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Happiness
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from the Summer 2020 Edition of the First published Wed Jul 6, 2011; substantive revision Thu May 28, 2020

Stanford Encyclopedia There are roughly two philosophical literatures on “happiness,” each
corresponding to a different sense of the term. One uses ‘happiness’ as a
of Philosophy value term, roughly synonymous with well-being or flourishing. The other
body of work uses the word as a purely descriptive psychological term,
akin to ‘depression’ or ‘tranquility’. An important project in the
philosophy of happiness is simply getting clear on what various writers are
talking about: what are the important meanings of the term and how do
they connect? While the “well-being” sense of happiness receives
Edward N. Zalta Uri Nodelman Colin Allen R. Lanier Anderson
significant attention in the contemporary literature on well-being, the
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psychological notion is undergoing a revival as a major focus of
Editorial Board
https://plato.stanford.edu/board.html philosophical inquiry, following on recent developments in the science of
happiness. This entry focuses on the psychological sense of happiness (for
Library of Congress Catalog Data
ISSN: 1095-5054
the well-being notion, see the entry on well-being). The main accounts of
happiness in this sense are hedonism, the life satisfaction theory, and the
Notice: This PDF version was distributed by request to mem- emotional state theory. Leaving verbal questions behind, we find that
bers of the Friends of the SEP Society and by courtesy to SEP happiness in the psychological sense has always been an important
content contributors. It is solely for their fair use. Unauthorized concern of philosophers. Yet the significance of happiness for a good life
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science of happiness, as well as the role of happiness in social and political
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy decision-making.
Copyright c 2020 by the publisher
The Metaphysics Research Lab 1. The meanings of ‘happiness’
Center for the Study of Language and Information
1.1 Two senses of ‘happiness’
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
1.2 Clarifying our inquiry
Happiness
c 2020 by the author
Copyright 2. Theories of happiness
Dan Haybron 2.1 The chief candidates
All rights reserved. 2.2 Methodology: settling on a theory
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1
 Happiness Dan Haybron

2.3 Life satisfaction versus affect-based accounts Philosophers who write about “happiness” typically take their subject
2.4 Hedonism versus emotional state matter to be either of two things, each corresponding to a different sense
2.5 Hybrid accounts of the term:
3. The science of happiness
3.1 Can happiness be measured? 1. A state of mind
3.2 Empirical findings: overview 2. A life that goes well for the person leading it
3.3 The sources of happiness
In the first case our concern is simply a psychological matter. Just as
4. The importance of happiness
inquiry about pleasure or depression fundamentally concerns questions of
4.1 Doubts about the value of happiness
psychology, inquiry about happiness in this sense—call it the (long-term)
4.2 Restoring happiness to the theory of well-being
“psychological sense”—is fundamentally the study of certain mental
4.3 Is happiness overrated?
states. What is this state of mind we call happiness? Typical answers to
5. The pursuit and promotion of happiness
this question include life satisfaction, pleasure, or a positive emotional
5.1 Normative issues
condition.
5.2 Mistakes in the pursuit of happiness
5.3 The politics of happiness Having answered that question, a further question arises: how valuable is
Bibliography this mental state? Since ‘happiness’ in this sense is just a psychological
Academic Tools term, you could intelligibly say that happiness isn’t valuable at all.
Other Internet Resources Perhaps you are a high-achieving intellectual who thinks that only
Related Entries ignoramuses can be happy. On this sort of view, happy people are to be
pitied, not envied. The present article will center on happiness in the
psychological sense.
1. The meanings of ‘happiness’
In the second case, our subject matter is a kind of value, namely what
1.1 Two senses of ‘happiness’ philosophers nowadays tend to call prudential value—or, more commonly,
well-being, welfare, utility or flourishing. (For further discussion, see the
What is happiness? This question has no straightforward answer, because entry on well-being. Whether these terms are really equivalent remains a
the meaning of the question itself is unclear. What exactly is being asked? matter of dispute, but this article will usually treat them as
Perhaps you want to know what the word ‘happiness’ means. In that case interchangeable.) “Happiness” in this sense concerns what benefits a
your inquiry is linguistic. Chances are you had something more interesting person, is good for her, makes her better off, serves her interests, or is
in mind: perhaps you want to know about the thing, happiness, itself. Is it desirable for her for her sake. To be high in well-being is to be faring well,
pleasure, a life of prosperity, something else? Yet we can’t answer that doing well, fortunate, or in an enviable condition. Ill-being, or doing
question until we have some notion of what we mean by the word.

