The Science of Happiness

March 28, 2004 3:21 PM

The Science of Happiness
posted by grumblebee (27 comments total)

Grumblebee, perhaps you could expand on this post a little? Why do you believe that this rant / revelation / blather worth our interest?

I don't want to be a bother, but there's not much new thinking here.
posted by SPrintF at 3:50 PM on March 28, 2004

From the link:-

"The first [cost] was moral, that we became victimologists and pathologizers. Our view of human nature was that mental illness fell on you like a ton of bricks, and we forgot about notions like choice, responsibility, preference, will, character, and the like. The second cost was that by working only on mental illness we forgot about making the lives of relatively untroubled people happier, more productive, and more fulfilling. And we completely forgot about genius, which became a dirty word. The third cost was that because we were trying to undo pathology we didn't develop interventions to make people happier; we developed interventions to make people less miserable."

Great link, grumblebee.
posted by SpaceCadet at 3:55 PM on March 28, 2004

More from the link:-

Coming out this month as part of the DSM is a classification of strengths and virtues; it's the opposite of the classification of the insanities. When we look we see that there are six virtues, which we find endorsed across cultures, and these break down into 24 strengths. The six virtues that we find are non-arbitrary — first, a wisdom and knowledge cluster; second, a courage cluster; third, virtues like love and humanity; fourth, a justice cluster; fifth a temperance, moderation cluster; and sixth a spirituality, transcendence cluster. We sent people up to northern Greenland, and down to the Masai, and are involved in a 70-nation study in which we look at the ubiquity of these. Indeed, we're beginning to have the view that those six virtues are just as much a part of human nature as walking on two feet are.

Sorry to keep quoting from it, I feel compelled - it's a fantastic read.
posted by SpaceCadet at 4:02 PM on March 28, 2004

Okay, I think it's fascinating that serious thought (and funding) is being given to the study of happiness. To me, that's new information.

Of course, there are many people who claim that they have know the secret key to happiness. But I've never heard of anyone systematically testing these claims.

On a personal level, I sure as hell would like to be happier, but as a skeptical atheist, it's pretty hard for me to trust any religion/self-help guru/etc. unless they can show me some strong evidence.

This seems like a step in the right direction.
posted by grumblebee at 4:05 PM on March 28, 2004

I also think the guy is a great writer. I really like the phrase, "the nasty thumb of science."
posted by grumblebee at 4:06 PM on March 28, 2004

...unless they can show me some strong evidence.

Don't count on it. What you're really looking for (and it is oh so hard to find) is faith. You're not alone. Don't give up.
posted by Witty at 4:22 PM on March 28, 2004

Oh happiness! There are as many ways to find happiness as there are people. There is a saying, however: "Happiness is the natural state of being". That all our fears, irritations, stresses, physical and mental pains etc mask this natural state. What pleasures us are the things that take these masks away, even if only temporarily.
posted by SpaceCadet at 4:23 PM on March 28, 2004

Gross National Happiness.
posted by homunculus at 4:24 PM on March 28, 2004

I was reasonably happy till I read this guy...now I am in need of meds and seriously depressed. A note in passing: many talk therapy guys discovered that HMOs limited money/time they would pay for talk cures so many doctors quickly switched over to a bit of talk and drugs, drugs, drugs...and HMOs thought of this as true science and paid for much longer periods of time.
posted by Postroad at 4:34 PM on March 28, 2004

Witty, are you joking? why do you say I am LOOKING for faith? I could understand if you said something, "stop looking what you're looking for and look for faith instead," but you're claiming that I'm actually looking for faith. Which I'm not. I don't even know what it would feel like to have faith.

SpaceCadet, did you read the article all the way through? Sure, there are many ways that people TRY to find happiness. The claim in the article -- and it's up to the writer to prove this, of course -- is that some of these ways work and some don't. (I'm sure he's not talking about everybody, but just for the majority of people).

Also, he makes a distinction between the type of happiness that you're talking about -- the type that temporarily eases our pain (i.e. recreational drugs) and a deeper sort of happiness, in which you're really involved in life.
posted by grumblebee at 4:37 PM on March 28, 2004

I have to say, some of the things Mr. Seligman says make me think he doesn't know that much about the subjects he's talking about.
For example, " ... a science of mental illness developed such that we found that we could measure fuzzy states like sadness, alcoholism, and schizophrenia with psychometric precision. "
I'm not sure I can have much respect for someone who says they've got the schizophrenia diagnosis down pat, especially when the concept of the "disease" is highly suspect, if not entirely bogus.

