What is this article about?

This is a research report of an experiment where 222 undergraduates were screened for high happiness. The upper 10% of consistently very happy people were compared with average people and very unhappy people. This study has tried to find out what some factor might be that influence high happiness: social relationships, personality and psychopathology, and variables that have been related to subjective well-being in correlational studies. It also examined whether there was a variable that was sufficient for happiness and a variable that was necessary for happiness (sufficient: everyone with the variable is happy, necessary: every happy person has the variable).

What were the results?

On a scale from 5 to 35, the very happy group scored about 30 on life satisfaction. The very happy people had virtually never thought about suicide, could recall many more good events in their lives than bad ones, and had many more positive than negative emotions on a daily basis. The very unhappy people were dissatisfied with life and had equal amounts of positive and negative affect on a daily basis. They reported this about themselves, but their friends and family also rated them dissatisfied. The average group was in the middle of these two groups. 

The biggest difference between the very happy group and the average and very unhappy group, was in their fulsome and satisfying interpersonal lives. The very happy people spent the least time alone and the most time socializing and valued their relationships the highest. Good social relationships might be a necessary condition for high happiness.

The very happy people also scored the lowest on psychopathology tests, virtually never in the clinical range. Almost half of the very unhappy group scored in the clinical range. 

Also good to note, was that the verry happy people never reported their mood to be "ecstatic", but they did score their mood with a 7, 8 or 9 most of the time.

Broader samples and longitudinal methods are needed to make strong conclusions from these results. These findings do suggest that very happy people have rich and satisfying social relationships and spend little time alone. But it is not yet clear what the causal relationship is here: perhaps happy people have better relationships because of their happiness, or happiness and good relationships are both caused by a third variable. What is clear is that social relationships might be a necessary but are not a sufficient condition for high happiness. Very happy people also experience unpleasant emotions and rarely feel euphoria or ecstacy. They are rather medium to moderatly happy most of the time.

Article summary with Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being - Diener, E. et al.

What is this article about?

The hedonic treadmill model is a model that supposes that good and bad events can only temporarily affect happiness. According to this model, everyone always adapts back to hedonic neutrality. This leads to the conclusion that it is pointless to try and increase happiness. The poorest diseased beggar with no social connections could be just as happy as the healthy billionaire with a lot of close and supportive relationships. But is this really true? This article will make five important revisions to the hedonic treadmill model:

1. Individuals' set points are not hedonically neutral.
2. People have different set points, partly depending on their temperaments.
3. A single person may have multiple happiness set points.
4. Well-being set points can change under some conditions.
5. Individuals differ in their adaptation to events.

What is the hedonic treadmill theory?

In 1971, Brickman and Campbell came up with the hedonic treadmill. According to them, processes similar to sensory adaptation occur when people experience emotional reactions to life events. Just like we get used to sensory input and are quickly not aware anymore of smells or sounds, we adapt to emotions as well. Myers added to this theory that every desirable experience is transitory. According to the original treadmill theory of Brickman and Campbell, people briefly react to good and bad events, but in a short time they return to neutrality. The theory is based on the automatic habituation model in which psychological systems react to deviations from one's current adaptation level. Automatic habituation processes are adaptive because they allow constant stimuli to fade into the background.

In 1978, Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman offered initial empirical support for the treadmill model. Brickman had for example studied lottery winners and found that they were not happier than nonwinners. It was also found that people with paraplegia, an impairment in the motor and sensory function of the lower body, were not less happy than people who could walk. The idea of hedonic adaptation was appealing in psychology because it offered an explanation for the observation that people appear to be relatively stable in happiness despite changes in fortune. The theory was widely accepted in psychology. Evidence frequently supported the idea. There soon came longitudinal studies that tracked changes in happiness over time. These studies provided more direct evidence that adaptation can occur. For instance, Silver found that people with spinal cord injuries had strong negative emotions after their crippling accident, but that these negative emotions had already faded after two months. 

What revisions can be made to the original hedonic treadmill model?

Are set points always neutral? 

The first revision that can be made, is that set points might not always be neutral. The original treadmill theory suggested that people return to a neutral set point after an emotionally significant event. Research now shows that this part of the theory is wrong. Most

What is this article about?

Two of the most widely held goals by which people measure and motivate themselves are happiness and a meaningful life. In this article, the relationship between these two goals is discussed. More specifically, although there certainly is (much) overlap between these two, the focus here is on the differences.

How can happiness be defined?

Happiness generally refers to a state of subjective well-being. Happiness be may narrowly or broadly focused: one can be happy to have found a lost key, but one can also be happy that the war has ended. Happiness is conceptualized and measured by researcher in at least two different manners. The first one concerns affect balance, which suggests that happiness is an aggregate of how one feels at different moment. Happiness is then defined as having more pleasant than unpleasant emotional states. The second one concerns life satisfaction, which goes beyond momentary feelings. It refers to an integrative, evaluative assessment of one's entire life. Generally, assessing both of these provides a useful index of subjective well-being.

How can a meaningful life be defined?

Meaningfulness is considered to concern both a cognitive and emotional assessment of whether one's life has purpose and value.

What is the central theorem of the theory that is being proposed in this article?

The authors suggest that the simpler form of happiness (affect balance instead of life satisfaction), at least, is rooted in nature. Every living creature has biological needs, such as wanting to survive and reproduce. Basic motivations make one to pursue and enjoy those needs. Affect balance then depends to a certain degree on whether these basic needs are being satisfied.

While happiness is natural, meaningfulness may depend on culture. In every culture language is being used as a means to use and communicate meanings. Meaningfulness, thus, makes use of culturally transmitted symbols (via language) as a means to evaluate one's life in relation to purposes, values, and other meanings that are also frequently learned from the culture. Thus, meaning is more associated with one's culture than happiness is. An important feature of meaning is that it is not limited to immediately present stimuli