HUMAN HAPPINESS - ITS NATURE & ITS ATTAINMENT
VOLUME I: THE NATURE OF HAPPINESS
CHAPTER 8
HAPPINESS AND BASIC HUMAN NATURE
Happiness, as we've come to see, is simply an emotion.
But what is an emotion? Why do human beings have emotions at all? Why is there such a thing as happiness? Psychologists have been intrigued by such questions, and the answers they have discovered provide extraordinary insights into the most fundamental nature of human existence.
We human beings have a fascinating and complex emotional life. Emotion follows us throughout life, it is a part of almost every experience we go through. Emotions come and go -- some good, others bad. Some emotions come and leave quickly, others hang around for long periods of time, and as life progresses our emotions weave an intricate tapestry that adds complexity to our personality and meaning to our lives.
But what is an emotion? How many emotions are there? Do emotions come and go in a regular cycle? Do we learn our emotions, or are they innate? What causes emotions: outside events or inside body rhythms?
And what about happiness? How does it relate other emotions? How do people decide if they are happy? Are some times in life more happier than others? How happy are Americans, and how happy are people in other places in the world? There are some of the unanswered questions we shall explore...
To truly understand happiness, we first need a background in basic psychology and the role emotions serve. To do this it might be fun to try and construct a surviving machine. In doing this we can provide a basic view of human psychology. Our view will be a drastically oversimplified one, but I believe it will be one that accurately reflects the current understanding of modern psychology.
A SURVIVING MACHINE
At the barest minimum, what would you need to erect a self-sustaining machine? Not a machine you can plug in, but one that could survive, on its own, in the wild.
Pretend, for the moment, can "invent" any equipment you might need, for this is a mythical machine being constructed for our demonstration purposes only.
Actually you wouldn't need much. First, just arbitrarily, let's put this thing in time and space -- give it a body (ant type or shape you wish; an egg is nice to visualize). To be living, it must have a source of energy, so let's give it an energy box (or if you wish to be more sophisticated, give it systems for carrying this energy throughout the shape you gave it -- making it all "alive").
Now it has a "life". But what good is life without awareness of it? Certainly we need to add a "awareness center" so the machine can know it's alive. So let's install such an "awareness center" (a mind, so to speak).
Well, there you have it: a machine that is living and that has self-awareness! Have we accomplished our mission? On one level, the answer is "yes." But as it stands, our machine won't last for long...
Energy is created from fuel, and fuel runs out.
Thus, the machine needs some fuel intake system and a device for transforming this fuel into the energy needed for life. Therefore, we'll give it the necessary equipment. We'll give our machine a fuel pick-up device, something like an elephant's trunk that works like a vacuum cleaner. Now it can suck up any outside materials and route them to the energy box which is equipped to turn these materials into energy and dump-out any waste. Our energy box is capable of turning most materials into energy, so our machine need simply to start vacuuming to continue its meager existence.
Soon, however the machine will eat everything in reach, so some form of transportation system will have to be added. Wheels, tractor belts, or something like that, will do.
Now it looks like we've got all we need, so let's crank up the machine! The energy box is working -- our machine is living. But nothing else is happening! The machine's just sitting there. Its trunk is not working, its wheels are not turning, and its limited supply of energy is being slowly used up. Why won't it do anything?
Apparently, something is still missing...
Maybe all it needs is some information. Right now, it's unaware of its draining power. Let's put an indicator on its energy box and run the wires to the awareness center, signaling a need for more fuel. Now it knows it needs fuel. But it's still not doing anything! Just like an automobile; the gauge may say it is running out of fuel, but the car never seems motivated to seek gas all by itself. Apparently, information alone does not motivate our machine. We need a spark! A drive! A will to live! But what can we use?
We could take an example from nature: pleasure and pain, the most rudimentary emotions. That's what we need to make our machine come alive!
Our machine knows it is running low on energy, but in its present form this information has no meaning. Therefore, let's give is some meaning...
Let's install just two more things: two emotion switches. When we stimulate one, it will fill the "awareness center" with painful sensations; when we stimulate the other, our machine will enjoy happy sensations. Next, we'll run the wires from the energy gauge directly to these emotion switches. When the energy level goes up, the pleasurable, happy switch will turn on, when it goes down, the negative, painful switch will trigger.
This ought to make our machine hop!
Before, our machine "knew" about its draining fuel supply, but the message didn't mean much. Now the message coming from the energy gauge is very meaningful -- it's the message of pain or pleasure.
We crank the machine up again, and now we find it's motivated to behave. It's quite busy sucking-up everything in sight!
It's all a matter of proper wiring. Our machine behaves simply because it feels good to do so -- and hurts not to do so.
EMOTIONS ARE THE ESSENCE OF LIFE
Obviously, the little machine we're building here provides a rather simplistic model of the human machine. And the point -- for both our machine, as well as for an understanding of human behavior -- is that the emotions are the key to energizing them both.
To the layman, emotions may not seem very important, but psychologists are coming to see that emotions are probably the most important thing there is to understanding human behavior. Emotions appear to serve some of the most essential functions in human psychology. First, the emotions are critical to our sheer survival. Second, the emotions function as the primary source of all human motivation. Third, emotions serve to evaluate our world and are the basis for all decision-making. And fourth, emotions provide the core underpinning for human learning and memory.
SURVIVAL
Survival, of course, is the most primal of all animal drives. Yet without emotion we couldn't survive. Indeed, we wouldn't even WANT to survive!
Why do creatures seek food to nourish themselves, build shelter to protect themselves? Why do they procreate, fight, flee, or do any of the other basic functions that assure their day-to-day survival? Are they born with an "instinct to survive?" Is there a "drive to stay alive?" Perhaps there is. But the main reason creatures survive, is due to emotion.
