This isn't a fault of the post per se, but I wish there wasn't so damn much equivocation on the word "happiness". I know what sadness, contempt, contentment, rapture, &c. are—introspectively they strike me as a rather distinct states. But "happiness" means like ten or fifteen different things that are only somewhat related to each other. (FWIW smiling makes me feel bitter-sweet, not happy, so this might be an undue generalization from one example.)
Also, at least many kinds of happiness are measures of value, not ends in themselves, and so chasing after them specifically is getting dangerously close to wireheading or the problems of Goodhart's law more generally.
Some feelings that have some "happiness"-nature: joy (piti), rapture (piti), bliss (sukha), loving-kindness (metta), adoration, sadness (paradoxically?), bitter-sweet-ness, exaltation, triumph, relief, a variation on wistfulness related to loving-kindness, power, pleasure, communing with God (maybe rapture/adoration/exaltation hybrid?), sehnsucht (sort of?). There are more but the list at least indicates the variety.
I felt the urge to upvote this article on a "more please" basis, but actually tl;dr'ed past the content once I'd read the summary. Anyone else?
Yep, me too. I don't think that's a problem, though. The content is practically an annotated bibliography, which needs to be there to substantiate the summary but doesn't need to be read unless you really want to.
No no, outline summaries are a great idea! Just keep in mind that may be all someone reads ;-)
This may be paranoid of me, but I'm always worried that when posts like this use the word "you", people will read it as "you", when they should be reading it as "the average person, who is similar to you to some extent (e.g. in possessing such brain machinery as is humanly universal), and whose properties inform you about your own properties to a degree that depends on background information".
It would be pretty neat if we had some happiness research that was disaggregated by such variables as intelligence, cognitive reflectiveness, and introversion. Does anyone know of such research?
E.g., I've seen a few studies purporting that "high intelligence" (which IIRC meant like 1.5 SD above average SAT scores) provides substantial protection against common cognitive biases. Yet I've never seen anyone take this into account when discussing "de-biasing".
Don’t do ‘comparison shopping.’
I used to do less comparison shopping than I do now, and would occasionally regret certain purchases. I almost never have such regrets now. And comparison shopping itself feels more like play than work. Does this seem like enough reason to think that the advice doesn't apply to me, or is there something I'm overlooking?
Hi. First of all thanks for the immensely helpful summary of the literature!
Since you have gone through so much of the literature, I was wondering if you have come across any theories about the functional role of happiness?
I'm currently only aware of Kaj Sotala's post some time ago about how happiness regulates risk-taking. I personally think happiness does this because risk-taking is socially advantageous for high status folks. The theory is that happiness is basically a behavioural strategy pursued by those who have high status. As in, happiness is performed, not pursued. Depression and anxiety would be the opposite of happiness. I remember some studies showing how in primates the low status ones exhibit depression-like and anxious behavior.
It may simply be my ignorance of the literature, but it seems strange that all these (otherwise wonderful) empirical investigations into happiness are motivated only by a common folk theory of its function.
The outlines of the performance theory seem good, and it feels introspectively correct as well. But if happiness is a high-status marker, why is it unattractive to women?
I took a look at the paper, and in particular the sample image they include:
My first impression was a lot more attraction to the female 'pride' picture than any of the other female images - while pride in females was found to be highly unattractive. Now I want to determine whether my preferences differ from some norm or whether this picture is an unusual case.
I do allow that much of my preference may have been determined simply due to the combination of hideously unflattering t-shirts and arms being up in the air compensating for that and actually making breasts evident. If giving all the people ghostly shirts was supposed to be some clever attempt to isolate the influence of clothing then it seems somewhat shortsighted. (Mind you if males were consistently not attracted to the 'pride' female despite it being the only one with apparent breasts then that is just all the more significant!)
Were those pictures seriously used in a psychological study? It strikes me as obvious that the 'pride' images would stand out for having much more implied animation. Though I could see attractiveness swinging both ways depending on viewer personality.
Edit: These seem to have been used in the actual study (via). Maybe that really is just an example?
Edit: These seem to have been used in the actual study (via). Maybe that really is just an example?
If those are the pictures, it looks an awful lot like they completely failed to control for the identities of the people in the pictures. For example, the "pride" group is better described as the "professional athlete" group.