Another example is that he says that the methods of the Buddha to make people happy have been found ineffective. He then goes on to relate how his uses of getting people to express grattitude, have been shown to make people lastingly happy. So I'm not sure how much he knows about either psychology/psychiatry or Buddhism, now (although I have a limited knowledge of Buddhist training, gratitude seemed like a fairly large part of it - grattitude for one's mistakes, one's insights, one's dinner ... )

By any means, not everything the guy says in this introduction to his work is bunk; but colour me sceptical this guy has the secret.
posted by Blue Stone at 4:40 PM on March 28, 2004

I doubt he has the secret, and I'm not his champion. I find the article thought-provoking, but not necessarily right about everything.

But I'm curious about your claim that Buddhism makes people happy (you didn't exactly claim this, but you criticized Seligman's claim that it DIDN'T make people happy).

How do you know it makes people happy? Because you know happy Buddhists? Because you practice Buddhism yourself and you're happy? Both of these claims rely on annacotal evidence, and that's exactly what Seligman is trying to counter.

I agree that it's worthy to study happiness -- and methods of increasing happiness -- unsing scientific methods. Whether or not Seligman's methodology is sound is another matter.

As for schizophrenia, I think Seligman's main point is that for most of it's history, psychology has been about fixing what's broken, not bettering what's fixed.

And I don't think he ever claims he has the secret.
posted by grumblebee at 4:49 PM on March 28, 2004

Blue Stone: Interesting that you would say the President of the American Psychological Association "doesn't know that much about" psychiatric treatments. There is in fact a clear definition of schizophrenia. I don't think he was claiming that knowledge specifically for himself or his research. I think he means "we" as in the psychological community.

Seligman says that "several of the things that have been proposed — from the Buddha to Tony Robbins — don't work." He never said Buddhism doesn't work. He said that some of the interventions culled FROM various sources, including Buddhism, didn't work. As a practicing, skeptical Buddhist, I actually found that worthy of thought.

As someone who is extremely skeptical about treatments of this kind, I read the article very carefully. I didn't see any claim at all to a "secret." It sounds like he's had some personal insights, developed some ideas, and is conducting research into those ideas.
posted by divrsional at 5:08 PM on March 28, 2004

Witty, are you joking?

No. I'm just responding to your comment about wanting to be happier... here:

On a personal level, I sure as hell would like to be happier, but as a skeptical atheist, it's pretty hard for me to trust any religion/self-help guru/etc. unless they can show me some strong evidence.

So first you say that you wish to be happier. Then you immediately follow that with a comment on religion, or lack thereof. You may be an atheist, but it's interesting to me that you instantly follow a hope to be happier with a desire, although somewhat veiled perhaps, to be shown some "evidence" (which I may be misinterpreting) that would legitimize organized religion... in your opinion.

Religion is an excellent source of happiness for a lot of people. But the vast majority of religions, organized or otherwise, are based almost entirely on faith, not hard evidence.

So maybe I jumped the gun and read too far into your original comment. I apologize. But I was just merely suggesting that if religion is still a viable option in your life, you'd be better off spending your time searching for faith, than you would scrounging for evidence.
posted by Witty at 5:12 PM on March 28, 2004

I don't have anything against religion, Witty. My closest friend is a devout Christian, and we talk about it all the time. But I'm not sure how I would go about "searching for faith."

I'm an atheist because I don't believe. That's what being an atheist means. I never chose to not believe. I just don't believe.

My guess is that there are things like that in your life too. My guess is you'd like to have a million dollars. Can you make yourself believe that you have a million dollars? Can you have faith that you have a million dollars? No, you know you don't have a million dollars, and you know that if you search for the faith that you DO have a million dollars, you won't find that faith.

Similarly, I KNOW that there is no God. Now I don't think this is the place do debate theism, so I'm not interested in "how do you know" discussion (though you can email me if you really want to get into it). I will admit that I might be wrong, but I have an unshakably strong feeling that I'm right. How can I erase or change that feeling. It's out of my hands.

Religious people are always telling atheists that they'd be happier if they had faith, but they're never helpful when it comes to saying how one should go about getting it. The only tactics I've heard are "go through the rituals even if you don't believe and eventually you will" and "just trust in God."

Well, ritual has never worked for me. And I can't trust someone I don't believe in. Can you trust in bugs bunny?

So I know you mean well, but what you say is cruel and useless. It's like telling someone who is asking for help with his PC to get a Mac.

So if you have a constructive method by which one can get faith, I'd be very interested in hearing it. If not, it's better not to dangle your happiness in front of someone else unless you can show them how to get it.
posted by grumblebee at 5:27 PM on March 28, 2004

Getting back to the subject at hand, I think there's a problem with the statement "religion is an excellent source of happiness for a lot of people." It begs the question "how do you know?"