Take for example, eating. Why do creatures eat? On a functional level, of course, eating provides nutrients necessary for any organism's continued survival. But this knowledge, by itself, is not enough to explain why organisms eat; in fact, we would suspect that most creatures are unaware of the nutritive function of eating. Knowing we need to eat is not enough; it's how we feel about it that counts. Creatures eat, just like our machine eats, because eating provides a series of pleasurable feelings and sensations, and not eating occasions a series of unpleasant feelings and sensations. Basically, we eat because of how we feel. There are no elaborate instincts involved; pleasure and pain simply force us to survive.
It is this way with all behavior -- it occurs, essentially, because it provides pleasure or avoids pain.
If an animal had no negative or painful feelings, threatening, dangerous, physically damaging situations would simply not be avoided -- and the organism would greatly decrease its survival potential. And if the animal had no positive, pleasurable emotions feelings either, it probably would not behave at all. It might consciously realize that it needed to eat, for example, but it just wouldn't care to eat. No pain to goad it, no pleasure to reward it -- no reason to do it.
The value of pleasure and pain to survival is not merely a hypothetical argument. There are cases, for example, of a genetic malformity, where persons are born without the development of normal pain receptor-nerves. In actual fact, they live a life without any pain! For these rare individuals, falls don't hurt, wounds don't sting, bumps don't smart.
At first glance, most of us might envy such a situation. Living without pain might seem the ultimate dream! But the parents of such children find it a nightmare. Such children constantly wound themselves. Since pain is not a factor, they tend to fall and bump into things without concern. Since cuts, bruises, and even broken bones don't hurt, such children are constantly reinjuring themselves in already wounded spots. Unless constantly monitored and restrained, these children are bound to do serious harm to themselves. Furthermore, without a sense of pain, the normal internal signals of disease or distress go completely unnoticed. Indeed, as many of the parents of such children will humorously relate, even a common spanking has no effect! (cite the Brain) Though some of these rare children survive to adulthood, it's clear from their example that pain is necessary for survival in normal circumstances.
Emotions, especially the most primitive, like pleasure and pain, are highly motivating. It usually takes just one painful experience (like touching a hot stove-burner) to avoid a behavior forever -- and just one extremely pleasurable experience (like sexual orgasm or intense drug experience) to create a life-long addiction.
Pain and pleasure are the most rudimentary emotional motivators. Indeed, they are, perhaps, all the emotion human beings would need to survive on a sheer animalistic level. But Humanity is also motivated by the higher emotions. We seek feelings of love, contentment, success, satisfaction, elation, and warmth -the feelings which comprise happiness. And we avoid feelings of despair, loneliness, grief, anger, resentment, fear, guiltiness, failure, and anxiety -- the feelings which comprise unhappiness. Indeed all human behavior, from the most animalistic needs to the the most lofty of intellectual achievement, is motivated by this simple, two-pronged, survival strategy: the seeking of positive emotion and the avoidance of negative emotion.
MOTIVATION
Motivation is one of the most basic areas of study in psychology, as any beginning psychology student knows. Motivation is the study of reasons -- the reasons people behave. What motivates people? Why do they behave the way they do? Our machine has shown us a very simple answer: motivation is strongly based on emotion. When it comes down to it, a few feelings are all it takes to produce a highly motivated organism. Modern psychological theory sees emotion is at the very core of motivated behavior (6, 59, 158, 159, 160).
People behave for emotional reasons. It's basic psychology: people seek out those things that make them feel good and avoid those things that make them feel bad. As one great theorist in the area, Robert Leeper, has said,
It is no blunder of evolution that the higher animals, such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and human beings...are such emotional creatures. Rather than being outside the pale of biologically adaptive motivation, the emotional processes are the chief sort of motivation...(159)
More and more, psychology is coming to see what the common man has always understood: emotion is the primary motivator of all human behavior (6, 159). As far back as Aristotle, Aquinas, and Freud, the motivational quality of emotion has been recognized (160). Even the Latin root of emotion, "movere," means "to incite to action." Yes, emotion provides nature's inner goad to action. (This is especially true if we classify things like pain, hunger, sexual desire, and other physiological drives as being fundamentally emotional experiences.)
Emotions drive a creature throughout the whole sequence of motivated behavior, from start to finish. The sequence starts when the organism begins to sense a need, like hunger. At this point, the organism begins to notice uncomfortable emotions. These unpleasant gnawings prod the organism into action. In addition, the emotions stimulate the body's energy, so necessary activity can take place. Emotions have an arousing, activating effect. Psychologists trace this physiological excitement to our animal heritage. Such arousal is Nature's way of preparing us for emergency.
Thus, emotions provide the initial prompt that starts the motivational sequence. They also provide the carrot at the end of the stick, keeping the sequence going. Emotions accompany and sustain the motivated behavior all the way to the goal -- in fact, it's as the goal gets closer that emotional behavior reaches its highest levels of arousal.
But it is at the moment of goal-attainment that the emotions play their biggest role. Here is where the emotions serve to reward all our effort. We do things for a reason, and the biological reason is a good emotional response: feelings of accomplishment, pride, success, and self- satisfaction. Learning theory suggests we wouldn't do anything very long if there was no reward in it. We enter motivated behavior in order to achieve a positive emotional reaction, or end a negative one. Every human goal has some emotionally rewarding property to it, and it is actually that emotional reward we seek -- the goal is merely the means to attain it.
Emotions, then, are the goad that initiates behavior, they are the "carrot at the end of the stick" that directs and sustains behavior, and they are the rewarding part of the outcome of such behavior. Emotion is the cause; emotion is the effect. And of all the emotional rewards in life, happiness is the ultimate.