I buy cat food and give it to random cats I meet in the city. This has extremely good cost:benefit ratio for happiness. The food is cheap and I only give each cat a little, but the act of feeding the cat makes me happy for a few hours. Because those cats are not mine, I have no additional costs. Try to beat that! :P
This is amazing! Well researched. I want to see an article like this on so many topics.
Humans pine for excess leisure but revealed preference shows that they find excess leisure stressful. People go stir crazy after 2-3 months. I can't say I wouldn't eventually find leisure boring, but I was unemployed for 8 months a couple years ago and it was unequivocally the greatest time in my life. The only lasting negative thoughts I had during that time were thoughts related to it ending. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm some wonderfully atypical snowflake, I suspect that many creative/intellectual types would love carte blanche to pursue random projects. But this proportion of the general populace is far smaller than the portion who profess to want it.
Excellent article! The only problem I had was that almost every article cited in the spending on others section was written by one group, it would be nice to see other supporters, if they exist.
This makes Robin Hanson's depiction of future brain emulation societies pretty bleak if the basic happiness structure of human minds isn't changed drastically. In his prediction, emulations (ems) will mostly live at near subsistence level and will have to work almost solely on heteronomous goals given by a manager that can probably compel you to provide extreme degrees of cognitive transparency.
Even in modern Western society, there's a big problem with heteronomous goals. I think this is one area where self-hacking is extremely important. I'm planning to w...
This is Tao Te Ching for the 21st century, and I mean that in a good way. I appreciate the time you took to research and aggregate the information.
Gut reaction: Working out has an externality. Muscle tone applies a cost on others who must devote more of their time (which can be measured in dollars, by the way) toward the positional signalling game of fitness. Does this mean we should avoid conspicuous health?
Second reaction: I don't like this advice. Maybe I value other goals higher than happiness.
Because the linked-to study simply says "conspicuous consumption has negative externalities" and the conclusion given is "Avoid Conspicuous Consumption." I call foul.
‘positional goods’ which, by definition, cannot be augmented, because they rely solely on not being available to others.
-
... the production of positional goods in the form of luxuries, such as exceedingly expensive watches or yachts, is a waste of productive resources, as overall happiness is thereby decreased rather than increased.
^ This is specific to wealth and cannot (necessarily) be said of other forms of status, such as fitness.
It's not a request to upvote - it's a statement of approval. And as per Why our kind can't cooperate, vacuous statements of approval or agreement are upvote-worthy, if only because of their rarity.
Well done!
Learn about the science of happiness. Internalize the lessons in this article and in here.
The link at the end of this sentence is broken.
Mode note: Fixed the old semi-broken HTML formatting for this post. Old formatting is still available as a revision.
Hm, I don't see anything in there at this moment; and I'm not confident enough to say that I know everything in the article but...
Is there any research on how entertainment *types affects happiness levels? I don't mean genres necessarily, but let's say, low cognitive load works like Bond movies, summer action flicks and slapstick comedies versus 'artsy' high cognitive load works like Schindler's list, Shakespeare plays and hard scifi.
So what I have is two apparently conflicting pieces of information. I know that people like to put off the latter for the fo...
This needs to be broken up into smaller, more digestible sub-articles. It's too much to take in all at once.
Spend on others, especially people you are close to.
This one sounds dubious to me if you happen to be rich. I always thought that if I were rich, I would make a public precommitment only to give away money to worthy charities, so as to avoid worry that anyone trying to get close to me was really trying to get close to the money. Maybe it doesn't work out that way?
These are some key takeaways (stolen without permission from elsewhere...)
Appreciate
Care
Alright... after reading through much of this, a certain line struck me over and over again.
Actively want to be happier. Motivation and investment matter.
I have only one question.
Why?
(To clarify: I mean: Why be happy? Why want to be happy? How is it useful? What 'good' is happiness?)
Great post! I'm going to use as much of it as I can.
I think it might be difficult to apply some of these, since I notice a good deal of my unhappiness is not affected by changes in thought or outward motions, and it can be hard to translate knowing you should try something into actually applying it. (But both of these can be mitigated: smiling, for instance, really does make me feel a bit happier even if I'm forcing the smile, and I'm sure there are plenty of articles about akrasia, here on LessWrong.)
