HUMAN HAPPINESS - ITS NATURE & ITS ATTAINMENT
VOLUME II: THE ATTAINMENT OF HAPPINESS
CHAPTER 2
THE GOOD NEWS & THE BAD NEWS FROM HAPPINESS RESEARCH
Happiness is considered by most people to be the most important thing in life!
But why? In Volume I of this set of books, we examined the basic nature of human happiness and its importance in great detail. I trust you've had a chance to acquaint yourself with the wealth of scientific data discussed in that early volume. Yet, some readers of this volume may not have had that chance. Thus we start this chapter with a brief review of the major conclusions we found there...
What is happiness and why is it so important?
Happiness is nothing more than an emotion. It is as the dictionary defines it, "a feeling of well-being and contentment."
Happiness goes by many names: contentment, joy, fulfillment, satisfaction, peace-of-mind, etc.. But all these terms synomously describe the same psychological experience -- a positive emotional sense of happiness in living.
Emotions of happiness take two basic forms. One is happiness the mood. Moods of happiness are generally short-lived -- they occur periodically and are usually brief and fleeting.
But there is also a deeper, more abiding sense of happiness every person carries with them all the time. It is an overall, emotional evaluation of life. It is what most of us understand when we think about our happiness. It is how we more typically feel day-to-day. And it is this meaning of happiness we are more concerned with in these volumes.
Why is happiness so important? Because without it life would have little point. According the the theorists, happiness is the main thing we human beings live for.
As Aristotle put it, "Human happiness is so important it transcends all other worldly considerations." Early psychologist, William James, viewed happiness as being "...for most men at all times the secret motivation of all they do and all they willingly endure." And modern philosopher Eric Fromm heralds happiness as "...the criterion of excellence in the art of living."
Certainly happiness is not the only thing we live for. We all hope for success. We search for love. We wish for good health and longevity. We desire warm family relations. Most of us would like to be wealthier. But why?
Only because there is the implied belief that if of these dreams come true, they will help to make us happy.
Even our more mundane wishes -- a new car, a nice home, a better job, etc. -- are fundamentally based on our assumption that such things will lead to greater happiness.
Everything we do is for happiness.
What good would anything be if it didn't lead to a happier life?
And looking it from the opposite point of view. What would life be like if nothing brought us happiness?
Without happiness, life would be truly empty indeed. Nothing would hold any meaning. Nothing would have any value. Nothing would provide any warmth or pleasure. Life, as we know it, would hardly be worth living.
Clearly, happiness is the essential motivation for human behavior. Not only do the great philosophers make this clear over their centuries, but modern psychological theory and research also confirms this view as well.
But we hardly need the reminding, for in over two decades of informal polling, I have questioned tens of thousands of individuals regarding their answer to the question "What is the most important thing in life?" and I have found that the vast majority of people, almost instantaneously, think of "happiness" as the answer.
Yet, what makes people happy?
The massive research studies on happiness have come to several major conclusions...
First, happy individuals enjoy a highly active, very successful social life. They tend to have close, warm, love- relationships with their friends, their family members, their acquaintances, and most especially, they seem to have a really satisfying, love-relationship in their lives.
Second, happy people appear to be more successful. They tend to enjoy higher income, high social status, high occupational status, high educational attainment, and, in general, seem to have those skillful, competent person- alities that allow them to achieve most all of their personal goals. Happy people typically love the work they do -- they often end-up in careers that are quite rewarding and stimulating.
Third, happy individuals usually enjoy better health, but more than that they seem to have zest, vitality, energy, vim and vigor, and they seem to live longer, healthier lives to boot.
Fourth, happy individuals have well-developed philosophical or religious beliefs that provide them the satisfying sense of meaning, importance, and significance in their life. They seem to have a marvelously developed sense of personal direction that comes from those beliefs and values. Happy individuals are concerned individuals; they volunteer much of their time to actually make a contribution to community action, volunteer work, charity work, and similar altruistic activities.
Fifth, happy individuals seem to have a whole lot more fun then the rest of us ever do. They have many more activities they enjoy doing for fun, and they spend much more of their time, on a given day or week, doing fun, exciting, and enjoyable activities.