DECISION MAKING
For the moment however, let's return to our surviving machine...
It seems to be doing "o.k.". But at it's present stage of development, it's being very inefficient. Since it is eating everything in its path, indiscriminately, it's wasting a lot of its energy processing materials that hold little nutritive or energy value. Rocks, sand, other inorganic materials are simply clogging the machine and providing little energy. It knows it needs to consume. But it doesn't know what to consume. If we could design our
If we could add something in our design to help our machine select only the most "energy-efficient" fuels to consume, it could survive more easily. But how can we get the machine to make such selections? Perhaps we should look at human beings, first. How do we humans make our choices?
Life is full of decisions.Some decisions are rather inconsequential (like whether you'll have chocolate or vanilla ice cream for dessert), others are extremely weighty (to find an accused guilty or not guilty in court). Similarly, some decisions are easy to make (indeed, we hardly think about them); while others are terribly agonizing (sometimes, we ponder them for months).
Still, as important or inconsequential -- as easy or difficult -- we make hundreds of decisions each and every day.
How do we do it? With the help and guidance of our emotions...
Perhaps the most important function emotions serve is to provide us a basis to evaluate our world. In this sense, the emotions are our primary guide through life.
Nature realized a long time ago that if we were to survive very long in a changing world, we needed to equipped with some way to evaluate our environment -- and the emotions are nature's built-in evaluation system. Upon the emotions rest every choice we make.
Emotional evaluations are made all the time. First impressions are rarely neutral; we are fast to evaluate novel material. Did it make us feel good or make us feel bad? Did the experience make us feel happy, satisfied, or proud, or good? Or, did it make us feel unhappy, depressed, nervous, anxious, fearful, angry, guilty, or uncomfortable? If it made us feel bad, we'll judge it "bad" and tend to avoid that situation and the behavior that led us into it; if it made us feel good, we'll pronounce it "good" and we'll tend to seek the situation out again and repeat the preceding behavior more often.
Such basic "good" or "bad" feelings are at the core of every choice we make, every preference we have. Our everyday tastes, our likes and dislikes, our attitudes, our beliefs and values -- all are founded on gut-level emotional reactions. Even our high judgements, those of logic or morality, could not be made without our basic emotions to guide us.
Although humanity prides itself on being rational and logical, in actuality even logical judgements are inevitably based on the emotions. Though the logical process attempts to be objective and non-emotional, the ultimate values upon which the process is based are essentially emotional ones. For example, what is more rational than directing oneself as to maximize rewards and minimize pain? And, what is more logical than a well-conceived plan that eliminates to pain, frustration, or failure?
Without emotions to support it, even logic has no point. It may be logical not sit on a railroad track when a train is barreling down on us, but like the person without emotions proved in an earlier discussion, without fear, pain, or the desire to live, the logic of the situation is void of meaning.
The same is true of decisions based on utility or morality. They are also founded on basic feelings regarding the happiness and unhappiness of all who will be affected. The "moral" choice has always been one that brings the greatest happiness and joy to all who may be affected. The "immoral" choice brings pain, guilt, and suffering to the self and others. In a very real sense, that which is Good is what makes us feel good, and that which is Evil causes pain.
And what of Meaning and Significance? Is there any meaning in a situation where no emotion exists? Is there any significance in life without feelings? There cannot be. For without a way to judge things, everything is completely neutral and totally valueless. Our emotions provide us a way to judge, and thereby bring meaning and significance to our existence.
Even with the emotions to guide us, choices are not always easy to make. Some decisions evoke both good and bad feelings simultaneously. Others provide good feelings at first and sad ones later; or vice versa. Still others may force a choice between two things, both of which engender strong emotional attraction, and so on. It is these, emotionally ambivalent experiences in life that provide the most profound ethical and moral dilemmas. But, even in these, less-clear situations, it is still obvious that our emotions, as conflicted as they may be, are still at the core of even the most rational decision-making.
In the final analysis, therefore, we find that the emotions are Nature's basic evaluators that guide us through life. Our every-day tastes and preferences; our likes and dislikes; our attitudes; our judgements of what is good for us and bad for us; our views on what is brilliant or what is folly; our conceptions of Good and Evil; our ideas on what is meaningful or significant -- all these are based on our basic emotions.
And, as we have seen, the highest emotional evaluation of all is happiness. That emotional feeling of happiness -- that sense of contentment, satisfaction, and fulfillment -- is how we as human beings judge the quality of our lives. Just as the emotions help us evaluate the specific elements of our world, the emotion of happiness serves to evaluate the whole of our life.
LEARNING
It is when we come to the important process of learning, however, that emotions play their most critical role.
Learning is the "process of self-motivation based on experience." It is the opposite of instinct. Instinct is a totally unalterable way of behaving. A creature (or our machine) can be preprogrammed with an elaborate set of instinctual instructions about how to survive in the world. But if the instructions cannot be modified through experience, they had better be darn good ones!
The nemesis of instinct is change. And change is the one certainty in the universe. The "racer's edge" goes to creatures that can modify their behavior to meet changing environmental conditions. Such self-modification (or learning) is the fundamental principle of evolutionary progress. Actually "instinct" hardly exists at all -learning is always the rule. Advanced species learn within their own lifetime. Lower organisms "learn" over many generations, through natural selection, which genetic adaptations work best and which do not. Indeed, Life itself "learns" as it evolves. Even the Universe is ultimately the result of such trial-and-error, learning processes. Of such "learning" we only see the results; success surrounds us everywhere we turn. Of failure, we hardly catch a glimpse.