...Prefer experiential purchases; avoid materialistic g
Overall, it is a good explanation supported by evidence, however I would like to see a followup with perhaps some different ways to implement that kind of thinking.
The following quote is misattributed to Ahuvia, (2002)
This research also supports the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions by demonstrating that higher levels of happiness may expand an individual’s mindset to include thoughts of others.
The quote comes from Aknin, Dunn, & Norton, (2011a), p. 352.
Also, this post has been absurdly useful to me. Fantastic job! :)
This started as an assignment to find out about the science of ‘buying happiness’ (using money to become happier) — hence the emphasis on money-and-happiness. I learned a great deal more than how to buy happiness, however, and the project became somewhat more generalized. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but perhaps it makes for a useful supplement to Luke’s How to be Happy. This post consists mostly of quoted material.
In A Nutshell
Money and Happiness
Work Satisfaction
Materialism and Purchasing
Interpersonal
Stretching Happiness (fighting hedonic adaptation)
Appreciation
Optimal Happification
Some Key Terms
Money and Happiness
Spend on others, especially people you are close to.
(Aknin, Sandstrom, Dunn, & Norton, 2011b)
(Ahuvia, 2002)
(Aknin, Dunn, & Norton, 2011a)
Positive feedback loop:
(Aknin, Dunn, & Norton, 2011a)
Being generous will make you happier.
(Aknin et al., 2010)
(Dunn, Aknin, & Norton, 2008)
(Aknin et al., 2010)
Don't be Stingy.
Aside from the positive effect of generosity on your own happiness, stinginess makes you less healthy; it is easier to be happy when you are healthy.
(Dunn et al., 2010)
Caveat: hedonic adaptation moderates the deleterious effect of bad health on well-being, but not entirely — and negative experiences are more powerful than positive experiences:
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
(More on negative experiences farther down in ‘STRETCHING HAPPINESS’.)
Think about time, but don’t think of time in terms of money (“An hour of my time is worth…”).
(DeVoe & House, 2012)
(Aaker et al., 2010)
In an word priming experiment done in a cafe:
(Mogilner, 2010)
Being richer will not necessarily make you happier.
(Kahneman, 2006)
(Stutzer & Frey, 2010)
(Kahneman & Deaton, 2010)
Pitfall of being wealthy: your ability to savor positive emotions and experiences will be impaired. Don’t make money your priority.
(Quoidbach et al., 2010)
(Diener & Seligman, 2004)
Financial aspirations are bad for family life (and the quality of interpersonal relationships is a strong predictor of happiness).
(Nickerson et al., 2003)
Don’t live ‘high’.
(Diener & Seligman, 2004)
(Perhaps the more important point here is that you must surround yourself with low-materialism people, which means surrounding yourself with happy people, since materialism correlates negatively with happiness. A caveat to the advice of living in middle class areas if wealthy: the presence of a wealthy neighbor can make people more materialistic; it makes them aspire for more. A wealthy person can make his less wealthy neighbors less happy. See below.)
Avoid conspicuous consumption.
(Frey & Stutzer, 2002)
(This relates to the recommendation to associate with happy people — farther down.)
More Recommendations
WORK SATISFACTION
Coping with Stress: React pragmatically rather than emotionally.
(Drnovšek et al., 2010)
Leaders and Entrepreneurs: Don’t take on too many business partners. (See also AUTONOMY below)
(Drnovšek et al., 2010)
Prefer the ‘approach’ path instead of the ‘avoid’ path.
It is good for your well-being to work towards achieving something, rather than preventing something from happening.
(Ryan & Deci, 2001)
AUTONOMY: Make a point of prefering autonomous goals rather than heteronomous goals (goals imposed/expected by others).
(Ryan & Deci, 2001)
(Aaker et al., 2010)
(Block & Koellinger, 2009)
AUTONOMY: Make sure you have spare discretionary time — even at financial cost.
(Aaker et al., 2010)
Be passionate, but don’t obsess. “Passion Does Make a Difference to People’s Well-Being” (Philippe, Vallerand, & Lavigne, 2009)
Key terms: hedonic well-being; eudaimonic well-being
(Kahneman & Deaton, 2010)
(Philippe et al., 2009)
Do work that you enjoy doing. Flow.
