Researchers seek routes to happier life

Posted by Helen on: 12.04.2006 /

I’ve been interested in ‘happiness research’ for a while. (By the way, there’s a new poll up, about happiness) Last week I ran across this article: Researchers seek routes to happier life

From the article:

For decades, a widely accepted view has been that people are stuck with a basic setting on their happiness thermostat. It says the effects of good or bad life events like marriage, a raise, divorce, or disability will simply fade with time.

We adapt to them just like we stop noticing a bad odor from behind the living room couch after a while, this theory says. So this adaptation would seem to doom any deliberate attempt to raise a person’s basic happiness setting.

As two researchers put it in 1996, “It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller.”

But recent long-term studies have revealed that the happiness thermostat is more malleable than the popular theory maintained, at least in its extreme form. “Set-point is not destiny,” says psychologist Ed Diener of the University of Illinois.

read the whole article

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4 Responses to "Researchers seek routes to happier life"

Comment by: Karen
1 12/4/06 2:41 PM | Comment Link |
Helen, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the TedTalks. I encountered them thanks to a recommendation by Siamang.

Anyway, they’re very short talks on various subjects by cutting edge folks. They’ve done a couple on the pursuit of happiness that I found really great. Go to the link above and scroll down to Sept. 26, 2006.
Comment by: NCxian
2 12/4/06 2:55 PM | Comment Link |
“Despite what we read in the popular press,” he writes, “the only known symptom of ‘empty nest syndrome’ is increased smiling.”

I thought this was hilarious!

I like the comparison to “set-point” which I am familiar with from reading up on diets my whole life. Your body seems to want to be a certain size–you can fight it, and overcome it, but it’s a fight. I imagine that to be something like happiness. Your upbringing (and perhaps your genes) predispose you to have certain expectations of life. It is hard to change that in any significant way, I think, but I imagine it can be done.

I did the “Signature Strengths” survey at Seligman’s site a few years ago. At that time it was free, I’m not sure if that is still the case. Like most of those “preference” kinds of tests (eg Meyers Briggs) it pretty much tells you what you think about yourself. Which can be useful, but is not any kind of magic, IMO. Just fun.
Comment by: benjamin ady
3 12/4/06 4:52 PM | Comment Link |
Seligman has done a lot of really fascinating research and has used rigourous scientific studies to determine what things lastingly increase happiness and what things don’t. You can poke around over at his reflectivehappiness.org. The signature strengths test and lost of other stuff is free. I’ve read a good bit of his stuff and it’s very accessible. It turns out that Victor Hugo was wrong with his

Reflecting minds make little use of this expression: the happy and the unhappy. In this world, the vestibule of another evidently, there is none happy.

The true division of humanity is this: the luminous and the dark.

To diminish the number of the dark, to increase the number of the luminous, behold the aim. This is why we cry: education, knowledge! to learn to read is to kindle a fire; every syllable spelled sparkles.

But he who says light does not necessarily say joy. There is suffering in the light; in excess it burns. Flame is hostile to the wing. To burn and yet to fly, this is the miracle of genius.

When you know and when you love you shall suffer still. The day dawns in tears. The luminous weep, were it only over the dark.

although it certainly rings enormously true in the ear–even more true than seligman’s writing. I suppose that’s just another paradox.
Comment by: JG
4 12/4/06 5:35 PM | Comment Link |
Not sure about this one. I might be going off at a tangent but two thoughts occur to me:

1) People do have different personality types. If you chart degrees of happiness over time on a graph, for some people, it may be a fairly steady line hovering around or just above “par” - for others, there may be plenty of ups and downs. Who is happier - the rperson who never experiences the lows? Or the person who experiences the highs? In some ways, I’m not sure you can compare, it is simply different. As someone who suffers highs and lows, I would not change my personality type - though would gladly modify its negative side.

2) I think there is some truth in the principle that those who seek happiness for others rather than for themselves experience the greatest degree of happiness. Perhaps because ups and downs in their own life don’t determine their state of happiness. I’ve known people go through the most awful experiences in life and yet who have radiated peace and joy and given considerable help and pleasure to others despite being in the midst of difficulties themselves.