How do the emotions serve the human learning process? Lets return to our "surviving machine" for a simple demonstration...
If we want our "surviving machine" to learn from its experiences, we need to make a few more installments. First, we'll need to give it a "memory" so it can recall its experience (after all, what good does it do to figure-out something if you can't use it later?). Second, we'll need to add some method of inputting information into this memory -- a sensory system, in other words, so our machine can gather data from its outside environment.
So far, so good! Now our machine can pick-up sensory data from its outside world, and it can record and store this data in its memory banks. It's off and running, yes?
No! Our machine is just recording; it's not learning...
Learning requires evaluation. Raw information is not enough. To serve our machine, the information must be evaluated. "Is it good for me, or bad for me?" "Is it useful, or not?" How might this be accomplished? A good model is to see how computers have been taught to "learn."
Advanced computers can be programmed to learn from their past experience; and the programming that allows this is incredibly simple! First, the computer is programmed with a couple hundred, problem-solving strategies. It, then, is programmed to select these strategies, at random, to work on a series of problems presented to it. Eventually, of course, one of the computer's problem-solving strategies solves the particular problem, and the computer goes on to the next problem, trying each of its problem-solving strategies, in a random way, until it hits another success.
Now at this point, the computer could go on indefinitely, solving problem after problem in this laborious, trial-and-error, fashion. But it can't profit from its experience. It isn't learning! Something else is needed to help it become more efficient. It needs a way to evaluate its progress.
Say we enhance its programming to evaluate each of the problem-solving strategies it uses, and a way to store each strategy's successes and failures in a memory bank. Then, when a specific strategy succeeds in solving a problem, the computer is programmed to give that strategy a "+" notation. Likewise, every time a strategy fails, it's given a "-" in the memory bank.
As time goes by, these pluses and minuses add up for each strategy, and trends become obvious. The computer begins to discern which of its problem-solving strategies work often, and which hardly ever work. Bit by bit, it begins to apply them to incoming problems in the order of past successfulness. Based on its experience, the computer is "learning" which strategies work best and which don't. Soon, a more hierarchical way of attacking problems emerges. The computer starts using the most successful strategies first and working down, rather than its original way of trying each of its strategies, one by one, in an aimless manner.
The results are marked. With every problem, the computer gets better and better (or "smarter," if you will). The more problems it encounters, the better its plan-of- attack becomes -- all because we've programmed it to evaluate its experience in simple "plus" or "minus" terms.
So, let's install such an evaluation strategy into our machine. Actually, we already have the basic components there already: the pain and pleasure switches we installed earlier to motivate our machine. All we need is a few more connections to connect these emotion switches to the incoming sensors and memory banks we've just created.
Now our machine is really off to the races! Pains and pleasures not only motivate it to seek food, they help it evaluate the relative "goodness" or "badness" of the various food sources around it, and it can store these emotional impressions of its environment for future use, refining it's strategies from what it has learned.
Human learning is just the same. For learning to take place, information stored in our memory must be evaluated. And Nature's basic evaluation system, as we have seen, is the emotions.
Positive and negative emotions are the human equivalent of the "plusses" and "minuses" computers utilize to judge our experiences and strategies in life. Like the computer, we automatically catalog emotional pluses and minuses to everything we remember. Did it hurt? Did it feel good? Did it make us feel better, or did it make us feel worse? Was it pleasurable, or was it painful? Do we like it, or do we hate it? Does it make us happy, or does it make us sad? And perhaps most importantly, do we want to repeat it, or should we avoid it?
Human memory-banks contain a lifetime of experience, literally billions of information-bits are housed there. Each is stored, combined with others, recalled, and synthesized for later use and reuse. And each and every bit, each and every recorded memory, every single item stored in our brain, has some emotional evaluation attached to it (35).
HUMAN BEINGS: THE ULTIMATE "SURVIVAL MACHINE"
We humans are essentially the same as the "surviving machine" we have created here. Our memory banks, learning mechanisms, sensory systems, body design, and brain-construction are all designed for survival and adaptation. And, as we found with our "surviving machine," the emotions provide the indispensable key that makes the whole thing work.
But work for what?
Clearly, we are a "surviving machine." Perhaps, the best that nature has ever produced. Our evolved intelligence and inquisitiveness have made us masters of the planet. Human beings represent among the most complex biological "surviving machines" we know of in the universe. We are the pinnacle of adaptation and survival. But for what purpose?
For this, Nature has provided no answer, save one: the pursuit of happiness...
THE ULTIMATE EMOTION
Truly, human emotion is fundamental to the most basic processes in psychology. It plays an essential role in all human experience. As psychologist Alden Wessman has said,
Perception, memory, learning, and, indeed, the whole, complex range of human activity shows the directing and sustaining force of emotional involvement (132).
Indeed, the world that humankind has created is possible, not just because of of our patently superior intellectual abilities, but also by the development of our emotions -- emotions that are more fully developed in humans, than in any species (132, 159).
The point is simply this: emotions exist simply because of their tremendous survival value. And the ultimate emotion of all is happiness! Pain, discomfort, fear, and anxiety motivate human behavior, yes. But the ultimate aim of all human goals is to, hopefully, move us to a state of emotional happiness.
Over the centuries, philosophers and theologians have have pondered about the nature and meaning of happiness. Their conclusions have often been extraordinarily complicated and metaphysical. Not that such views are incorrect, but frankly, happiness has so much intrinsic survival value, complex explanations are hardly needed.
What then is the function of happiness?