Finally, happy people appear to be remarkably well-adjusted. They seem to display a high degree of self-actualization and positive mental health characteristics.
These, of course, are just the most general attributes typical of happier individuals. In Volume I of this set, we reviewed scores of these particular characteristics in great detail and with specific referencing (and if you would like more, please refer to that volume). But for now -- and in order to briefly summarize the research -- one of the best descriptions of happy people (and how they differ from unhappier people) comes from one of the major happiness tests used by psychologists, the Psychap Inventory (xxxxx). The interpretation of scores from that test describes the happiest people thusly:
"Happy people are very satisfied with the way their life is going, they derive great happiness from living, gain many rewarding feelings from major aspects of their life, show vitality and good health, and have a disposition that is generally quite content and happy. Unhappy people have dispositions that are rarely happy, and live lives that aren't going as well as they would like. They are not all content with their lives, experience many stressors in their important life areas, have many felt personal dissatisfactions, and consequently feel unhappy and unsuccessful.
Happy individuals have an extroverted, spontaneously friendly, and outgoing, social personality; a concern for others, and an ability to be a trusting, accepting friend; a healthy, positive self-image; good self-knowledge and self-acceptance; a high degree of autonomy and self-sufficiency; a lack of negative tensions and problems; a certainty of values; internal direction; and a high degree of organization and direction toward goals. Unhappy persons tend to be somewhat more shy, and introverted; a bit more self-conscious in social settings; a little "down on themselves" and self-critical; more uncertain about their motivations, values, and direction in life; a bit unorganized and often procrastinate; rely too much on others and not enough on themselves; and sadly, usually have a lot of problems, stress, and difficulties to contend with.
Happy individuals have a highly optimistic outlook on life; preponderantly positive thought patterns; a more modest level of ambition and expectation; a more realistic (than idealistic) approach to life and goal setting; a value focus on the present (they enjoy living more for today, and are not unduly preoccupied with past hurts or future apprehensions); a very low level of everyday worry; and a strong value commitment to their own personal happiness. Unhappy persons are the opposite: they devalue happiness, over-idealize their goals, think pessimistically, worry a great deal, interpret events negatively, and are often preoccupied with past and/or future problems.
In addition, happy people also live their day-to-day lives in a way that is significantly opposite from that of unhappier people. Happy individuals live an involved, exciting, and robust life. They display a high level of social interaction, socializing, and organizational participation; have close, rewarding ties with acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and family; live lives that are highly active and busy; spend the majority of time doing activities that are enjoyable, fun, and exciting; are involved with work or avocations that are meaningful, significant, and rewarding; have broad interests; and are currently involved in a satisfying love-relationship. The unhappy are caught in lives that are much less active, rewarding, social, or enjoyable."
Simply put: "Happy people have it made!"
According to the collected studies amassed in the field of happiness research over the last several decades (which we examined in detail in Volume I), happy people characteristically have more of the "good things" in life, in greater abundance, and for longer periods of time, than most average (and especially unhappy) people ever do.
THE BAD NEWS
Most people, upon learning the basic research findings regarding happy people, tend to find the picture a bit irksome -- if not downright depressing. Clearly the happiest people have most of the things in life that the rest of us dream of. Indeed, many of my students exclaim, a bit resentfully, "No wonder they're so happy. They've got everything!"
By in large, it's true. And that's a little disheartening to the rest of us who are just struggling to get along in life.
Now, in fairness, hardly any "happy person" we've studied has every one of these "good things" going for them. The model is an additive one. The more "good things" one has in life, the happier a person tends to be, statistically speaking.
Still, taken as a whole, scientific research in happiness tends to paint a rather bleak picture for the average man and woman. Mainly, because it's fairly clear that a lot of those "fine things" we've listed are things that many of us may never achieve.
It's a sad fact of life...
Not everyone ends-up being wealthy, do they? Not everyone ends up with that rewarding, love relationship that seems to be as fresh as spring, year after year. Not everybody has a warm, harmonious family situation. Few of us will ever enjoy great success or social recognition. Not everyone ends up with a healthy, self-confident personality. For some of us ill health will always be a problem. For others life's tragedies and misfortunes will block our dreams at every turn. It's a little discouraging, then, to find that happiness seems to be associated with so many of these "fine things" so few of us have.
