Rakhshieh 1

Mehrdad Rakhshieh

Professor Beadle

ENGL 115

September 30, 2019

Project Space

In spite of everything, there exists a predetermined happiness threshold, which is

experienced during normal conditions. Sonja Lyubomirsky, in the chapter “How Happy Are You

and Why?” from The How of Happiness, argues that three factors contribute to one’s happiness:

circumstances, genetic set point, and intentional activity. David Brooks, a journalist, and Graham

Hill, a journalist, entrepreneur, and designer, have also shared their perception of happiness and

have offered ways to increase one’s happiness level. In his article “What Suffering Does,”

Brooks claims that suffering is not always destructive, and it provides people a chance of

experiencing development and eventually happiness. Hill, in “Living with Less. A Lot Less,”

argues that material possessions do not provide happiness, and they cause stress and unnecessary

complications. In terms of persuasion, Lyubomirsky appeals to her audience’s emotions more

effectively than Brooks by describing the life experiences of her interviewees and the happiness

survey, invokes logical connections more frequently than Hill by utilizing graphs and offering

case studies, and she is considered more credible by the readers than Brooks and Hill because of

her credentials in social psychology and the references to reliable researches and studies.

Sonja Lyubomirsky utilizes the life experiences of her interviewees, the happiness

survey, and an optimistic tone to invoke emotional responses, which allows her to make a more

relatable argument than David Brooks. She describes the lives of three people, Angela, Randy,
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and Shannon. Angela and Randy experienced hardships throughout their childhood but still feel

happy, but Shannon had an ordinary childhood experience but feels “very alone and believes her

life to be unsteady and her relationships unreliable” (Lyubomirsky 182). Lyubomirsky

intentionally uses strong emotional words for the readers to be able to relate and sympathize with

the interviewees, so they would be convinced that circumstances do not play a huge role in a

person’s happiness level. She also provides a “Subjective Happiness Scale,” which allows the

reader to reflect on their happiness level and take action based on their results. Since the

happiness scale can trigger an emotional response, Lyubomirsky is able to easily persuade the

readers that intentional activity helps boost one’s happiness level. Additionally, as Lyubomirsky

makes her argument about the relationship of intentional activity and happiness, she maintains an

optimistic tone to motivate her audience to take action. She states, “But just because your

happiness set point cannot be changed doesn’t mean that your happiness level cannot be

changed” (Lyubomirsky 190). Since she first mentions that the influences of circumstances and

genetics add up to 60% on a person’s happiness level, Lyubomirsky does not want her audience

to feel uninspired to increase their happiness level; therefore, she keeps a positive tone to avoid

discouraging the readers. However, Brooks mainly uses logos and ethos in his article to argue

that suffering helps us grow in a positive direction. He uses cause and effect successfully and

keeps a professional tone throughout the article. His use of cause and effect is evident in:

“Abraham Lincoln suffered through the pain of conducting a civil war, and he came out of that

with the Second Inaugural” (Brooks 286). Brooks implies that Abraham Lincoln’s suffering

experience during the civil war era led him to sympathize with the South and unite the country

with his second inaugural address. Although Abraham Lincoln’s experience supports Brooks’

argument, his audience can have a hard time relating to such a historical accomplishment.
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Furthermore, the readers may feel intimidated as they could believe that it is expected of them to

significantly change after a suffering experience. Brooks’ choice of tone improves his credibility

but does not appeal to his audience’s emotions. As a result, Lyubomirsky manages to persuade

her audience more effectively than Brooks, since she utilizes pathos to make an argument on an

emotional subject, happiness.