Happiness is Nature's main reward in life. It is at the core of both the most basic, most primitive experiences in life as well as the experiences in life we consider the most self-actualizing, enriching, and insightful. It is what motivates the entire, seemingly infinite, range of human behavior, from the most primitive, animalistic survival urges to the most lofty of artistic and scientific achievements. It is the spark of life itself -- the only thing that makes a thought worth thinking, a song worth singing, or even a meal worth eating.
Happiness is the only thing that makes life worth living.
RECENT PHYSIOLOGICAL
DISCOVERIES DEEP IN THE BRAINUntil modern times, our psychological understanding of the emotions was mostly theoretical. But then, emotion centers were actually discovered deep inside the brain, and with these discoveries theory on emotions become exciting fact (35, 191, 192, 193, 194).
Where is happiness located? As we initially said in an earlier Chapter, it is located inside the human brain, in certain areas of the lower brain, in and around the limbic system -- the most primitive part of our brain structures (evolutionary speaking).
Animal research first revealed these areas, using a technique called electrical brain stimulation. (The technique involves minute, selective stimulation of the nerves in the brain using low voltage currents approximately equal to the levels the brain normally generates.) Probing various areas of the brain, the scientists first discovered that some stimulation repeatedly triggered rage and fear in several species of animals. Soon after that, it was discovered that other, specific areas of the brain seemed highly pleasurable. Animals couldn't get enough of these stimulations.
Later, these same areas were stimulated in humans and apparent "happiness" centers were truly discovered. Stimulations produced highly euphoric, happy feelings in their most pure form. Numerous areas in the thalamus, limbic system, and even the cerebral cortex have been isolated that give rise to pleasurable feelings and/or happy emotion. And most of these spots produce these sensations with every stimulation, seemingly without satiation.
Common sense says a person can't be happy all the time, but on a physiological level this may not be true. In one thorough study, recording the results of hundreds of minute points of the brain, over 400 points gave rise to happy feelings (35). Yet only three of these points showed satiation effects, all of the other points gave happy feelings no matter how often they were stimulated!
The same has been found in animal research. If laboratory rats are any example, you never get tired of positive brain stimulation. For lab rats, it appears to be the "ultimate trip!" Rats prefer stimulation of the pleasure centers to food or even sex. If not stopped, they'll stimulate themselves until they collapse from exhaustion. They'll even accept great punishment for it. Experiments have found that rats are willing to cross a grid which gives severe electric shocks in order to receive pleasant brain stimulations, yet when hungry, they refuse to cross the same grid to get to food.
Science fiction? Perhaps. But one day we all may be able to have our own happiness stimulator. Indeed, some experimental work with patients suffering from chronic depression has already done just that. Surgeons have installed tiny electrodes in these patients' pleasure centers and have them wired to a self-stimulator, operated from a small battery box with the prescription: "When depressed, press button." When they do, they are rejuvenated with a jolt of happiness. Pure happiness, right from the source, on demand!
A little hard to accept, isn't it? One can envision a future where pocket brain stimulators will be as popular as pocket message beepers are today. Everyone being just as happy as they want to be, anytime they want to be!
What would you think about such a world? Would you have such a device installed? Can you imagine it? There you are in the same job, with the same old family situation, seeing the same old people, caught in the same old routine -- yet with your new brain stimulator, everything will take on a happy, meaningful, warmly social glow. If you agree that "the good life is the good mood," these stimulation techniques certainly appear the ultimate short-cut to it.
There is one more thing about the location of the emotion centers. They are in the center of everything, psychologically speaking. They are part of the most primitive and basic systems in the brain -- ones that have stood the test of evolutionary time throughout the animal kingdom. They are situated right at the very place where sensory information first reaches the brain, so they are in a perfect spot to evaluate this incoming information. In addition, the emotion centers are right beside those brain centers that arouse and excite us to action. Indeed the emotion centers are located at the point in the brain where all functions of the brain are coordinated and orchestrated. Anatomically then, the emotion centers occupy a place in the brain that is as central as their role in human behavior.
These exciting brain discoveries prove that emotion is as physical a part of our being as our heart or our hand. There are, if you will, organs of the body that creates emotion. They are just as critical to our existence as our lungs, our kidneys, or our stomach; and just as tangible. They can be stimulated electrically or chemically, and emotions like happiness occur in their most pure form. They can be damaged or surgically removed, and with it the capacity for emotions like happiness goes with it, never to be experienced again.
Since the emotions are merely biochemical brain reactions, there is the potential that one day the emotions can be controlled biochemical.
The idea is nothing new. Humans have attempted to alter their moods with alcohol and various natural drugs since the dawn of time. But in recent decades, the attempt to control emotion, biochemically, has reached astounding new heights. Modern medicine has provided a whole host of "miracle" drugs to deal with depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders. And on the downside, the epidemic use of illegal drugs has been exacerbated by the development of new "designer" drugs and the more potent and refined forms of old street drugs, like "crack" cocaine.
On one level, if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that this cultural experiment to chemically alter our mood is fairly successful. To some degree all these drugs work! For the person using mild tranquilizers prescribed by their family physician, to those with mental disorders living on antidepressants or psychotropic, to hyperactive school children on calming medication, to those who occasionally use "recreational drugs," to those who are wholly addicted to illegal drugs -- apparently, there is some relief from life's problems. Drugs can dull us from extreme and disruptive emotion. Drugs can temper our depressions, anxieties, hyperactivity, or uncomfortable thoughts. Drugs can even give us fleeting moments of comfort and euphoria. But somehow, none of them really change us...
The one thing my clinical experience has shown me about chemical "highs" is how illusory they are. As one patient put it to me:
Since taking my medication, I'm certainly not as depressed as I was before. My anxieties have been reduced. In fact, I don't feel much of anything anymore. It's like I'm all dulled-out. Everything seems in a haze, as if my medication has pulled a glazed curtain over my mental life.
