Tag Archives: Happiness

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Self-centred chaos

DOING THINGS FOR OTHERS

A STORY given by a professor to a class of students is well worth hearing about. To each of them he gave a yellow balloon and asked them to blow their happiness into the balloon and then tie their name tag on to it.

Then he told them to throw the balloons into the air and bat them around for a while.

“Now, find your happiness,” he said.

What followed was chaos. People got in each other’s way, they tripped over furniture and some balloons were burst. Very few students recovered their own balloon in the time allotted.

Then the professor suggested a different way.

“Pick up the balloon closest to you. Then give it to the person named on the tag.”

Two minutes later, everyone had their “happiness” back.

Do you see what he did? He taught his students that if we concentrate on ourselves, very few will end up happy. But if we all set out to do things for others, before too long everyone is happy!

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Health, Psychology, Research, Science

Positive Psychology: Barriers to well-being

BARRIERS TO HAPPINESS AND WELLBEING

ON May 9, 2021, an entry was made on this site concerning ‘happiness’ and the factors that can affect it. You might like to refer back to it.

The article looked at various tried and tested pathways to happiness, such as the five components of Martin Seligman’s well-being theory: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment.

But is happiness that easy to attain? Surely if it were that simple, we’d all feel pretty upbeat all the time. In practice, there are several psychological obstacles which stand in the way of us achieving long-lasting happiness and contentment, and it’s worth knowing what these are so that we can try to overcome them. This entry will explore the five main barriers to well-being.

Barrier 1: the negativity bias

The negativity bias refers to our tendency to pay more attention and give more weight to negative emotions, experiences, and information than to positive ones. This means that you’re more likely to remember (and take seriously) an insult, a criticism or a piece of negative information or feedback than a compliment or a piece of positive information or feedback. From an evolutionary perspective this makes perfect sense since we would not have survived as a species had we not been finely attuned to notice the actual dangers and possible risks all around us. But now that there are far fewer threats in our lives (whatever the media says), this in-built negativity bias can get in the way of our well-being.

Studies also show that positive and negative information of the same importance do not hold equal weight in our minds. If we are given two pieces of equally important information about a stranger, one positive and one negative, they don’t balance each other out – we’re more likely to form a negative view of the person than a neutral one. Similarly, if we have had a good experience and bad experience close together, we will feel worse than neutral, even if the two experiences are of a similar importance. The evidence suggests that positive and negative emotions are not equal, or, in other words, negative emotions reduce our level of well-being more than positive emotions increase it. This helps to explain why it is important to experience positive emotions frequently.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister and colleagues summed up the impact of the negativity bias in five words: “bad is stronger than good.”

Barrier 2: duration neglect

It seems logical that the duration of an experience should influence how we feel about it and how we remember it. A two-week holiday in the sunshine on a glorious tropical island should feel twice as good as exactly the same holiday in the same location lasting for one week. Likewise, undergoing a negative experience such as a 20-minute dental procedure should feel twice as bad as a 10-minute procedure, assuming we feel the same intensity of discomfort throughout both.

So, it may surprise you to discover that when we evaluate our positive and negative experiences, their duration hardly matters at all, which psychologists call duration neglect. Factors which are considered more important are, 1) the intensity of the peak positive or negative emotion, and 2) how the experience ends. So, if we undergo a painful medical procedure which lasts 20 minutes, as long as the pain we experience at the end is less severe than our worst experience of pain during the procedure, we’ll actually remember it more favourably than the same procedure in which the worst pain is the same, but which is only half as long.

In practice this means that if we want to increase our well-being, and that of other people, we should deliberately look for ways to end experiences on a high note. This might just be a simple thing such as when leaving work at the end of the week, you wish colleagues a good weekend. Or, if you have to do something like a presentation, make sure you end it on a high, and practise a positive ending until it comes naturally.

Barrier 3: social comparison

We use the expression “keeping up with the Joneses” to refer to the comparison we make with others – such as our neighbours – to determine how well we’re doing in life. If we buy things to keep up with the Joneses, it means we’re not doing it out of necessity, but as a way of maintaining social status. So, even if our standard of living is acceptable from an absolute perspective, if it’s lower than our peer group our well-being will be diminished.

