Psychology of happiness

Although economists (barring Richard Layard) have not really started believing in happiness research, there is a lot to learn from psychological randomized experiments that have taken place of late.

Often it’s said that artificial happiness is not of the same quality as natural happiness. I listened to a lecture by Dan Gilbert who says that synthetic happiness is the same as natural happiness. Long term happiness is not a function of events that we perceive would make us happy, like elections or winning lotteries or passing exams. Our minds seem to have automatic stabilizers that kick in whenever we encounter failures or are unable to achieve our goals. This usually takes place in the shape of altering the world view – “It happened for the good” or “This was destined to happen” or “We should learn to accept this”. These statements are examples of psychological immune systems that make us feel less miserable than what we might think would happen after a huge loss.

Another talk on the psychology of happiness that is worth listening to is by Martin Seligman. He finds that there are three channels of achieving happiness – leading the pleasant life, the good life and the meaningful life. The first one deals with the sensory pleasures. The second one with social engagement, relationships with family and friends and how much satisfaction you get from work (Karma-yoga in Sanskrit). The third one is about having a goal bigger than oneself. The meaningful life and the good life seem to be the significant contributors to long-term happiness with sensory happiness only the icing on the cake. But it seems that in ancient Hindu scriptures avoiding sensory pleasures was one of the goals to reach long-term sustained happiness or enlightenment. This would be the next frontier for happiness research. How much are the goals of the first life conflicting with those of the second and more importantly the third life.