But the problem is, it's still me on the inside. Nothing has really changed. I still think the same depressing thoughts -- they just don't effect me so much. I still have the same fears, but they just don't make me so terribly afraid. I still don't like myself, but it doesn't make me feel the insecurity I used to have. It's like a switch has turned me off inside. Sometimes, as scared and depressed as I used to be, I think I'd rather be like that again. At least then I felt more alive...
Drugs don't really change us. Nor do they really make us happy. Certainly some drugs create a feeling of complete euphoria for brief periods of time, and modern psychiatric drugs can be a Godsend for many who suffer from deep emotional torture and the families who've had to live with them. Indeed, in my clinical practice I often find it necessary to have some of my more agitated or depressed patients placed on medication to reduce their overt symptoms. And for many patients, such medication appears to be the only short-term solution for their agony. But no prescription, as helpful as it might be in relieving the symptoms of mental disorders -- nor any street drug, as wildly intoxicating as it might be -- comes anywhere close to the natural feeling of happiness we are describing in these Volumes.
As good as it feels, even those in the middle of a chemically induced happy mood sense its artificial nature. Indeed, in my years of clinical work I have never found one individual who has had experiences with both natural and chemically induced happiness that cannot discern the difference between them -- and none report that their chemically induced experiences are nearly as complete and satisfying as the "real thing."
Even the research shows the difference. In Chapter 5, we provided a rather extensive picture of happy moods as they naturally occur. This description is quite different from the picture presented in drug studies. Two of the most noticeable distinctions are that in naturally occurring happy moods people become quite sociable and productive, in induced happy moods these desirable traits are typically absent. Drug induced happiness typically involves more social withdrawal and a tendency to turn inwardly away from productive interaction with the outside world.
One day, perhaps, the perfect happiness pill may be invented. But to date, our current attempts fall far short. Both legal pharmaceuticals and illegal drugs seem to constrict and debilitate life much more than they create real happiness. Still, the future appears bright for such an extraordinary breakthrough. Yet one wonders how desirable such an ultimate "happiness pill" would actually be...
Until then, however, we in psychology see our mission not in terms of what can be done to make people happy, but rather, in helping people learn how to make themselves happy.
HAPPINESS IS MORE THAN JUST "ANOTHER EMOTION"
We have come to appreciate how fundamental emotion is in human psychology. With that in mind, we need to turn our attention back to happiness. The question for us is: where does happiness fit into this general picture of emotion? There are two basic ways to look at this.
Looking at it one way, happiness is simply one of many dozens of positive emotions. In this view, happiness is a separate and distinct experience, different from joy, or contentment, or euphoria. If we check the dictionary this appears to be the case -- a hundred words describing pleasant emotional experiences are defined and each is distinct and slightly different from any other. Furthermore, research in semantics proves people are indeed able to distinguish between these many terms in reliable ways (14, 105). ("Happiness," for example, gets an intensity rating of 7.1 on an 11-point scale (just below "joy", rated 8.1, and above "pleasure" rated 5.7) (105).) This, however, is the narrow view of happiness.
The broader way to look at happiness assumes that there are only a few basic emotions but they are given many, many names. In this view, "happiness" is one of just two or three basic emotions, yet it is called many thing depending on the situation the person finds himself in. For example, the basic mood of happiness is called "love" when felt in the presence of our mate, it is called "pride" or "satisfaction" when felt in situations of achievement, it is called "contentment" when felt in a relaxed state, it is called "euphoria" when felt in an excited state, but in each case the basic feeling is happy -- only the situations are different.
This broad view is the one psychologists have adopted, based on the research (132, 230, 202, 249, 289, etc.).
We seen that many terms are included under the heading of happiness. Emotions like joy, ecstasy, contentment, satisfaction, felicity, pleasure, mirth, merriment, elation, and many more, are essentially the same thing as "happiness." Each of these emotional experiences are seen, according to the experts as just different manifestations of the same, basic emotion, most commonly called "happiness."
This "broad view" of happiness has emerged from several parallel lines of research...
Some of the most sophisticated, statistical research in this area has been dedicated to a better understanding of the emotions and their interrelationship (7, 15, 31, 51, 52, 98, 132, 133, 197, 201, 418, 419). In these studies, hundreds of commonly experienced emotions have been examined, through a variety of sophisticated statistical techniques, in an attempt to isolate the most basic psychological components of human emotions. The picture that has emerged from these various studies all seem to support the broad definition of happiness we have presented. Collectively, these studies indicate that there are actually only a few basic emotions; though hundreds of emotional terms were analyzed. These studies paint a a fairly simple picture of human emotions. In fact, the picture that emerges from this modern statistical research tends to reaffirm a very old view of emotions that dates back to the early theories of Wilhelm Wundt and Titchner, and has evolved over the years to the modern views expressed by Magda Arnold (6) and Robert Plutchik (197), and James Russell (418).
These contemporary theories sees human emotion as a product of two, independent dimensions. Any emotion one could name, according to this scheme, is, basically, just a combination of these two dimensions.
The most important dimension is the evaluative dimension, a dimension of goodness or badness, pleasantness or unpleasantness. This is essentially the "happiness dimension." All emotions can be meaningfully placed on a continuum from the happiest and most pleasant to the unhappiest and most unpleasant. Ecstasy would be near the high point of this dimension, depression would be at the low point.
The second dimension is the "activation dimension," one that ranges from the most relaxed, serene emotions to the most aroused and excited emotions. Along this dimension too, most every emotion can be meaningfully placed. At the highly aroused end of the continuum would be emotions like ecstasy, rage, or fearful panic; at the relaxed end would be contentment or boredom.