If we see people around us (family, friends and colleagues) buying more or better things than us, it makes us feel worse about our lives. Thus, how much we earn or buy in comparison to others has an impact on our well-being. That others may be up to their eyeballs in debt to acquire all these new goods barely registers. If they’ve got it, we feel that we’ve got to have it too. This is all made much worse by celebrity lifestyles which are splashed across the internet, TV and magazines, plus the advertising and brand endorsements which accompany them. The problem occurs because, unbeknownst to many of us caught up in the endless must-have-more cycle, buying more things in an effort to keep up with the Joneses will never make us feel happier. The reason? It’s what positive psychologists have dubbed the hedonic treadmill.

Barrier 4: the hedonic treadmill

The bad news – Think of the last big purchase you made, the last time you were promoted or given a pay rise. Remember how excited and happy it made you feel? Now think how long you stayed excited and happy. A few days? A week? In all likelihood, it wasn’t very long. We adapt, we get used to things, whether it’s the things we buy or other positive events and experiences in our lives. When that happens, we start taking them for granted, quickly reverting to our usual happiness baseline (also called the “set-point”). This is what happens when “the novelty wears off”.

In reality, the hedonic treadmill means that there’s little point in expecting shopping and material goods to raise your well-being permanently. They may give you a little boost of positive emotion in the short term, but the bad news is that it won’t last, and you’ll soon feel exactly as you did before. Worse still, you may feel driven to buy something else in order to make yourself feel better again. And so, it goes on. And on.

Sadly, this adaptation principle also applies to other pleasant experiences or circumstances, such as getting married. In research, the average person does not experience a lasting boost to their satisfaction after marriage. Instead, they experience a short-term increase in happiness, followed by a return to their baseline level beyond the early years.

The potential good news – On the other hand, this process of psychological adaptation also applies to unfavourable circumstances, which means that if bad things happen, we will feel worse in the short or medium term before eventually coming back up to our baseline or set-point level of happiness. However, research suggests that we adapt much more quickly to positive events and experiences than we do to negative ones.

There are two take-away messages from the hedonic treadmill story. The first is that you should expect the boost you get from positive experiences like shopping to wear off pretty quickly. The second is that over the longer term it’s worthwhile investigating other, more sustainable routes to well-being. And if you’re married or contemplating getting married, remember that it’s not a guaranteed pathway to permanent happiness – you’ll have to continually work at your relationship if you wish happiness to be your priority.

Barrier 5: lack of self-control

The fifth barrier to well-being is lack of self-control. Self-control (often called self-regulation) refers to our ability to control our impulses and channel our effort in a way that will allow us to reach particular goals. You’re not alone if you think you have low self-control – one study of the 24 character strengths of over 83,000 adults found that self-regulation scored lowest. But self-control is important; according to psychologists Mark Muraven and Roy Baumeister, lack of self-regulation is at the heart of many of the social and personal problems that we suffer in the modern, developed world.

Contrary to the popular view that happiness results from giving in to our natural desires, psychology studies show that higher well-being is actually linked to higher self-control. So, it makes perfect sense to find ways to increase your self-control. Luckily, self-control is bit like a muscle, the more you practise it, the stronger it gets. Developing self-control in one life domain can help to strengthen your self-control in other areas.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

. We naturally give negative emotions, experiences, and information more attention than positive ones.

. Negative and positive experiences of roughly the same importance do not cancel each other out – generally the negative experience will affect you more.

. Shakespeare was right – it’s true that all’s well that ends well! Try to ensure that negative events and experiences end on a high note.

. Comparing yourself upwards is likely to reduce your well-being. Comparing yourself downwards is likely to increase it.

. The novelty almost always wears off.

. Self-control is like a muscle: it improves with practice.

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Health, Psychology, Research, Science

Positive Psychology: Happiness

WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

ONE of the criticisms often levelled at positive psychology is that it’s all about the “big H”: happiness. Some may argue that happiness is a frivolous topic and certainly not one worthy of serious scientific endeavour. Yet, when you start digging deeper, it becomes clear that happiness is not at all straightforward. In fact, it’s a pretty complex concept. This article explores some of the components of happiness (or well-being as it’s often called), how they’re measured and why they matter.

. Previously About ‘Positive Psychology’

Probably the simplest way to get a handle on happiness is to divide it initially into two basic components:

. Hedonic well-being

. Eudaimonic well-being

The distinction between these two aspects of happiness dates to the ancient Greek philosophers Aristippus (c. 435–356 BCE), who championed hedonism, and Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who advocated eudaimonism.