But that's "the Bad News of Happiness Research."
Yes, "the Bad News of Happiness Research" is: there are lot of thing which contribute to personal happiness that most people never get in life.
To put it more personally, the Bad News is that happiness research has revealed many things which could greatly increase your own happiness, that you, yourself, may never get.
All in all, the general findings of happiness research would appear to be "Bad News," indeed, for most of us.
But that's the way the scientific cookie crumbles, so to speak. After all, psychological researchers -- like all scientists -- are primarily dedicated to the investigation of the Truth. We investigate happiness with the same purpose as scientists in any field: to simply understand. And there can be little doubt that what we've discovered regarding the nature of human happiness (as detailed in Volume I) is scientifically fascinating and academically provocative on its own.
No one can question the value of research into this important area of human existence. No matter what the personal implications, a better scientific understanding of human happiness is intrinsically interesting to any inquiring mind.
Yet sometimes mere understanding offers little in the way of consolation. Often, for example, in medical practice, despite years of research and understanding, physicians are helpless to provide much in the way of cure for many infirmities.
Much of our scientific understanding of of happiness appears to be the same. As much as we have learned about it, the prognosis for the average person's happiness has been seen as fairly bleak. As Jonathan Freedman concluded in his classic book written just a few decades ago, "Happy People," "... apparently there is no formula for happiness" ( ).
Since then, the prognosis hasn't gotten any better. Given the nature of the happiness findings, there's not much, on a cursory level, which gives any hope for the average person improving his or her happiness.
Imagine a psychologist versed on the current research on happiness appearing on a television "talk show" being asked, "What can our viewers do to become happier people?"
"Well, according to the research," he might answer, "I guess you could advise your audience to have all their health problems and emotional conflicts cured. Then, it would be good if they could triple their income in the next few months. If they would ditch their current family situation and find the perfect love-relationship sometime soon, that would help, too. Of course, it would be necessary to become highly successful, socially popular, and land a high-status job, as well."
As true as the advice might be, I doubt our psychologist would be invited back for another guest appearance.
Happiness, according to the hard statistics, isn't easy to achieve. For most, the basic data suggests it's an almost impossible avenue to travel. Much in the happiness data which shows that happiness is, to a large degree, determined by a variety of factors like high income, good health, a wonderful marriage, high occupational status, social acceptance, etc., that are very difficult for the average person to achieve overnight.
In the long run, of course, such life-success is a possibility for us all. But we have to view such possibilities with a bit of realism. Though fortune and fame may come to some, most others, despite their best effort and hard work, will never attain them. Indeed, one of the most discouraging research I've ever seen suggests that, even in America, less than 15% of older individuals report ever achieving the goals they believed they could achieve in their youth. Thus, for the average person, the possibility of increasing personal happiness looks tentative at best.
Most of us, therefore, might just as well accept that our happiness is, pretty much, fixed. Unless some really miraculous happens (like "hitting the lottery" or falling in love with a perfect mate) there isn't much to be done about it.
THE GOOD NEWS
Fortunately, there is Good News that comes from the happiness research studies. Indeed, this Good News is the basis for this second Volume on Human Happiness.
The Good News is that there is a lot that we've learned about happy people that anyone can use to improve their own happiness!
Apparently, happy people have a number of traits that practically anyone can develop. These traits appear to be more everyday qualities that happy people have which contribute to their happiness. Unlike the Bad News qualities -- like social, occupational, or financial success -- these "everyday" traits have more to do with happy people's life-style, their personality, their attitudes, and their values. Things that almost anyone, in any circumstance, might learn to do.
Before going further, however, let me give you a little bit of the historical background on how we discovered this Good News...
In many ways, the basic research picture regarding personal happiness was fairly solidified in the mid 1970's. The view that psychologists had then, concerning the nature of happiness and the characteristics of happy people, has actually changed little since then. Certainly, as the interest in this field has grown -- and the research base expanded -- studies over the decades generally have served merely to confirm and reconfirm the basic view of happiness we held years ago (and that we outlined in the precious Volume). Of course there have been refinements, but the original picture remains, by in large, the same.
