There are already endless answers to all these questions, but few of these are based on scientific studies. A new and blossoming field of psychology - positive psychology - has begun to uncover fascinating, evidence-based answers to these questions. Over the past few months I've been sizing up these findings to reveal the emerging science of happiness.
What are the everyday sources of happiness?
Because happiness is something most of us aim for, how we define it has important implications for how we conduct our lives. To see why, compare these two competing definitions of happiness.
For me, happiness is not just a headlong charge towards whatever makes us feel pleasure, it is about finding satisfaction in ourselves and in what we have done. But what can modern psychological research tells us about the everyday sources of happiness?
It's one of the great paradoxes of life that we all want to be happy, yet so few of us seem to know exactly where happiness comes from. Happiness itself can be defined in many different ways, it may have all kinds of components, it may be a life's work, or even no work at all, but we are, most of us, in pursuit of this elusive goal.
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sustainable happiness -»
Happiness is all about everyday, normal activities, psychologists have argued, but do we intuitively understand what strategies increase happiness or not? To find out if students knew, Tkach and Lyubomirsky (2006) asked 500 undergraduates about the strategies they used to increase their happiness.
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what we think makes us happy -»
Materialism is a dirty word. It also gets a bad rap in psychology. Studies consistently show that people who agree with statements like "You will buy things just because you want them," tend to be: less satisfied with life, less happy, more likely to be depressed, more likely to be paranoid and more likely to be narcissistic.
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why experiences beat possessions -»
How can happiness be increased?
Since most of us want to be happy, what practical steps does psychological research suggest we can take to increase our happiness?
Being happy and staying happy is all about our day-to-day activities according to this theory of sustainable happiness. Research suggests that the contributions to our happiness are 50% genetic, 10% from our life circumstances and fully 40% determined by our day-to-day activities. But what evidence is there for this theory?
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why enjoyable activities beat improved life circumstances -»
Psychological research finds that people's happiness levels are remarkably stable over the long-term. Whether you win the lottery or are paralysed from the neck down, after about three to six months you'll have returned to your usual level of happiness. While these findings are deeply counter-intuitive, they also raise a serious problem for those wanting to increase levels of happiness permanently. A possible answer comes from recent research in the psychology of gratitude.
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gratitude -»
Dr Robert Emmons' top 10 tips for actually becoming more grateful, and consequently more happy.
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how to practice gratitude -»
What strategies do you use to make yourself feel better, increase your energy levels and reduce your tension? That's the question Robert Thayer and colleagues at California State University were motivated by in looking for the strategies people use and find effective.
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how to improve our mood. -»
We can all create our own lists of happiness enhancing activities and argue endlessly about which is better and for whom. While that's fun for a bit, I always want to ask: which activities have evidence to back up their claims for increasing happiness?
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the evidence for happiness enhancing activities -»
Is being happy any use?
Is there an optimum level of happiness and will happiness help us succeed in life?
The psychological literature clearly shows there is a strong relationship between success and happiness. For example, people who have a comfortable income, or high status in society are usually happiest. But which one comes first, happiness or success?
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9 ways happiness leads to success -»
People around the world value happiness - that is, feeling good - above intelligence, success and even material wealth (Diener & Oishi, 2006). This makes sense because happiness is associated with so many positive outcomes: satisfaction with personal relationships, better jobs, better performance in those jobs and a higher income. But happiness is much more complex than this...
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whether happier is always better -»
Happiness advice: ancient and modern
Advice on how to live the good life comes from many different countries and cultures around the world. There's self-help advice from the ancient Greeks, the ancient Chinese, 19th Century German philosophers and modern Americans, to name only a few. But how does all this advice compare with what we observe today about the conditions of happiness? As you'll see, some advice certainly fares better than others.
In China two and half thousand years ago one man, Kong Qui, and his followers, synthesised the traditions of the Chinese people to create what they believed were the fundamental principles of humanity. Of course what Westerners now call Confucianism has changed over the years, just like the other major philosophies that have flourished in the East: Buddhism and Taoism. But to have survived this long, these systems of thought must have at their cores a useful set of principles that help people live the 'good life'.
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happiness, Confucian style -»
One philosopher who dispensed clear advice about how to live a happy life was Epicurus, a Greek who lived in the third century B.C.. In a new article in the Journal of Happiness Studies, Bergsma, Poot and Liefbroer (in press) explain Epicurus' guide to the good life and then compare it with some of the huge body of work in psychology looking at satisfaction with life.
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Epicurus' advice for the good life -»
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was such an extreme pessimist that he thought we live in the worst of all possible worlds and happiness is an illusion. This is what makes it surprising that he wrote a best-selling book containing a self-help section. And yet he did. Although calling it self-help is somewhat misleading; the main aim of his advice was really reducing misery.
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Schopenhauer's advice for 'reducing misery' -»
From humble beginnings, self-help books have now colonised huge and ever-growing areas of bookshops. Best-selling titles like '
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus', or '
Don't Worry, Make Money' promise to teach us how to fix our relationships and live 'more fully'. But are these, and other come-ons, just empty assurances designed to sell a product?
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modern self-help books -»
There are many, many self-help books for depression around these days, but which ones do experts recommend and which ones work? Liz Anderson from the University of Bristol and colleagues examined the use of self-help books for treating depression (Anderson et al., 2005). They found six books that were recommended by experts, although only one book had evidence for its effectiveness.
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self-help books recommended by experts -»
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[Image credit: Kalos Eidos]