The Happiness Twins study, pie chart, bar graph, and the comparison between height

and happiness make Lyubomirsky appeal to the reader’s logic more effectively than Graham

Hill. Lyubomirsky uses a study carried out by behavior geneticists David Lykken and Auke

Tellegen to draw the relationship between genetics and happiness. In the study, it was

determined that the happiness levels of identical twins were similar, and the researchers found

out this was not the case with fraternal twins, who are one-half as genetically similar to each

other as are identical twins. Therefore, Lyubomirsky makes the conclusion, “This fact-that

identical twins (but not fraternal ones) share similar happiness levels-suggests that happiness is

largely genetically determined” (Lyubomirsky 188). She uses inductive reasoning to logically

persuade the reader that a genetic set point largely affects the happiness level. She also proceeds

to use a pie chart and a bar graph from Proper Insights & Analytics, which provide further

evidence of her points. The chart and the graph allow the reader to visually believe the logical

connections between circumstances, intentional activity, genetic set point, and happiness.

Finally, Lyubomirsky compares the heritability of height and happiness to draw another logical

conclusion. She states height has a heritability level of 0.90, compared to 0.50 for happiness, but

can be modified by environmental and behavioral changes, which is proved by the increase in the

average height of Europeans based on their better overall nutrition (Lyubomirsky 191). She then

makes the connection that since height has a higher heritability level than happiness and can be
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radically modified, a low happiness set point can also be modified to increase one’s happiness

level, which is deemed logically true by the reader. Nevertheless, Hill mainly uses his life

experience to persuade the reader that material possessions only create unnecessary stress. Hill

uses logical connections, such as the use of the U.C.L.A study, where it was found that 75% of

the families in the study could not park their cars in the garages due to the lack of space, to

convince the reader into not buying inessential items, but he does not logically prove that less

material objects lead to positive consequences. He supports his argument by explaining his

feelings throughout stages of his life, such as stressing about his material possessions and feeling

freedom after selling his inessential items (Hill 311), which allows the reader relate to his

experiences but does not provide logical evidence. In conclusion, the effective use of logos

enables Lyubomirsky to make a stronger argument than Hill.

Lyubomirsky’s credentials in social psychology and her use of reliable researches and

studies allow her argument to be more credible than Brooks and Hill’s arguments. Lyubomirsky

is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and she has earned a

Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University. As a result, she is considered credible to

make conclusions about human happiness levels. On the other hand, Graham Hill is a journalist,

entrepreneur, and designer, which does not help his credibility on the subject of happiness, and

David Brooks is a political and cultural commentator, who has earned a B.A. in history. Since his

credentials do not relate to human psychology, Brooks is also not qualified to make trustworthy

arguments about happiness and suffering. However, each author includes credible sources of

information to apply ethos. Lyubomirsky mentions Aristotle’s, Freud’s, and Schulz’s definitions

of happiness (Lyubomirsky 184), uses the study of behavior geneticists David Lykken and Auke

Tellegen and the New Zealand study, “which was voted by the editorial board of Science
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magazine as the second-biggest finding of that year” (Lyubomirsky 192) to strengthen her

argument. David Brooks refers to the theologian Paul Tillich to support his take on suffering

(Brooks 285), and Graham Hill uses U.C.L.A. researches, the National Resources Defense

Council reports, and psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen’s findings (Hill 311) to prove that

material objects do not provide happiness. Since Lyubomirsky refers to more scientific and

psychological studies, her sources are more closely connected to the subject of human happiness

than Brooks’ and Hill’s. She manages to gain the trust of her audience more successfully than

Brooks and Hill, because her credentials relate to the subject of happiness and her reference to

definitions given by well know psychologists and studies carried out by credible scientists.

To make a more effective argument, Lyubomirsky appeals to her audience’s emotions

more frequently than David Brooks with the use of an optimistic tone and by describing the life

experiences of her interviewees and the happiness survey, and she invokes logical connections

more effectively than Graham Hill through the comparison of height and happiness, the

application of graphs and charts, and case studies. Lastly, she is considered more credible by the

reader than Brooks and Hill because of her credentials in social psychology and the references to

reliable researches and studies. Lyubomirsky’s article reveals the current scientific knowledge on

a person’s happiness level which is processed in the brain, but it is clear that the brain is the final

frontier in scientific discoveries, since artificial intelligence has yet to be programmed to feel

happiness.
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Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Mathew Parfitt and Dawn

Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 284-287.

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Mathew Parfitt

and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 308-313.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Mathew

Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 179-197.