Sure, many people would claim that religion has made them happier, but the testtube is pretty dirty. Is it faith that makes them happy or going to Church or following rules or engaging in ritual? If you took a really thorough survey of religious vs. non-religious people, would you definitely discover that more of the religious people are happier than the non-religious people?

Seligman does suggest that working towards something "larger than yourself" leads to greater happiness. If true, that may be why religious people are happier. But while religions are about things larger than the self, one can work towards something larger than oneself without being religious (one's country, one's community, the arts, the sciences, etc.)
posted by grumblebee at 5:50 PM on March 28, 2004

I've read Martin Seligman's book Learned Optimism and I recommend it. It's not what I would call a self-help book, though it does outline techniques for learning to be optimistic, and it has features like a test for gauging depression (if you get over 25 you're supposed to seek professional help. I scored 48 out of a possible 60, oops) or how optimistic you are. (I believe I tested as realist with a negative bias.) Most of the book discusses his research and it's very interesting stuff indeed. Optimism is a huge benefit in life and although some people are born with it, most others do have the capacity to learn it.
posted by orange swan at 6:30 PM on March 28, 2004

it's fascinating that serious thought (and funding) is being given to the study of happiness

there was also the previous edge article on the 'science' of happiness! [viz affective forecasting, cf subjective well-being] also the subject of a NYT mag article last year! (and another one on putting meditating buddhist monks in a fMRI machine :) oh and one more on hyperthymia, "the condition of being uncommonly happy" :D and don't forget peter kramer's seminal listening to prozac!

from an economics perspective richard layard had a nice lecture series, "happiness: has social science a clue?" (1,2,3) and dan kohn has collected what amounts to a survey of happiness as it pertains to economics.

what's intriguing to me about this avenue of research -- the effective measurement of utility -- is it represents a holy grail of sorts for economists. or as joseph schumpeter puts it:

For the system of economic science the main importance of this theory lies in the fact that, if distribution can be described by means of the social marginal utilities of the factors of production, it is not necessary, for that purpose, to enter into a theory of prices. The theory of distribution follows, in this case, directly from the law of social value. This theory, indeed, seems to be the starting-point of the concept of social value and the main theoretical reason for its introduction; and it helps to set forth all economic phenomena, and especially those of wages and interest, in a very simple manner,--one that is much more lucid and attractive than that derived from an intricate and cumbersome theory of prices.

heretofore the 'cumbersome theory of prices' has been less so than 'a theory of social value' (which begins with understanding 'happiness') and while it still is the case, it looks like if finally may becoming tractable.
posted by kliuless at 6:32 PM on March 28, 2004

Buddhists do in my limited experience (in North America) seem on average more "happy" (if that's the right word for what they are) ... but correlation doesn't imply causation.

The six virtues that we find are non-arbitrary — first, a wisdom and knowledge cluster; second, a courage cluster; third, virtues like love and humanity; fourth, a justice cluster; fifth a temperance, moderation cluster; and sixth a spirituality, transcendence cluster.

hmmm. Interesting how closely those six virtues correspond to the first six circuits in Timothy Leary's model. The order is different, and they aren't quite exactly the same, but it's close enough that one could see it as a different take on the same thing.
posted by sfenders at 6:35 PM on March 28, 2004

Buddhists 'really are happier'
posted by homunculus at 6:55 PM on March 28, 2004

"how do you know?"
posted by kliuless at 7:03 PM on March 28, 2004

Julian Jaynes, a peculiar but wonderful man, was a research associate at Princeton when I was an undergraduate. Some people said he was a genius; I didn't know him well enough to know. He was given a South American lizard as a laboratory pet, and the problem about the lizard was that no one could figure out what it ate, so the lizard was dying. Julian killed flies, and the lizard wouldn't eat them; blended mangos and papayas, the lizard wouldn't eat them; Chinese take-out, the lizard had no interest. One day Julian came in and the lizard was in torpor, lying in the corner. He offered the lizard his lunch, but the lizard had no interest in ham on rye. He read the New York Times and he put the first section down on top of the ham on rye. The lizard took one look at this configuration, got up on its hind legs, stalked across the room, leapt up on the table, shredded the New York Times, and ate the ham sandwich. The moral is that lizards don't copulate and don't eat unless they go through the lizardly strengths and virtues first. They have to hunt, kill, shred, and stalk. And while we're a lot more complex than lizards, we have to as well. There are no shortcuts for us to reach flow. We have to indulge in our highest strengths in order to get eudaemonia. So can there be a shortcut? Can there be a pharmacology of it? I doubt it.

grumblebee, this is a great read. Even if others have thought the thoughts here, I think he's found a way of saying things freshly.

