• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1543 0

are not getting happier as they get richer, so solving the Easterlin Paradox perhaps replaces it with another paradox: Why do some indicators of unhappiness rise at the same time as the average general level of happiness is rising too? Are the same people both happier and more stressed? Or are a minority of people increasingly unhappy while the majority pulls away from them? Or is it just happenstance? The evidence is not consistent—for example, suicide rates show a lot of variation that obviously has no relation to income levels, going up and down over time for unknown, noneconomic reasons. But to the extent that some indicators of unhappiness do increase as incomes rise, this, like the paradox of happiness and growth in the United States, may be an inequality issue. Certainly, the final word on how to interpret all of the evidence has not yet been written.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HAPPINESS

Perhaps an alternative approach can help. Psychologists too have been looking more closely at happiness—the “positive psychology” movement. It would be easy to make fun of some of this work. For example, two techniques of collecting data on happiness are commonly used by psychiatrists. One version asks people to keep a diary during the day about their feelings when doing various activities. Another involves people recording how they feel when prompted to do so by their mobile or PDA at random points during the day. The results so far seem unsurprising and without many obvious policy implications. One of the best known involved 909 women from Texas. They liked sex and socializing best, followed by praying, eating, exercising, and watching TV. They liked least commuting and being with their boss, then housework and childcare. No big surprises here, nor any obvious policy conclusions.

Yet the psychology of happiness offers a useful alternative perspective. Its leading authorities have explored what contributes to a positive baseline frame of mind.41 The problem, as Mihaly Csikszentmilhalyi has put it, is that we live in a universe that’s indifferent to us: “How we feel about ourselves, the joy we get from living, ultimately depends directly on how the mind filters and interprets everyday experience. Whether we are happy depends on inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the great forces of the universe.”42

Most people are somewhat happy most of the time, no matter where they live or what their conditions are, although with some cultural variation, and the differences reported in the surveys used in the economic research described earlier should be seen in this light.43 The explanation lies in the process of adaptation, the hedonic treadmill. It moderates or limits the psychological highs and lows that the vagaries of experience would otherwise impose on us. “Just as it acts as an emotional ceiling that keeps us from experiencing non-stop joy, it also protects us from being dragged into the emotional pits.”44 Adaptation is a marker of human psychological resilience; it is a desirable characteristic. It can be kept at bay to some extent. Haidt writes: “Variety is the spice of life because it is the natural enemy of adaptation.”45 And perhaps this (rather than the keeping up with the Joneses mentality of conspicuous consumption) explains one of the underlying drives toward consumerism: the variety that characterizes modern capitalism does indeed make us happier, until we adapt and seek the next new experience or item.

However, adaptability does limit the scope either for us as individuals or for governments on our behalf to increase happiness levels. This is not to say that each person’s level of happiness is immutable. The research on what it is that enables us to experience an inner harmony rather than disharmony is expressed in several different but essentially similar ways. Csikszentmilhalyi describes happiness as deriving from “flow,” the focused immersion in an activity that challenges our skills but does not go too far beyond what we’re capable of. Activities that create a sense of flow are those in which