Is it possible to measure happiness? And if so, what are the causes of happiness?
Hi everyone, this is Jeff, and welcome back to your favorite podcast in English. This is episode 179 of Plain English, and all the resources for this episode—and I mean alllllllll the resources—are available at PlainEnglish.com/179. JR is the producer, hard at work, producing lots of new stuff for all of you each Monday and Thursday. PlainEnglish.com/179
Let me ask you a question. Researchers have identified three drivers of happiness: three factors that influence whether a person is happy or not. They are your circumstances, like your age, health, and income; your behaviors, things you intentionally; and, finally, your genetics. Out of these three, which are the biggest drivers of happiness? I’ll tell you what they are later in the episode.
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Is it possible to measure happiness?
If you can measure something, you can study it. But how can you measure happiness? We have thousands of ways to measure the economy and wealth. GDP—gross domestic product—is the biggest one, but we also have the stock market, consumer confidence, per-capita income, purchasing power, inflation, house prices, net worth, tax rates, and on and on. We have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of ways of measuring our well-being economically. Are there any good equivalents for happiness, which is, arguably, much more important?
Here’s a hint: no, there aren’t.
Over the years, scientists have tried to come up with good, objective ways to measure whether people are happy. I’m a quantitative person, so I’m always looking for an objective, quantifiable way to measure happiness, so some of these appeal to me. First up: biological factors. Is it possible that there’s something in the hormones of happy people? Do our bodies produce chemicals when we’re happy? Depression has been linked to low levels of serotonin; is it possible there’s a biological marker for happiness? Unfortunately not. Scientists have been unable to find any biological indicators of happiness.
Next up, is there anything about our behavior that gives away our happiness? You may have heard of studies that look at micromovements on your face, where the tiniest involuntary movements of muscles can give away your emotions. Scientists have studied everything—how long it takes you to react to an image, how much you blink, I mean everything, without much luck. Happiness, though, isn’t a moment-by-moment emotion; it’s more a state of being. Do happier people smile more, laugh more, or use more emoji’s in their texting? No rock-solid evidence exists about behavioral factors, either.
Here’s an interesting one: ask another person. If you’re studying JR, for example, you could ask his friend Nora, who sees him every day. This unfortunately doesn’t work since happiness is a very internal thing. People may give the impression of being happy, while not being satisfied inside. This is only useful on studies of children, where their parents are the ones being asked.
So that leaves us with only one way to measure happiness. If you’re a quantitative, left-brained person like me, then you’re not going to like it. The answer is: self-reporting. Overwhelmingly, the most popular way to measure happiness over a large number of people is to simply ask them.
I have always thought this was a very strange way of doing it. If you ask two people, “How many hours of sleep do you get a night?” One person might say “six” and another person might say “eight.” You can say the second person definitely gets more sleep. But with happiness, there is no objective frame of reference. For example, if I ask two people, on a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with your life?, one person might answer “six” and another might answer “eight”. But there is no common definition of what six on a scale of ten means. Can we really say that the person who answers “six” is less happy?
Ordinarily, as a fairly quantitative person, this would bother me. People are throwing out numbers on a scale, but everyone’s scale means something different; it’s all very personal. But the more I thought about it, the more comfortable I got with this idea. Happiness is a personal thing. It’s a subjective feeling, true, but the subjective feeling is what we’re trying to measure. Besides, that’s the only game in town: if self-reports are the only option, then we have to live with self-reports. And psychologists have developed some standard surveys, so they can be compared across time and across cultures.
So now for the good stuff: what makes people happy? At the beginning of the episode, I asked you to think about these three big causes of happiness: your genetics, your circumstances, or your intent. Your intent is all the things under your control. Your circumstances are things like your age, social status, health, and income. And your genetics are, well, a gift from your parents.
Statistically speaking, your level of happiness is comprised fifty percent by your genetics; ten percent by your circumstances; and forty percent by your intentions. The bad news is that a huge contributor to your happiness is something out of your control: your genetics. Your genetics will give you a baseline, a predisposition. You can always overcome it, but for some people it takes harder work to be happy than for others.
But remember that fifty percent is, at least to some degree, under your control. Let’s set aside the “circumstances” portion for now and talk about what people can do to improve their overall levels of happiness. How can they boost that forty percent that falls in the “intentions” category?
The biggest contributor to people’s happiness is social relationships, including close friends and romantic relationships. Married people are generally happier than people who have never been married, for example. So to boost your happiness, you need to nurture your relationships with friends and your spouse or partner. You can also gain happiness with exercise, being in nature, adding a variety of experiences to your life. Expressing gratitude is linked to happiness; that’s why many people keep a gratitude journal, in which they regularly note down what they’re thankful for. When you experience pleasures, really let yourself enjoy them, savor them. Helping others is linked to happiness. And so is being committed to meaningful goals.
Related: How millennials are changing the modern workplace
This is a long episode already and I haven’t even touched the juicy part of this subject: how much of an effect does money have on happiness? So let’s pick this conversation up on Monday with Part 2 of this topic, when we’ll answer the question, how much does money affect our personal happiness?
Today I want to say “hi” to Jean Paul from Bogotá, Colombia. He runs his own company and is hoping to emigrate to Canada someday, so he’s learning English right alongside all of you. I also want to say hello to William in Singapore, who’s already a great writer in English; Alexson in Brazil, who enjoyed the João Gilberto episode; and Parsa from Iran, who’s studying for the TOEFL and is hoping to study in the United States. And thanks to all of you—I can’t mention everyone in the episode—but thanks to all of you who have sent me messages on WhatsApp. If you would like to send me a note on WhatsApp, you can find us at PlainEnglish.com/WhatsApp
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