Using these two dimensions, any emotional term can be placed. As examples: an active, unpleasant emotion would be "panic;" an active, pleasant emotion might be "euphoria;" an unaroused, unpleasant emotion would be "depressed;" and an unaroused, pleasant emotion would be "serenity."
Some theorists suggests that a third dimension is necessary to complete the picture. It is often called "curiosity dimension." It is a continuum of emotion ranging from interest, curiosity, concentration, and attention at one end, to disinterest, ignorance, and avoidance at the other. Both "fear" and "anger" tend to be highly aroused and highly unpleasant events -- but they are obviously different feelings. With the "curiosity dimension" the picture becomes clear. In "anger" we tend to approach and attack; in "fear" we tend to retreat and avoid.
Of these dimensions, however, the "happiness dimension" is by far the most important. In most studies, this dimension accounts for from 50% to 95% of the variance between emotions as people actually experienced them. Apparently, the "activation dimension" is quite secondary (and the "curiosity dimension" unnecessary) to adequately isolate common emotions.
Some emotions researchers, on the other hand, don't buy the dimensional theories. Instead, they tend to see emotions in a more global way. They believe our emotional repertoire consists of only a few "core" emotions, like anxiety, hostility, and depression (419). Here, the myriad of emotions we have names for are merely variations of these basic "core" emotions. Each varies in intensity, yet each are discreet feelings. For example, take the "core" emotion of anxiety. It can be experienced as mild feeling of concern, a moderate feeling of anxiousness, a strong feeling of fear, or an extreme feeling of panic -- but the "core" feeling remains the same. The "core" emotion of hostility can range from a mild dislike to an aggressive rage. And the "core" emotion of depression ranges from despair to euphoria.
Clearly, both the "dimensional" theory and the "core emotions" theory agree that basic emotions vary in intensity and activation. Likewise, they both agree that all emotions can be reduced to a few basic elements. And, indeed, both theories seem to suggest that there is only one global positive emotion: happiness. It is at the negative, unpleasant end of the spectrum that these theories tend to clash.
Is there just one, basic unpleasant emotion which manifests itself in differing ways? The "dimension" theorists would say yes. They would say that "fear" and "rage" are essentially the same; that the two are only a slight degree apart. But the "core emotions" theorists would claim that the two emotions are fundamentally different. And, further, they would suggest that sad, depressed moods are quite distinct form both "fear" or "anger."
My own theory sides more with the "core emotions" view. I believe that human beings are biologically equipped with four basic emotions. Three are negative (and I would label them, as others have, "anxiety," "hostility," and "depression"), and one is positive (and, obviously, I call this "happiness").
In the final analysis, no matter which theory appeals to you, the research clearly shows that human emotions can be reduced to a few, basic elements, and only one of these is a happy element!
Although we have hundreds of literary descriptions for a happy experience, the underlying "core" emotion of happiness is there in all of them. For example, researchers have found that feelings like "elation," "fullness of life," "receptivity toward the world," "fluency of thought," "satisfaction," "love," "social receptivity," "pleasure," "joy," "lightheartedness," "affection," "kindness," "warm-heartedness," "contentment," "serenity," "pride," and "cheerfulness" all fluctuate together in a unitary fashion (15, 31, 98, 132).
In other words, even if you "think" your current mood is best described using just one of these terms, closer psychometric analysis shows that you're likely to be feeling the others also. Researchers Alden Wessman and David Ricks called this "the good-mood -bad-mood phenomenon" (132). In other words, when you're in a happy mood, virtually all of these positive feelings are likely to be present. When you're in a unhappy mood, none of them will be. Apparently, all the positive feelings we can name go together, thus they must be part and parcel of the same underlying "core emotion."
Data from physiological psychology also supports this "core" view of emotion. Psychologists studying the brain have met with constant frustration when they attempt to distinguish between the many specific emotions people commonly distinguish. Using the most sophisticated biochemical and physiological indicators, there seems to be virtually no difference at all between any of the various emotions we feel. Anger, fear, ecstasy, etc. all show highly similar physiological responses in the body and the brain. Biochemical indices do show if a person is emotionally aroused or not, but beyond that, they tell virtually nothing about the particular emotion a person is feeling (133, 186). All emotions are quite similar physiologically, and to complicate matters, some emotions show very little physiological arousal at all (121).
The physiological similarity of emotions has had its most dramatic demonstration in the famous work of Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (195, 196). In numerous experiments, individuals were injected with a shot of adrenaline to induce emotional arousal. However, such shots did not produce the same emotions in every individual. The emotion individuals felt (whether giddiness, anxiety, or depression) was determined by the situation these researchers arranged for them. Thus, the same shot of adrenaline caused some people to feel happy, others to feel unhappy, some to feel excited, and still others to feel anxious. In other words, the variety of emotions we know are more a matter of labeling than true physiological differences.
Essentially, then, human emotionality appears to be rather crude. Although, on an intellectual level, we have come to see our emotional lives as highly complex and multifaceted, and although we have developed hundreds of emotional terms to describe our feelings from situation to situation, on the most basic psychological and physiological level, there are only a few basic emotions which make up our lives. Sadly, three of these basic feelings are unpleasant ones: sadness, fear, and anger. Only one is good -- and that is happiness. No wonder that "happiness is the most important thing in life."
LEARNING OUR EMOTIONS
If the emotions are basically so simple, how come adults have such elaborate and multifaceted emotional repertories? Why are people so different in their emotional temperament? And why do people differ so much in their reaction to the very same situations?
The answer lies in learning and development. Emotions are developed throughout the life cycle, just as all other human traits are. Like language skills, cognitive skills, and motor skills, the emotions develop from simplicity to complexity, through a lifetime of learning (22, 187).
