Making Happy People: The nature of happiness and its origins in childhood

The more straightforward distinction between pleasure and the absence of displeasure also has deep roots running back to ancient Greece. The philosopher Epicurus, among others, argued that avoiding pain and displeasure is a crucial element of happiness.4 The seventeenth-century poet John Dryden captured the thought in these lines: ‘For all the happiness mankind can gain / Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain’. Early Buddhist teachings express a similar view when they advocate the avoidance of suffering, and depict the ultimate state of nirvana as one in which all suffering has ended.

Modern research has confirmed that pleasure and displeasure are distinct states, not just opposite ends of the same spectrum. Perhaps surprisingly, the amount of pleasure we experience is found to be relatively independent of how much displeasure we experience, at least when measured over reasonably long periods of time. You can have a lot, or a little, of one or both in your life. A heroin addict might have a life packed with intense pleasure and intense displeasure, whereas a routine-bound suburban drone might have little of either. Given a magic wand, you would probably choose to have a generous serving of pleasure, with occasional homeopathic doses of displeasure to heighten the contrast.

Pleasure and displeasure even have different brain mechanisms. A chemical messenger substance called dopamine is released by the brain in response to food, sex, drugs and other pleasurable stimuli, and for this reason dopamine is sometimes referred to as the brain’s ‘pleasure chemical’.5 Pleasure also stimulates the release in the brain of natural opiate substances called encephalins and endorphins. An imbalance in a different chemical messenger, called serotonin, plays a central role in unpleasant states such as anxiety and depression. Prozac and certain other antidepressant drugs work by inhibiting the re-uptake of serotonin in the brain and thereby boosting its level.

Pleasure and displeasure can become more closely intertwined in people suffering from severe depression. As well as experiencing intense displeasure, some depressives lose the capacity to feel pleasure – a condition known as anhedonia. They become unable to enjoy experiences that would normally raise their mood, which is one reason why it can be extremely difficult for them to emerge out of their depression.

Even more crucial to an understanding of happiness is the distinction between pleasure/displeasure and satisfaction. Pleasure and displeasure differ from satisfaction in two fundamental ways. First, pleasure and displeasure reflect how you feel, whereas satisfaction reflects how you think about your life.6 Satisfaction can come from achieving long-term goals, and it extends the concept of happiness to include the fulfilment of mental as well as physical appetites. ‘No man is happy’, wrote the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius, ‘who does not think himself so.’

The second big difference between pleasure/displeasure and satisfaction concerns time frames. Pleasure and displeasure are rooted in the present: they are about how you feel now. Satisfaction is rooted in the past, as you look back on your life. A Greek scholar called Solon, who lived around 600 BC, expressed this retrospective aspect of satisfaction in a strong (if not wildly overstated) form when he wrote that no man could be described as happy until he was dead. The distinction between pleasure/displeasure and satisfaction means you can be happy without having to be one of those smiley people who appear to be permanently bubbling over with bliss. Some of us are just not very jolly most of the time, but that does not necessarily mean we are unhappy. Happiness comes in many forms, not all of which are built on immediate delight.

Happiness, then, depends both on feeling (pleasure and displeasure) and thinking (satisfaction); it involves both the heart and the head. This has important practical implications. It means, for example, that you can be satisfied, and therefore happy, without necessarily experiencing much immediate pleasure. We all have to put up with occasional bouts of displeasure in order to achieve satisfaction, because most satisfying activities involve effort and some entail outright pain. Most of us would feel satisfied (and therefore happy) about, say, comforting a crying baby or a sick relative, even though the experience might not be particularly pleasant at the time. Our happiness would derive from a deeper sense of satisfaction at having done something good. Similarly, I am told that training hard for a competitive sport can be highly satisfying despite at times being painful.

The eminent American scientist Martin Seligman, who is one of the founders of positive psychology, has neatly encapsulated the three elements of happiness into what he calls the Pleasant Life and the Good Life. As its name implies, the Pleasant Life is one built primarily on pleasure and the absence of displeasure. This is the materialistic vision of hedonism, fuelled by lashings of raunchy sex, prolific shopping, exquisite food, recreational drugs, designer clothes, or whatever presses your button.7 The underlying attitude is characterised by an overriding concern for the self, a drive for immediate gratification of physical needs, and a belief that material possessions produce happiness. The outward sign of someone living the Pleasant Life is a big smile.