According to Aristippus, the goal of life is to maximise pleasure and minimise displeasure or pain. In positive psychology hedonic well-being is often used to refer to the happiness you get from feeling pleasure in the moment; it is the variety of happiness which usually springs to mind when you’re asked what happiness is. It is, though, typically short-lived. We must keep topping up our reserves in order to maintain its effects. One of the problems with defining happiness solely in terms of sensory pleasure is that, paradoxically, some human desires, even if they are pleasure-producing in the short term, are not good for you in the long term.

And what about eudaimonic well-being? If happiness can ever have a serious side, this is certainly it. As suggested, some people believe that pleasure on its own isn’t sufficient to describe the totality of human well-being. According to Aristotle, merely pursuing pleasure is vulgar; he advocated eudaimonism because he believed that true happiness is found in doing what is worth doing, not in just having a good time. Eudaimonic well-being is a broad term used by positive psychologists to refer to the happiness we gain from having meaning and purpose in our lives, fulfilling our potential and feeling that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

But even eudaimonic well-being is not problem-free. Some psychologists dislike its moral overtones; they argue that it isn’t psychology’s job to prescribe what is good for people. And, as a matter of fact, eudaimonic well-being may not provide any pleasurable feelings at all: it may involve considerable personal hardship and effort over the longer term. Yet, it is suggested that eudaimonia leads to greater life satisfaction than pure pleasure alone (Huta, V., Park, N., Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. [2003]).

In practice, positive psychologists do not agree on the definition of eudaimonic well-being – terms which include “self-actualisation”, “personal expressiveness”, “meaning”, “personal growth”, and “engagement and flow”. Nor do they agree on how it should be measured, and often the term eudaimonic well-being is used as a catch-all for any type of happiness that isn’t hedonic. But even if we’re not yet sure how to define eudaimonic well-being, most people would acknowledge that there’s more to true happiness than a game or round of 9-hole golf at the weekend. Psychology research concurs with this: a recent study of over 13,000 people suggests that pursuing engagement or meaning is more strongly related to well-being than pursuing pleasure (Schueller, S. M., & Seligman, M. P. [2010]).

Another area of disagreement for positive psychologists is whether happiness is a subjective or an objective phenomenon. Some definitions of eudaimonic well-being suggest that there is an objective standard against which people’s lives can be judged. On the other hand, there are psychologists who insist that happiness is a subjective phenomenon. They argue that it can only be measured by asking people to rate their own happiness. This leads us to another definition of happiness often used in positive psychology – Subjective Well-Being (SWB) – which is expressed in the following formula:

Satisfaction with Life + Positive Emotion – Negative Emotion

In simple terms this means that subjective happiness consists of three elements, one cognitive (or evaluative) and two affective.

Using Subjective Well-Being as the measure suggests that to increase our level of happiness overall, we should focus on minimising our negative mood and maximising our life satisfaction and positive mood.

. A positive psychology model of well-being

In his most recent book, Flourish, Martin Seligman, one of the founding fathers of the positive psychology movement, describes his new theory of well-being. His model (PERMA), which consists of five separate elements, draws on aspects of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being:

P (Positive emotion) is exactly what it says – the experience of positive mood and feelings which are uplifting. Psychologists use various types of questionnaire which can be used to measure positive (and negative) emotional states.

E (Engagement) or ‘flow’ as it’s often called, refers to the well-being you get from being totally absorbed in the task in hand, so much so that you lose track of time and feel completely at one with what you’re doing. When sports people talk about “being in the zone”, they’re referring to their experience of flow. Flow is usually measured by asking people to reflect back on their day and record flow experiences or by having them carry an electronic beeper which randomly prompts them to think about and record what they’re doing at that moment in time.

R (Relationships) are included in Seligman’s model because research suggests that good, caring and supportive interpersonal connections are essential to your well-being at any age in life.

M (Meaning) is important because it provides both a stable foundation and a sense of direction in life. Pursuing meaningful activities has been found to be more strongly related to happiness than pursuing pleasurable ones. There are many different measures of meaning, although it’s still a relatively under-researched area. The Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe) measures 26 different sources, including self-transcendence (such as spirituality), self-actualisation (such as challenge and knowledge), order (such as tradition and holding on to values), and well-being and caring for others (such as community and love).

A (Accomplishment) is the latest psychological component in Seligman’s well-being model. It’s another broad category which includes everything from achievement, success and mastery at the highest level possible to progress towards goals and competence.

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