At birth the human infant displays none of the emotional variety adults do. Excitement and quiescence appear to be the main emotions the newborn displays. But by the age of three months, a general emotion of delight (or "happiness") and a general emotion of distress (or "unhappiness") become evident. By the end of the first year observers can distinguish between fear, anger, delight, and elation. By the second year, affection and jealousy can be differentiated (22, 187). And by the time adulthood is reached the emotional repertoire has become extremely complex and differentiated.
Children are learning all the time, and it is important to realize that adult emotional patterns are highly determined by learning. Psychologists have ample evidence of the strong role learning plays our emotional lives.
First off, the actual amount of feeling or emotion one can experience as an adult is largely determined by early learning. Studies show that children who are completely deprived of love, cuddling, or stimulation, become "emotional stunted," and are incapable of feeling real adult emotions in later life (184, 185). Likewise, it appears that the ability to feel happiness, and even the desire for it, is also determined by such early emotional learning (195). Early childhood is a particularly important period for happiness, since a person's entire lifetime of happiness may either be enhanced or reduced through early learning experiences (374, 376).
Learning not only determines the kinds of emotions that predominate in a person's adult life, but learning also instructs children in the appropriate situations for various kinds of emotional expression, and the kinds of gestures, facial expressions, and behaviors with which to display emotion. These learned differences in emotional expression vary markedly from culture to culture.
Imagine yourself deep in a remote province of China. You've wandered off from your tour-group, and you're definitely lost. You run into a elderly village man, and you try to convey your plight to him. You have no idea if he understands you, but as you go on, trying to explain your predicament, he claps his hands as he listens, his eyes open wide, then he sticks-out is tongue, and finally he scratches his ears and cheeks. What does it all mean? Apparently, this Chinese was first worried or disappointed (the clapping); this was followed with anger (the widened eyes); then, a reaction of surprise (the stuck-out tongue); but whatever you did must have worked, for you left him in obvious happiness (the ear scratching) (188). As odd as it might seem to us, these reactions are quite understandable emotional expressions in his culture, just as our own learned emotional behaviors are to us.
Even within the same culture, wide differences exist in emotional expression between classes and subcultures. Sex differences in emotional expression are certainly apparent. Men and women respond quite differently to most emotional situations. Even family and individual differences are widespread. The variety of emotional behavior is endless. People's reactions to the very same event are quite varied and often even opposite. One person may laugh and another cry at the same "love scene" in a movie. One individual may react with anger when threatened, another with fear, still another with calm resolve. And so on...
Even the experienced qualities of the same emotion in the same culture may be different for different people! In other words, different people learn different ways of experiencing the same emotion. We saw in the Chapter on The Happy Mood that the feeling of happiness is essentially the same for most people. Still, each individual experiences happiness in a way that is somewhat unique, and this is a consequence of differential learning about happiness. Thus although everyone is born with the same basic "core" emotions, the strength to which these emotions are developed and the manners and situations in which they are expressed are largely determined by learning. Thus by the time an individual reaches adulthood, their emotional patterns are as individual as their own personality.
Still, we should not emphasize these individual differences too much, for great similarity of emotional behavior exists in any given culture, and this also is a function of learning. For example, psychologists find there is uncanny agreement between people concerning the nature of happiness and the situations that produce it (27, 55, 130). One study, for example found incredible agreement between individuals (around 96%, on average) concerning how happy or unhappy certain common situations would make them feel (58). This kind of agreement can only be the result of common cultural teachings about emotions that all of us are exposed to.
Finally, there is much that is universal in emotional expression, and may well be innate to the species. Crying, laughter, and expression of the more basic emotions is recognizable around the world. Particularly, the emotion we are studying: happiness. Smiling and laughter appear to be the universal language of happiness. And interestingly, it appears, from the research, that happy facial expressions are the first, of all the emotional expressions, to be recognized by infants (Dan).
In summary here, it is clear from psychology that much of our emotionality is learned. Of course, the emotional centers in the brain are inborn, as are some of the most basic forms of emotion and its expression. But most of our adult emotional life is shaped by learning, and is, hence, quite open to modification. And herein lies a tremendous hope and potential. If the emotions are so heavily influenced by learning: perhaps through learning and education, we can harness them -- particularly, human happiness!
Happiness, especially, seems dependent on learning. It is well established that happier people seem to know more about happiness (132, 289). Compared to others: they are better able to define happiness (130); they give more reasons for happiness (55); they have a a greater awareness of happiness as important (132, 201); they value happiness more (132, 201, 289); and they render longer lists of "things that make one happy" (220, 289). Early childhood learning, as we shall see in the next Chapter, also play a part in life-long happiness. Other research suggests that when individuals learn about the research findings on happiness, they tend to model their lives to become happier themselves (224, 225, 228, 229, 289).
If one's happiness is determined, to some degree, by learning, then it would seem clear that there is the possibility of increasing happiness through knowledge and education! If happiness is something which is learned, then, clearly, happiness can be taught. If science can learn enough about its nature and causes, it might seem that anyone might be educated in how to be happier...
If this is the case, already, this book may have had value. In many ways, merely by reading this book, you are gaining one of the most fundamental qualities happy people already have: a basic appreciation and understanding of the nature of personal happiness. Yet, in actuality, you (as a reader) have been learning far more than most happy people ever have known before in history. Happy people "know more" about happiness, it's true. But their understanding about it is completely intuitive. It is not based on any of the research findings you have been privy to in this Volume, so in this way, you are already far ahead of them!
Consider yourself now, as you read on, to be among the best educated persons ever to live in this world regarding the Nature of Happiness...