posted
Couple of years back I got interested in a branch of psychology known as positive psychology. A significant part of this branch concerns the psychology of happiness. For instance, while having plenty of market goods to choose from might mean we're materially well off, it doesn't necessarily mean that having more choice makes us happier. In fact, being faced with more choice everyday might make us less happy.
quote: Humans rapidly and inevitably adapt to good things by taking them for granted. The more possessions and accomplishments we have, the more we need to boost our level of happiness. It supposes that the brain of a species that has dominated others would evolve to strive for continual betterment.
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* Despite the fact that external forces are constantly changing our life goals, happiness for most people is a relatively constant state. Regardless of how good things get, we'll always be about the same level of happiness.
* It is believed that the baseline of an individual's happiness is at least partially genetic. For example, identical twins are usually equally bubbly or grumpy.
* There are things that we can do to raise or lower our baseline happiness. Marriage does, pets do, but children don't seem to (despite what we think). Money does not add much to happiness. Lottery winners are the perfect example: within a year, they usually return to their former happiness level. Those handicapped in motor vehicle accidents are another example. They too return to former happiness levels, despite their loss of function.
But while money can't buy you happiness in many ways, it might be able to in some.Posts: 722 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Meh. The problem with all that sort of study is that crossing off one of five boxes (very happy, somewhat happy, slightly happy, somewhat unhappy, suicide bomber) is just not a very good way to measure the internal state of happiness. You would almost have to measure smile/laugh frequency, brain patterns, serotonin levels... Actually, even that wouldn't help because we really have no idea how this correlates with the qualia of happiness. In short these studies are useless.
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