Happiness
The author is an economist at London School of Economics. He doesn’t believe that buying power is associated with happiness as standard Economics implies. His research into the subject of happiness utilise the findings from diverse areas as psychology, neuroscience, economics, sociology and philosophy. I particularly like the book that was written by someone who amalgamate findings from multiple disciplines and build a coherent narrative. The more I read the more I study, the more I believe that there’s no such thing as discipline; it’s all made up. We make it so we can study things more easily, but the downside is that we lose sense of a whole, a comprehensive outlook of an issue. Information, understanding become fragmented and it’s very difficult to put them back together to get the big picture. This book is an antithesis to the fragmented nature of scientific enquiries.
On happiness measurement
Happiness can be measured the same way as pain using their objective character. One study used hot pad of the same temperature placing on participants legs. Pain scores reported by participants varied widely. The scores, however, were directly associated with brain activity as measured by EEG. So the reported scores (subjective measurement) equals brain activities-physiological responses (objective measurement). What they feel, therefore, is really what happened.
The author tried to convince readers that happiness can be measured (by linking subjective and objective nature of pain and pain perception) because if it could not be measured all the following arguments would collapse. For healthcare practitioners, we probably don’t need convincing. We are familiar with visual analog scale and already believe that pain can be measured therefore so can happiness.
“A wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife’s sister’s husband.”
On relative quality of income
Income is much more than a means to buy things. We don’t perceive income as absolute, we need comparison to place value on income. We also use income, compared to others’, as a measure of how we are valued and (if you are not careful) a measure of how we value ourselves.
The hedonic treadmill or hamster wheel: a never-ending run
How far do we adapt to higher income? The simplest approach is to find out how people’s actual income affects the income which they feel they need. We can ask people, what after-tax income for your family would you consider to be very bad, bad, in sufficient, sufficient, good, very good? The middle would be required income. It was found that this varies strongly with the actual income that an individual currently experiences. A dollar rise in actual income causes a rise of at least 40 cents in required income. In other words, at least 40% of this year’s gain is wiped out next year. This is eye-opening. To put this in Australian context, if you earned more than 180K, 45% would be taken away by tax and another 40% through our mental adaptation to higher income so it’s not really worth it financially and also emotionally.
If happiness is the goal, working hard to make more money and use that money to buy things from which happiness is extracted might not be the way. It is because the things that we get used to most easily and most take for granted are our material possessions. However, the experiences do not pale in the same way for example: the time we spend with our family and friends, and the quality and security of our job. Again if happiness is the goal, the focus should be on acquiring more time so it can be spent on family and friends (once the essentials and financial security are taken care of)
US general social surveys ask people how happy they are in general, and also how satisfied they are with the different dimensions of their lives. It was found that there are big seven factors affecting happiness: family relationship, financial situation, work, community and friends, health respectively. Two more factors are personal freedom and personal values. This survey put things in perspective. Without financial security, it will create knock-on negative effect on other important aspects of our lives (so we will never be happy). Money is, therefore, important, but up to a point after which the other four factors should take precedent.
On TV and happiness
In 1982 nearly 50% of the characters in prime time social dramas were millionaires, the actual millionaire figures were more than twenty thousand time less. While 66% of real Americans work in blue collar or service job, only 10% of television characters do. The more TV people watch, the more they overestimate the affluence of other people and the lower the estimate of their own relative income. The result is that they are less happy. Happiness depends much more on how you perceive your relative income than on what your income actually is. Since TV has a negative impact on your perceived position, it is bad for your happiness.
On one estimate and extra hour a week watching television causes you to spend an extra four dollar a week on “keeping up with the Jones”. Therefore, not only does TV reduce our happiness through relative perception, but also through actual spending.
Watching TV may also inflict body image problems. One psychological study recorded that the mood of women fell right after watching beautiful models. Similar experiment was done in men and found that they felt less good about their wives after watching beautiful models. Beautiful people constantly parade on TV. It could be argued, however, that the mood drop might not be long-lasting so the significance of body image problems TV created may not be that dramatic.
This book was written long before the age of social media, I think the findings are still applicable. The medium may change, but the key element remains i.e. it’s all about comparison-our awful reality and highly self curated content on social media.
On internal source of happiness
We can train our feelings. We are not simply victims of our situation, or indeed our past. Instead, we can directly address our bad feelings and replaced them by positive feelings, building on the positive force that is in each of us, our better self. It is impossible to be happy without developing a positive outlook, and the inner feeling of a positive space that is ultimately impervious to outside events. Easy to say, but extremely difficult to do.
I can’t help but thinking perhaps after going around the world and spending almost half of my life learning and studying about science and western philosophy, the one and true avenue for long-lasting happiness might have originated in the the East i.e. meditation. If meditation can create internal contentment regardless of external circumstances then that might be the one sure way of being happy. The problem is it’s not an easy thing to do.
As a society we are no happier than 50 years ago. Yet every group in our society is richer, and most are healthier.
What can be done to improve the situation?
Human beings are very adaptable. If things get better, we, after a while, take them for granted. If they get worse, we also eventually largely accept them. This is the reason why economic growth has not increased welfare as much as we expected. The number of people who are dissatisfied with their financial position is still as high as it was 30 years ago, while people are many times richer. In other words, income is addictive. Suppose my income and spending rise this year next year I will need more income still in order to achieve a given level of happiness. In fact, to a large extent, it is the change in income rather than income itself that affects happiness. We habituate more rapidly to things that money can buy (material possessions) than to things it cannot buy (e.g. relationships).
Since most people do not foresee the addictive effect of income and spending, taxation has a useful role just as it has with other forms of addiction like smoking. Taxes discourage us from overwork, from running on a treadmill that brings less advance in happiness than we expected.
Helping the less fortunate is more cost effective from global point of view (cost/happiness unit).
Extra income increases happiness less and less as people get richer. In poor countries extra income increases happiness much more than in rich countries, and that is why helping the third world should be one of the major ethical goals for western society.
Policies that will increase misery, like easier laws on gambling, can never be justified by the income they would generate. Income is not everything. When consider a case for sin tax, human misery, suffering are not part of the equation because it’s difficult to measure and are, therefore, overlooked, but that doesn’t make it less real.
Happiness depends on your inner life as much as on your outer circumstances. It is possible to improve your inner life to accept yourself better and to feel more for others. To develop this inner strength of character should be a major goal of education. Buddhist meditation and positive psychology may play a role in this.
“Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Everyday will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.”