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Dorikka comments on How to Be Happy - Less Wrong
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Luke,
With regard to how you're using the word in your post, does everyone want to be happy by definition, or is it a specific set of feelings which different people may attach different emotional utility to?
Subjective well-being is a complex but useful concept. At the moment, it appears that humans can in principle desire almost any state of affairs. It just so happens that all (or nearly all) humans desire subjective well-being (or happiness). Key books on these subjects, focusing on neuroscience, include the recent Pleasures of the Brain volume edited by Kringelbach and Berridge, and the philosophy book by Tim Schroeder, Three Faces of Desire.
But it's not the only thing people desire or work for, yes? Is something along the lines of 'satisfaction' included in happiness?
Correct. People desire more than just subjective well-being.
Let me switch to pleasure briefly. One leading theory is that pleasure is largely the result of a positive difference between expected desire satisfaction and perceived desire satisfaction. That is, if your desire seems to have been satisfied somewhat more than expected, the reward system in the brain tells the pleasure system to fire off some pleasure signals. But we are uncertain of this right now.