How is it measured?
From Dickinson College Wiki
How to Measure Happiness
The saying goes that "money doesn't buy happiness," but this has been a long debated argument. In Richard Layards' Happiness Lectures he informs us that happiness in the West has not increased in 50 years despite a drastic increase in income.
Happiness plays a vital role in the economy. Studies have also proven that when people are happier, the economy will have a tendency to prosper. These happiness studies have drawn connections to many different fields of science, including Psychology, Science, Biology, and Neurology. These different sciences have added to the studies of Economists by including studies that show how different sides of the brain are affected by happiness, and how different levels of certain chemicals are set off in the brain with the changes in emotion.
Happiness is measured in a plethora of ways with many different types of experiments for each one. Happiness research is also conducted in many various formats, depending on the specific field of happiness being researched. Researchers keep in mind that happiness is affected by changes in environment, mood, time of day and sometimes even the people that you are around.
The fluctuation of mood is taken into consideration during these evaluations of happiness due to the fact that people’s feelings and moods change throughout the day. One particular happiness research study was performed on a group of 1000 women in Texas. In this study, the women were asked to divide a typical day into episodes, explain what they were doing in each episode, who they were with and also how they felt in each episode.
The results in Table 1 display the happiness index and average hours per day of each particular activity. The activity which seemed to be the most enjoyable was sex which occurred for an average of 12 minutes each day, while the average 24 minute morning commute was rated the lowest.
Table 2 shows the average happiness index of these women with different people. Studies show that they prefer to be with their friends and relatives the most, with the least preference going to their bosses. Being alone wasn’t highly rated either, which is not surprising due to the fact that the activities with the highest ratings are some of which many of these women would not partake in alone.
The above results serve to show that the people that you interact with during particular activities have a direct affect on a person's happiness. If someone is around people that they enjoy being around, they will be more likely to enjoy what the activity that they are doing; for instance, socializing with friends after work, or having dinner with parents/ relatives. Likewise, the tables also prove that if you are around company that you may not be the most fond of, you will be less likely to enjoy the activity you are doing in the presence of that particular person; like Working under the watchful eye of your boss.
Researchers also take into consideration the measure of happiness as compared to a persons tiredness. These studies show that before 4 PM, the more tired a person is, the more unhappy they are likely to be. Figure 1 and 2 show that happiness drops drastically after 12, which is usually after lunch when people get the first hint of tiredness of the day. After 4PM, which is usually when the work day ends for most people, happiness has a sharp increase despite the increase in tiredness as well. This too would have an impact on productivity. When a person is happier and less tired, they are likely to be more productive and get more work done as opposed to people who are unhappy, tired and will have a tendency to be sluggish and less productive at work.
Rivalry is also another way that happiness is measured. It is also the explanation for why Happiness has not made any increases in 50 years. Figure 2 below show the result of a recent study of Harvard graduate students. The majority of students preferred to be in world A, as opposed to B because they would rather be poorer, provided their relative position improved. Many other similar studies show that people have a tendency to care about other peoples incomes as well as their own.
Rivalry is the evidence that explains the lack of an increase in happiness despite increases in income. Lets say for instance everyone at a company gota a 5% raise in their salary. Since everyone’s income has increased, no one’s relative position has improved. It follows the similar concept of “smart for one, dumb for all.” If one person decides to work overtime to increase his wages, so that he could buy a larger house, his relative position would have improved because he now has a larger house than everyone else. However, when everyone else decides to work over time to buy larger houses as well, then he is back to square one.
Habituation is another explanation for why happiness has not increased in the West. When your income increases, and you are able to buy that larger house— despite the other people buying larger houses as well—you will be happier because you have more than before, however, as times goes by, you will get accustomed to your position and your new larger home, which will soon cease to seem large to you. Due to habituation, you will always look for ways to increase what you have. Now, you will want to buy another yet larger house, and the cycle continues with toys, cars, cell phones etc.
Source: Richard Layard- Happiness Lecture #2
Shenisa Clarke
What are the current findings?
link back to main page: Happiness Studies