(Nicolao, Irwin, & Goodman, 2009)
(Philippe et al., 2009)
(Ahuvia, 2002)
Set goals that are reasonably challenging and reasonably achievable.
(Ryan & Deci, 2001)
Prefer intrinsic (vs. extrinsic) goals
Definition:
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
MATERIALISM AND PURCHASING
The Hedonic Treadmill: We adapt to life changes. Many things that give pleasure will soon cease to do so, thereby driving us to seek more, and more…
(Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2012)
Prefer experiential purchases; avoid materialistic goals. It is better to collect (positive) experiences than to collect things.
(But do not keep repeating the same positive experience, lest hedonic adaptation set in quicker. See "Stretching Happiness" farther down.)
(Howell et al., 2012)
(Thomas, 2010)
(Nicolao et al., 2009)
(Diener & Seligman, 2004)
(Hudders & Pandelaere, 2011)
(Howell et al., 2012)
(Nicolao et al., 2009)
(Howell et al., 2012)
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
(Nicolao et al., 2009)
Don’t engage in ‘comparison shopping.’ And don’t place much stock in the happiness potential of any one positive change.
Comparison shopping makes us aware of previously unimportant differences and makes us forget the salient qualities of what we want.
(Dunn et al., 2011)
(Kahneman, 2006)
'Follow the herd.' (Dunn et al., 2011)
(Dunn et al., 2011)
INTERPERSONAL
Socialize — with the right people.
(Diener & Seligman, 2004)
(Aaker et al., 2010)
(Diener & Seligman, 2002)
(Kahneman & Deaton, 2010)
Associate with happy people.
(Aknin, Sandstrom, Dunn, & Norton, 2011b)
(Fowler & Christakis, 2008)
Give the people around you opportunities to be generous. Ask them for favors.
You can possibly make people around you happier by allowing them to be kind and generous, and you want to surround yourself with happy people (see above). Aside from making them happier, you will also improve your relationship with them via the Benjamin Franklin effect, which — unintuitively — makes people like you more if you ask them for favors.
Be actively kind (and occasionaly reminisce about your recent acts of kindness).
(Otake et al., 2006)
STRETCHING HAPPINESS (fighting hedonic adaptation)
Hedonic adaptation — definition:
(Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2012)
Choose smaller, more frequent successes rather than larger ones.
Even big positive changes can get old fast, and soon stop bringing happiness.
(Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2012)
Go for variety and surprise. Don’t keep doing the same thing.
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
(Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2012)
Savor the anticipation. Delay consumption. Actively anticipate good experiences.
(Aaker et al., 2010)
(Perhaps the above can inform the discourse on the [ir]rationality of lotteries.)
Divide positive experiences into smaller pleasures, if possible.
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
Dividing into smaller doses also increases the amount of pleasurable anticipation. See previous subsection.
Corollary: Conclude negative experiences as soon as possible.
Don’t "think about it tomorrow.” Prolongation increases the effect of both negative and positive experiences, and bad is stronger than good:
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
Make a point of avoiding experiences that make you feel bad.
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
APPRECIATION
Be grateful. Count your blessings (literally). Recycle happiness. Reminisce about good experiences.
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
Think of counterfactuals. (“If I didn’t have this, what do I lose?”)
(Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011)
Breathe deeply. Expand your time — by slowing down.
(Aaker et al., 2010)
Stay in the present.
(Aaker et al., 2010)
OPTIMAL HAPPIFICATION
Actively want to be happier. Motivation and investment matter.
(Lyubomirsky et al., 2011)
Learn about the science of happiness. Internalize the recommendations in this article and in here.
(Quoidbach et al., 2010)
(Dunn et al., 2011)
EXTRA CONSIDERATIONS
(Diener & Seligman, 2004)
(^But try not to think of it that way!)
(Graham, Eggers & Sukhtankar, 2004)
(Diener & Seligman, 2004)
It will be easier to stay happy when you become happier
(Aknin, Dunn, & Norton, 2011a)
Happiness Interventions Work!
(Diener et al., 2009)
(Diener et al., 2009)
Extra extra: Cultural Differences
(Ahuvia, 2002)
References
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