I will admit that I might be wrong, but I have an unshakably strong feeling that I'm right. How can I erase or change that feeling. It's out of my hands.

I don't want to promote the derail too much, but the Pauline phrase "faith is the evidence of things not seen" seems applicable here... and I think it even ties back in to the discussion. I'm aware that "faith" is regarded by many here as a willfully placed blindfold between the deluded and the facts, and I don't think I'll deny that one part of its meaning can be closely related to that.

But there's another faith that I have the sense of, and it's an assesment of possibilities before all the facts have weighed in, and the choosing of a possibility you prefer. Strong faith involves a real commitment to that possibility and the choices necessary to make it a reality -- even when some of the facts that have been taken and measured suggest there's a real possibility of failure and disappointment.

This kind of faith is not only exercised by religious people. It's exercised by kids going off to college, it's exercised by every person who moves from their smaller town to New York City or California, it's exercised every time people fall in love and marry, committing themselves fully to that vision of a life together which they've got. I daresay that more often than not people are wrong about what's actually going to happen versus the vision in their heads. We're imperfect judges of truth.

That doesn't change the fact that this faith is what makes the human world at least, go 'round. Without it, nobody would do anything. If you've ever had depression or known someone who has, you've seen what happens when this kind of faith I'm speaking of largely leaves someone. This is where I think things tie back into the article: we're like the lizard in this sense: we have to have faith -- these good possibilities that we hunt and stalk through a forest of doubts and obstacles -- or we simply sulk and starve.

For some people (myself included), this becomes irrevocably tied to encounters they have had with the divine... and once you understand faith in this way you see it scattered everywhere throughought scriptural stories and you see it as a difference between people you know who are happy, whether or not they believe the same things as you do. For some people, it's faith in a course for their life that has another (but real) meaning for them. So even though I have no idea whether Witty and I actually believe the same things, I agree with Witty when he says it is a vital force and centrally important.

Thanks for an excellent post, grumblebee -- it alone made MetaFilter worth visiting today. Hope I've made a contribution to the thread that won't be taken as too "fundy" and won't be incendiary.
posted by namespan at 9:39 PM on March 28, 2004

Good post, namespan:

But there's another faith that I have the sense of, and it's an assesment of possibilities before all the facts have weighed in, and the choosing of a possibility you prefer.

I understand the "assesment of possibilities" part, but not the "choosing of a possibility you prefer" part, unless you mean it very literally.

There is a possibility that my bank made an error and deposited 20 million dollars in my account, and I would definitely prefer that possibility to be true. But that doesn't make it true.

More likely: I would like to get an iPod for my birthday. I really might get one. But I can't act as if I'm going to get one and start buying CDs to put on it, because I don't know if I'm going to get one.

Maybe this is the difference between an atheist an a theist. Maybe theists have the ability to make themselves believe in anything they want to be true. I don't have this ability. I don't know how people do it.
posted by grumblebee at 6:57 AM on March 29, 2004

The possibility that one needs to have faith in is that life is worth living. Some people may never get to the point where they question that, but many (most?) do. There's no way to logically prove it, no scientific evidence that can be weighed for or against it. You just have to make your own belief in it. Faith is one way to do that.
posted by sfenders at 7:23 AM on March 29, 2004

So if you have a constructive method by which one can get faith, I'd be very interested in hearing it. If not, it's better not to dangle your happiness in front of someone else unless you can show them how to get it.

Take it easy. I'm not dangling anything. I don't necessarily know how you should go about finding faith, but I do know that that's what you need... if religion is ever the path you choose to take. Religious enlightenment is impossible without it.

To use your "real world" examples... if you asked me how to go about buying your own island, I would say, "get a million dollars". I don't know how to get a million dollars, but I do know that that's what it will take to buy your own island.

I'm more like you than you think grumblebee... when it comes to faith and belief and evidence and "how do people do it". So feel free to let me know if you ever come up with anything. :o)
posted by Witty at 7:29 AM on March 29, 2004

I thought the article was great, although I'd heard of his book before. I'd refer to those of you debating whether faith is a necessary component of meaning to the obviously biased Internet Infidels' Discussion Board, particularly the philosophy and secular life fora (forums?), where secular meaning is a frequent topic.
posted by callmejay at 10:54 AM on March 29, 2004

If you've ever had depression or known someone who has, you've seen what happens when this kind of faith I'm speaking of largely leaves someone.

Eh? I have depression, and I don't think faith of any sort enters the picture.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:49 PM on March 29, 2004