In contrast, Seligman’s Good Life is one built mainly upon satisfaction. Someone living the Good Life derives much of their happiness from engaging in worthwhile activities like work, parenting or study, and attaining goals that mean something to them. They may not always be grinning with joy, because they sometimes do things that are difficult or unpleasant, but they nonetheless feel good about the life they are living.8 If all is going really well, you could have a life that is both Pleasant and Good. A Good Life rich in satisfaction may also be a Pleasant Life. Someone who has a loving partner, close friends, an interesting job and a stimulating social life may have experiences that are both satisfying and pleasurable. There is no rule against having both.

More than pleasure

Equating happiness with pleasure has been a common error throughout history. Across the centuries, various sages, politicians and gurus have preached that the ultimate aim in life should be the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.9

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, for example, Jeremy Bentham and like-minded utilitarian philosophers championed a world view that made happiness synonymous with pleasure. Bentham, whose stuffed remains are still on display in University College, London, regarded pleasure as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, and argued that playing pub games was just as good as composing a symphony if it produced the same amount of pleasure. He famously asserted that ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ should be the supreme criterion for morals and legislation. Bentham even tried to devise objective methods for measuring the greatest happiness of the greatest number using his ‘felicific calculus’, but the task was beyond him.

Twenty-first-century attitudes are not vastly different, in that many people are still inclined to focus on pleasure rather than satisfaction when thinking about happiness. This mindset, which evaluates happiness in terms of feelings rather than thoughts, lies at the heart of our consumerist ‘me’ culture, and it starts early in life. Young children readily discover the immediate fix that comes from a pleasurable experience like eating chocolate or watching TV. Satisfaction is more elusive, since it requires thinking, effort and a certain amount of patience. Children can all too easily develop a lifelong habit of relying on short-term pleasures rather than learning to attain satisfaction. As we shall see later, a child’s ability to resist the desire for instant gratification, in return for greater benefits at a later time, is a good predictor of subsequent happiness and success.

Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with pleasure: personally, I am in favour of having as much as I can get. One of the simplest and most reliable ways of making yourself feel better, at least for a while, is to do something you enjoy. For many people, listening to music is a reliable way of eliciting powerful sensations of pleasure and relaxation. Research using brain-scanning techniques has revealed that pleasurable responses to music are mediated by the same regions of the brain that respond to other pleasurable stimuli including sex, food and recreational drugs.10 Listening to music can also ease anxiety and induce a physiological relaxation response, which is why music therapy has been used successfully for many years to help patients suffering from painful medical conditions.

But, as I have said, there is more to happiness than pleasure. William James, who was one of the founders of modern psychology, put it like this: ‘If merely “feeling good” could decide, then drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.’ It’s good to feel – but it’s also good to think. After all, thinking is one of the hallmarks of being human. A life built on pleasure alone can be empty and one-dimensional – a life for grazing animals, as Aristotle scathingly described it. Taken to excess, the Pleasant Life can be self-destructive and unhappy. Elvis Presley and the Marquis de Sade reportedly lived lives rich in pleasurable sensations and the gratification of physical appetites, but not everyone would regard their later years as enviably happy in the broader sense. At the other end of the spectrum, saintly figures have lived lives rich in self-sacrifice and satisfaction but rather short on pleasure. There is something to be said for a happy life built on generous measures of both.

How is happiness measured?

Throughout this book I will be referring to evidence drawn from published scientific research into the nature and causes of happiness. Some of this work is cited in the References section at the end. However, you might be wondering how scientists could possibly know all these things. After all, happiness is an essentially private experience. And if you ask someone how happy they are, can you trust their answer? Investigating happiness is not a trivial problem. Fortunately (or I could not have written this book) psychologists have devised an array of proven and reasonably reliable techniques for measuring happiness, which they have been studiously deploying for many years.

