The feeling of happiness has a peculiar status in our culture. We all wish to maximise it, but at the same time, we don’t seem to become happier. Might it be impossible to attain happiness as we please, and what might be at the root of this?
The feeling of happiness has a peculiar status in our culture. We all wish to maximise it, but at the same time, we don’t seem to become happier. Might it be impossible to attain happiness as we please, and what might be at the root of this?
Photo by Mark Adriane
Photo by Mark Adriane
We live in a culture that is obsessed with happiness. We are enticed to think of this state of mind, this feeling, as something that we should maximize individually. Better to feel happy than to feel sad, anxious, depressed, or confused. Much of our modern economy fuels the desire to feel happy with a bombardment of advertising. We internalize this and construct our goal accordingly: we just want to be happy. We wish this for our children as well: as long as they are happy in life, what more could you want for them? Next to this, we also tend to see that being unhappy is the indication of a problem. Negative emotions are all too easily pathologized in modern Western societies. We just don’t want to experience them, we want to feel happy. This outlook on life should not be too unfamiliar for the reader; in fact, I would argue that it is implicitly present in the worldview of us all. But how sound is this perspective really? Does it pay off to focus on improving one’s own happiness, and why, or why not? These are the central questions of this essay, and it will become clear that striving for happiness is not without its risks, and there are good psychological reasons for that.
Despite the appeal, striving for happiness might actually be counterproductive. It is not so easy to actually be happy when this is what you are actively searching for. It turns out that people who are experimentally induced to value happiness, by reading a text about the advantages of happiness vs. reading a control text, report less happiness when watching a happy film clip (Mauss et al., 2011). The same thing also holds true in an interpersonal context. In another experiment by the same researcher, people who report valuing happiness most highly in life, also report the most loneliness on a daily basis. (Mauss et al., 2011). On top of this, when people are experimentally induced to value happiness, they also report higher loneliness and less social connection to others (Mauss et al., 2011). Valuing happiness could result in this negative effect due to unmet personal expectations of the representation of happiness in one’s mind. In other words, whenever you value happiness more, you might try to act in ways that will produce happiness, and when this pursuit fails, you are confronted with negative emotion, which then directly negates your goal of feeling happy entirely. It also makes sense that people who highly value happiness are less happy in happy circumstances (akin to the first experiment), because in that context, you are supposed to feel happy. If you don’t feel this way, you cannot explain your lack of happiness by the negative circumstances you’re in. So, paradoxically, valuing happiness might cause disappointment and a less positive mood in life, especially when there is more reason to feel enjoyment and satisfaction.
“The idea that you can strive for a specific affective state, and keep it after you’ve obtained it, arises out of a misunderstanding of what emotions are and what they are for.”
More importantly, there is a more fundamental reason why striving for happiness does not work, and this reason has to do with the functions of emotions. The idea that you can strive for a specific affective state, and keep it after you’ve obtained it, arises out of a misunderstanding of what emotions are and what they are for. The functional account of emotion describes emotions as adaptations to the problems of social and physical survival (Keltner & Gross, 1999). They are solutions to predicaments in our long evolutionary history as human beings, and from the time before that. Emotions can be understood as the ‘intelligent interface that mediates between environmental input and adaptive output’ (Keltner & Gross, 1999). In other words: in your brain, neurobiological systems produce emotions in response to things happening in the environment, in order to make the organism execute output that is adaptive for survival and procreation. Through emotions we are guided through complex social and natural life. This idea makes intuitive sense – for example, why would we feel ashamed and blush when being confronted when people find out some transgression of ours – what would be the function of this? In this case, blushing signals to the social environment that we truly feel like we’ve gone astray. It signals vulnerability through biological transparency. This makes us trustworthy to others. Anxiety and fear make us move away from threats. They keep us safe.
Happiness, being an emotion, follows the same logic. The feeling of happiness can be interpreted as the reward for obtaining goals, for doing something ‘right’. You get rewarded with a happy feeling when playing with your dog or your kids, when laughing with your friends and when you obtain your Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. It tells you: this thing that you are doing is beneficial – keep on doing it. The problem in life is, however, that you’re not always doing something right. You have problems to attend to and challenges to overcome, and then there is tragedy, which will always strike. When studying a difficult topic or failing a job interview, the feeling of happiness is of no use to you, and your nervous system regulates your mood so you can do what is appropriate. In the case of failing your interview, you might feel disappointment, sadness, or guilt. But precisely these emotions can teach us what our shortcomings are, and they motivate us to not fail the next one. When we understand this process, the idea that we should feel happy in life, and make it our goal, is recognized as a naïve one. We are simply not the masters of our neurochemistry. Instead, it somehow controls us considerably more.
“Our nervous system cannot produce feelings of happiness all the time, no matter how much you value them.”
Having a deeper understanding of our emotions and their functions leads to the following conclusion: being confronted in life by upsetting negative emotions is not something to pathologize too quickly. It can actually teach us something valuable. About what problems you face, and what needs improvement in your life. And if negative emotions do not propel us forward, they are still part of our intricately personal mental life, so they too must have their place. Our nervous system cannot produce feelings of happiness all the time, no matter how much you value them. As it turns out, valuing happiness very highly is even counterproductive, resulting in less happiness. It is worth remembering that evolutionary forces have shaped our emotion-producing systems carefully so an abundance of happiness is avoided. If not, you would just stagnate in enjoyment, instead of going through stress and challenging yourself. So, we should learn to listen to what our emotions have to tell us, instead of trying to influence them. This is in the end a more accurate and helpful way of understanding. One about being mindful about all the emotions that take the stage in the theatre of our mind. But also definitely one in which we should humbly cherish the moment whenever happiness does come over us. <<
References
– Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 11, 767.
