and far between. To put that into perspective, you may not want to spend a lot on that crazy expensive iPhone. But once you do, you fall in love with it. Having done that, you go around telling everybody they ought to have it as well because it will make them happy. So, mummy was wrong again in arguing that more children bring more happiness.

If these guys are so smart and have figured everything down to the T, is there a formula that can be deployed to compute and acquire happiness? Yes, says Seligman, and offers an equation to come up with a robust answer. 

H = S + C + V, where H is your enduring level of happiness, S is your set range, C refers to the circumstances of your life, V represents factors under your voluntary control. 

It is important here to distinguish between enduring happiness and momentary happiness. “Momentary happiness can easily be increased by any number of uplifts such as a chocolate, a comedy film, a back rub, a compliment, flowers, or a new blouse,” writes Seligman. And while it’s okay to deploy some resources every once in a while towards the moment, in the longer run, all of your efforts ought to be deployed to achieve enduring happiness. To begin getting here, it is important to first understand your genetic predisposition—or the set range. If your biological parents were unhappy people, Seligman’s research suggests even if you were placed in a foster home with happy parents, you may just turn out to be unhappy. Unless you actively work on acknowledging it in the first instance, working at changing the circumstances that surround you and being in control of all the variables you possibly can. So it is time to rethink all that mum told you, however noble her intentions were. 

Want to know how happy you really are? Go ahead and take a test at www.authentichappiness.com

This is a test designed by Martin Seligman himself.

NOTE: Though written by me, certain parts of this blog post have been taken from various sources and the figures mentioned in the post are factually correct.