How, then, do psychologists go about measuring happiness? In most cases they do it simply by asking direct questions to suitably selected samples of people. A number of special questionnaires (or ‘scales’, as they are known in the trade) have been developed for this purpose. Some are designed specifically to assess pleasure, displeasure or satisfaction with life, while others are intended to assess happiness in the round. The simplest versions use a single question, such as ‘How satisfied are you with your life in general?’ The respondent answers on a scale of, say, one to ten. More sophisticated versions use many different questions (or ‘items’) which are designed to probe specific aspects of pleasure, displeasure or satisfaction. For example, the Oxford Happiness Inventory contains 29 different items, and for each item the respondent must select one of four statements that best describe how they have been feeling over the past several weeks – for example, ‘I do not feel happy/I feel fairly happy/I am very happy/I am incredibly happy’.

Asking people directly is not the only way of gauging their happiness. Other techniques have also been devised. These include conducting one-to-one interviews, asking partners, friends or close relatives to assess the individual’s happiness, and measuring levels of various hormones and neurotransmitter chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, cortisol and endorphins. Another widely used technique is known as experience sampling or mood sampling. In this case, the subjects carry a notebook or miniature electronic recorder around with them and make a note of their current experience, activity, mood or level of happiness at various times throughout their normal day, whenever they receive a prompt from a pager or timer.

Memory can also cast light on happiness. Studies have found that happy people find it easier than unhappy people to remember good events in their lives and to forget bad events. Unhappy people are typically faster at recalling unpleasant memories than pleasant memories. This seems to be partly because happy people actually experience more positive events than unhappy people, and partly because they are more likely to interpret any event in a positive way.

Happiness – or, rather, positive mood – can also be gauged by recording how much time people spend smiling. However, only certain types of smile indicate genuine jollity. Experiments have revealed that the so-called Duchenne smile, which involves smiling with the eyes as well as the mouth, is a true indicator of positive mood, whereas a mouth-only smile is not. The non-Duchenne smile is the contrived, have-a-nice-day smile of the fake who feels they should appear happy even when they are not. Researchers have found that people can sense whether a stranger is smiling or frowning from the sound of their voice alone, without seeing their face. In fact, you can judge whether someone is smiling just from hearing them whisper.

A good mood even has a distinctive smell. Scientists have discovered that people can judge whether someone is in a positive mood from their body odour alone. In one experiment, men and women were made to feel either cheerful or frightened by showing them funny or scary films, while their armpit odours were collected on gauze pads. A week later, the researchers presented these gauze pads to complete strangers and asked them to decide which ones had come from people in a jolly mood and which from frightened people. They were able do this – not perfectly, but well above chance levels. This ability to divine mood from smell is not as remarkable as it might seem. We humans are primates, and zoologists have known for decades that other species of primates communicate information about their emotional states, particularly fear, through smell.

One reason for placing a degree of trust in psychologists’ measurements of happiness is that these very different techniques produce results that are broadly in accord with each other. Thus, people who report feeling in a good mood and satisfied with their lives are also likely to be judged happy by their friends, to have a lot of objectively positive experiences, to smile more, to have lower levels of stress hormones in their bloodstream, and to find it easier to remember nice events. They probably smell jolly as well. Another reason for believing that measurements of happiness are meaningful is that they relate consistently to other indicators of well-being. Measures of happiness are reasonably good predictors of people’s mental health, the state of their personal relationships and family life, their success at work or in the classroom, their physical health and even how long they live. (We will be exploring these connections between happiness, health and other aspects of well-being in the next chapter.)

One day it should be possible to judge how happy someone is by analysing the patterns of electrical activity in their brain. Scientists have made some progress in this direction, but the technology is still far from mature. Techniques such as PET (positron emission tomography) brain scanning have revealed that particular moods or emotions are consistently accompanied by distinctive patterns of electrical and chemical activity in various regions of the brain.11 The brain activity patterns associated with happiness and sadness are quite different from one another, reinforcing the view that they are distinct mental states. A recent series of brain-scanning studies has shown that happiness is particularly associated with heightened electrical activity in an area on the left side of the brain known as the dorsal-superior region of the left prefrontal cortex. Individuals who routinely display higher levels of activity in this brain area are found to be better at regulating their emotions and faster at recovering emotionally from unpleasant experiences.

It may not be too many years before measurements of brain activity provide a new window on happiness. Meanwhile, scientists are able to assess happiness in meaningful ways, and are beginning to unravel its causes and consequences.

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