– Mauss, I. B., Savino, N. S., Anderson, C. L., Weisbuch, M., Tamir, M., & Laudenslager, M. L. (2012). The pursuit of happiness can be lonely. Emotion, 12, 908–912.
– Keltner, D., & Gross, J. J. (1999). Functional accounts of emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 13, 467–480.
We live in a culture that is obsessed with happiness. We are enticed to think of this state of mind, this feeling, as something that we should maximize individually. Better to feel happy than to feel sad, anxious, depressed, or confused. Much of our modern economy fuels the desire to feel happy with a bombardment of advertising. We internalize this and construct our goal accordingly: we just want to be happy. We wish this for our children as well: as long as they are happy in life, what more could you want for them? Next to this, we also tend to see that being unhappy is the indication of a problem. Negative emotions are all too easily pathologized in modern Western societies. We just don’t want to experience them, we want to feel happy. This outlook on life should not be too unfamiliar for the reader; in fact, I would argue that it is implicitly present in the worldview of us all. But how sound is this perspective really? Does it pay off to focus on improving one’s own happiness, and why, or why not? These are the central questions of this essay, and it will become clear that striving for happiness is not without its risks, and there are good psychological reasons for that.
Despite the appeal, striving for happiness might actually be counterproductive. It is not so easy to actually be happy when this is what you are actively searching for. It turns out that people who are experimentally induced to value happiness, by reading a text about the advantages of happiness vs. reading a control text, report less happiness when watching a happy film clip (Mauss et al., 2011). The same thing also holds true in an interpersonal context. In another experiment by the same researcher, people who report valuing happiness most highly in life, also report the most loneliness on a daily basis. (Mauss et al., 2011). On top of this, when people are experimentally induced to value happiness, they also report higher loneliness and less social connection to others (Mauss et al., 2011). Valuing happiness could result in this negative effect due to unmet personal expectations of the representation of happiness in one’s mind. In other words, whenever you value happiness more, you might try to act in ways that will produce happiness, and when this pursuit fails, you are confronted with negative emotion, which then directly negates your goal of feeling happy entirely. It also makes sense that people who highly value happiness are less happy in happy circumstances (akin to the first experiment), because in that context, you are supposed to feel happy. If you don’t feel this way, you cannot explain your lack of happiness by the negative circumstances you’re in. So, paradoxically, valuing happiness might cause disappointment and a less positive mood in life, especially when there is more reason to feel enjoyment and satisfaction.
“The idea that you can strive for a specific affective state, and keep it after you’ve obtained it, arises out of a misunderstanding of what emotions are and what they are for.”
More importantly, there is a more fundamental reason why striving for happiness does not work, and this reason has to do with the functions of emotions. The idea that you can strive for a specific affective state, and keep it after you’ve obtained it, arises out of a misunderstanding of what emotions are and what they are for. The functional account of emotion describes emotions as adaptations to the problems of social and physical survival (Keltner & Gross, 1999). They are solutions to predicaments in our long evolutionary history as human beings, and from the time before that. Emotions can be understood as the ‘intelligent interface that mediates between environmental input and adaptive output’ (Keltner & Gross, 1999). In other words: in your brain, neurobiological systems produce emotions in response to things happening in the environment, in order to make the organism execute output that is adaptive for survival and procreation. Through emotions we are guided through complex social and natural life. This idea makes intuitive sense – for example, why would we feel ashamed and blush when being confronted when people find out some transgression of ours – what would be the function of this? In this case, blushing signals to the social environment that we truly feel like we’ve gone astray. It signals vulnerability through biological transparency. This makes us trustworthy to others. Anxiety and fear make us move away from threats. They keep us safe.
Happiness, being an emotion, follows the same logic. The feeling of happiness can be interpreted as the reward for obtaining goals, for doing something ‘right’. You get rewarded with a happy feeling when playing with your dog or your kids, when laughing with your friends and when you obtain your Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. It tells you: this thing that you are doing is beneficial – keep on doing it. The problem in life is, however, that you’re not always doing something right. You have problems to attend to and challenges to overcome, and then there is tragedy, which will always strike. When studying a difficult topic or failing a job interview, the feeling of happiness is of no use to you, and your nervous system regulates your mood so you can do what is appropriate. In the case of failing your interview, you might feel disappointment, sadness, or guilt. But precisely these emotions can teach us what our shortcomings are, and they motivate us to not fail the next one. When we understand this process, the idea that we should feel happy in life, and make it our goal, is recognized as a naïve one. We are simply not the masters of our neurochemistry. Instead, it somehow controls us considerably more.
“Our nervous system cannot produce feelings of happiness all the time, no matter how much you value them.”
Having a deeper understanding of our emotions and their functions leads to the following conclusion: being confronted in life by upsetting negative emotions is not something to pathologize too quickly. It can actually teach us something valuable. About what problems you face, and what needs improvement in your life. And if negative emotions do not propel us forward, they are still part of our intricately personal mental life, so they too must have their place. Our nervous system cannot produce feelings of happiness all the time, no matter how much you value them. As it turns out, valuing happiness very highly is even counterproductive, resulting in less happiness. It is worth remembering that evolutionary forces have shaped our emotion-producing systems carefully so an abundance of happiness is avoided. If not, you would just stagnate in enjoyment, instead of going through stress and challenging yourself. So, we should learn to listen to what our emotions have to tell us, instead of trying to influence them. This is in the end a more accurate and helpful way of understanding. One about being mindful about all the emotions that take the stage in the theatre of our mind. But also definitely one in which we should humbly cherish the moment whenever happiness does come over us. <<