There came a time in my own research career, around 1974 or 1975, when it occurred to me that the time had come for happiness studies to depart into a new realm. Up till then all happiness investigations (including my own) had dealt with "basic" research: examining the phenomenon of happiness to learn more about it. But it appeared to me that enough of a background had already been established to move to the next order of research, "applied" research: utilizing what is known to develop practical, everyday applications.
Science inevitably marches in this direction -- from the "basic" (sometimes called "pure science") to the "applied." No matter what the topic of study, every piece of scientific knowledge, eventually, is ultimately useful. In some areas of science, the potential use may be hard to imagine or even realize in the pioneering stages of investigation, but in sciences like medicine and psychology, research has an obviously applied aim.
For example, in the medical study of cancer I doubt there are any researchers who would maintain that their interest in this disease is "purely" academic. Certainly cancer-cell physiology is scientifically interesting, but the main reason medical researchers examine it is their hope that something they might discover could eventually be part of a cure for this dread disease.
Those of us who study human happiness, naturally, have the same thing in the back of our mind. As academically fascinating as it is to understand happiness for its own sake, there is always the hope that someday, something we discover in our research might prove helpful to average people in a practical sense. Our psychological colleagues who study schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and other illness syndromes obviously have the same goal in mind. "Basic" research in these areas are often undertaken with the hope that new scientific insights might provide new keys to help improve existing therapeutic techniques -- or even point the way to new treatments.
In essence then, the explicit goal of science is understanding, but the implicit goal of science is the ultimate betterment of the human condition.
In this vein, I and my staff departed from the main- stream of researchers (who continued to study happiness in a "basic" sense) to see if the knowledge we had developed about happiness could be practically applied.
We began with another complete survey of the research literature. We included every scrap of happiness research data we could accumulate (the bulk of which was surveyed in Volume I of this set of books). But this time our survey was a little different than it had been before. This time, instead of looking at all the elements which contributed to happiness, we were more selective. We were looking for qualities and characteristics about happy people we believed average people could employ to increase their own happiness -- things that might be used in an experiment to see if average people could possibly improve the happiness they experienced in life. But, especially, we were looking for things that ordinary people might be able to develop in a short time-frame.
We were looking for simple, everyday things -- any personality quirks, any special attitudes, anything about their daily routine -- anything at all that an average person might be able to imitate. Was there anything, for example, about the way happy individuals spent their time? Were there any particular daily activities they typically enjoyed? Were there things about their personality that might be helpful? Was there something, perhaps, about their belief systems, their attitudes, or their values? These were the kinds of questions we were asking.
After a while, a list of potential characteristics began to emerge from the data, and we began to formulate the first of our initial experiments to see if it was possible to increase human happiness.
This was a pioneering effort. To our knowledge, these studies would be the first time anyone had attempted to experimentally develop happiness.
The theory was elegant, on paper. We hypothesized that if normal people could be taught how to be like happy people, they would become happier themselves.
But to prove this theory, three major obstacles stood in out way...
The first was: had we found some things that average people could learn to do; or would the "happiness characteristics" we had uncovered prove too difficult to achieve? Put another way, could ordinary people actually become a more like happy people? Or, were we just hoping for too much?
The second obstacle was time. Could a person develop the traits we had isolated in a fairly short amount of time -- say, in a few months? Or were the traits we had selected impossible to develop in a short time-frame?
The third, and the more significant, obstacle we faced was: if average people could, indeed, actually develop some of these "happiness traits," would they really be any happier? Some of my colleagues had reservations here; they believed it would be possible for normal people to imitate happy people, but they didn't think it would make any difference in their long-term mood.
The first series of pilot experiments was begun with some trepidation, but the initial analyses proved our fears unfounded. In actuality, it appeared as if our theory might have merit! In our first attempts, the large majority of the people we studied were not only able to develop the "happiness traits" we had selected for them, and in a relatively short period of time, but their overall happiness appeared greatly improved, as well (224).
Following this initial success, a number of subsequent studies were undertaken to confirm our original results and to study various combinations of the "happiness factors" we had tested (224, 225). Based on the ensuing experimental results some of these factors were discarded from our studies, while others were added for further testing.
Eventually, one major set of items was distilled, which we named "The Fourteen Fundamentals" (224, 225). The "Fourteen Fundamentals" were the fourteen traits we had found in our search of past happiness studies, and in our pilot experiments, to be the most helpful to our test subjects.
In the years that followed we formally experimented with the "Fourteen Fundamentals" many times. The results, a number of which have received wide professional dissemination in professional journals, continue to confirm our original findings. Other researchers, around the world, have also done independent studies with our materials (add citings).
According to the results accumulated to date, all experimental data suggests that these "Fourteen Fundamentals" do indeed have the ability to help average people become significantly happier.
Yet it is not just "average people" which seem to benefit. Many investigations -- some formal, some informal -- appear to show that these "Fundamentals" have wide application. Investigations with young people (teens and pre-teens), older individuals, prison inmates, patients in a cancer ward, students in foreign countries, individuals in psychotherapy, and other disparate groups suggest positive results (add citings). But the most gratifying finding of all is how the "Fourteen Fundamentals" have helped unhappier people...
Initially, as we began experimenting with these happiness "traits," we believed they would only help improve the happiness of those who were average in their happiness. Somehow, we had it in our mind that unhappy and depressed individuals wouldn't show any gain from our treatment -- perhaps, because they had so far to climb. We were pleasantly surprised, therefore, to find that some of the most remarkable happiness progress has been made by individuals who were the most unhappy at the beginning of our experiments.
In sum, practically everyone we've studied has been able to become more like happy people (if they wish to), and as they do, they become much happier people!
Now on one hand, all this may sound quite incredible. After all, it's quite an astounding claim to suggest that research has finally found a way to make people happier! That science has made a major breakthrough in helping Humankind achieve it's most cherished dream!
Well, in a sense, it has! Still, if we examine it more closely our success in this field is neither incredible nor astounding. Actually it is so elementary, one wonders why it had never been attempted before. The basic premise is so simple: if one can learn to be like a happy people is, then one will be happy too.
Why hadn't this proposition been tested before? Mainly, because it couldn't have been tested before!
A few decades ago we had hardly begun to develop a scientific understanding of happiness. Indeed, up until the late 1940's psychology had hardly begun to research any positively-oriented human characteristics. As ancient a quest as happiness is, until science finally turned its attention to it there was no way to test the possibility of its improvement.
But now that we have, it appears as if the possibility for happiness improvement is limitless! Many of the finer things in life -- like wealth, success, and fame -- are limited. There are not enough of these commodities for everyone to have in abundance. But happiness is the rare exception. It is a mental commodity, and as such there are no limits. Though not everyone can be a millionaire (there's not enough money to go around), nor can everyone be the President of the United States (there's only one such position available), there's no limit to the possibility that everyone can be happy. At least, that is the guiding principle behind our continued research, and why we happiness researchers believe it is so important.
To summarize, then, there is Good News in the happiness research! And the Good News is the "Fourteen Fundamentals."
As the years have progressed, we have combined these "Fundamentals" with a variety of techniques, skills-training, and assessment tests to help our experimental participants work at developing them more effectively. Currently, the "Fourteen Fundamentals" has evolved into a program of study that includes both cognitive learning and behavioral homework activities. The materials we have developed on this program has been widely requested by psychologists at hundreds colleges, universities, research centers, and governmental agencies around the world. Many teachers are incorporate the "Fundamentals" in their classroom lectures, and they are cited in a number of widely used college textbooks. The "Fundamentals" have also received a great deal of attention in popular magazines and newspapers over the years. (An updated listing of such popular and academic citings can be found in the "About Dr. Fordyce" pages of this website.)
Previously, the "Fourteen Fundamentals" have been described in my short booklet The Psychology of Happiness; A Brief Version of the Fourteen Fundamentals (229) and in a 14-episode, college TeleCourse video- series entitled Michael Fordyce's Psychology of Happiness produced for educational television and classroom use (289). (More Information on these are available at the "home page" of this website.)
Despite these other resources and citings, no other source offers as much on the theory, research, and practical application of the "Fourteen Fundamentals" as you will find in the coming Chapters. In them, you will find much that could well help you attain greater happiness!