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 Happiness
badly, may call for sympathy or pity, whereas we envy or rejoice in the
good fortune of others, and feel gratitude for our own. Being good for
someone differs from simply being good, period: perhaps it is always
good, period, for you to be honest; yet it may not always be good for you,
as when it entails self-sacrifice. Not coincidentally, the word ‘happiness’
derives from the term for good fortune, or “good hap,” and indeed the
terms used to translate it in other languages often have similar roots. In
this sense of the term—call it the “well-being sense”—happiness refers to
a life of well-being or flourishing: a life that goes well for you.
Importantly, to ascribe happiness in the well-being sense is to make a
value judgment: namely, that the person has whatever it is that benefits a
person.[1] If you and I and have different values, then we may well differ
about which lives we consider happy. I might think Genghis Khan had a
happy life, because I think what matters for well-being is getting what you
want; while you deny this because you think a life of evildoing, however
“successful,” is sad and impoverished.
Theories of well-being—and hence of “happiness” in the well-being sense
—come in three basic flavors, according to the best-known taxonomy
(Parfit 1984): hedonism, desire theories, and objective list theories.
Whereas hedonists identify well-being roughly with experiences of
pleasure, desire theorists equate it with the satisfaction of one’s desires
—actually getting what you want, versus merely having certain
experiences. Both hedonism and desire theories are in some sense
subjectivist, since they ground well-being in the individual’s subjective
states. Objective list theorists, by contrast, think some things benefit us
independently of our attitudes or feelings: there are objective prudential
goods. Aristotelians are the best-known example: they take well-being
(eudaimonia) to consist in a life of virtuous activity—or more broadly, the
fulfillment of our human capacities. A passive but contented couch potato
may be getting what he wants, and he may enjoy it. But he would not, on
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Dan Haybron
Aristotelian and other objective list theories, count as doing well, or
leading a happy life.
1.2 Clarifying our inquiry
Now we can sharpen the initial question somewhat: when you ask what
happiness is, are you asking what sort of life benefits a person? If so, then
your question concerns matters of value, namely what is good for people
—the sort of thing that ethical theorists are trained to address.
Alternatively, perhaps you simply want to know about the nature of a
certain state of mind—happiness in the psychological sense. In this case,
some sort of psychological inquiry will be needed, either philosophical or
scientific. (Laypersons often have neither sort of question in mind, but are
really asking about the sources of happiness. Thus it might be claimed,
say, that “happiness is being with good friends.” This is not a view about
the nature or definition of happiness, but rather a theory about the sorts of
things that tend to make us happy. It leaves unanswered, or takes for
granted, the question of just what happiness is, such that friends are a good
source of it.)
In short, philosophical “theories of happiness” can be about either of at
least two different things: well-being, or a state of mind.[2] Accordingly,
there are essentially two bodies of philosophical literature about
“happiness” and two sets of debates about its nature, though writers often
fail to distinguish them. Such failures have generated much confusion,
sometimes yielding bogus disagreements that prove to be merely verbal.[3]
For instance, some psychologists identify “happiness” with attitudes of life
satisfaction while remaining neutral on questions of value, or whether
Bentham, Mill, Aristotle, or any other thinker about the good life was
correct. Such researchers employ the term in the psychological sense. Yet
it is sometimes objected against such claims that life satisfaction cannot
suffice for “happiness” because other things, like achievement or
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 Happiness
knowledge, matter for human well-being. The objectors are confused:
their opponents have made no claims about well-being at all, and the two
“sides,” as it were, are simply using ‘happiness’ to talk about different
things. One might just as sensibly object to an economist’s tract on
“banks” that it has nothing to say about rivers and streams.
Which use of ‘happiness’ corresponds to the true meaning of the term in
contemporary English? Arguably, both. The well-being usage clearly
dominates in the historical literature through at least the early modern era,
for instance in translations of the ancient Greeks’ ‘eudaimonia’ or the
Latin ‘beatitudo’, though this translation has long been a source of
controversy. Jefferson’s famous reference to “the pursuit of happiness”
probably employed the well-being sense. Even later writers such as Mill
may have used the term in its well-being sense, though it is often difficult
to tell since well-being itself is often taken to consist in mental states like
pleasure. In ordinary usage, the abstract noun ‘happiness’ often invites a
well-being reading. And the locution ‘happy life’ may not naturally take a
psychological interpretation, for the simple reason that lives aren’t
normally regarded as psychological entities.
Contrast this with the very different meaning that seems to attach to talk of
“being happy.” Here it is much less clear that we are talking about a
property of a person’s life; it seems rather to be a property of the person
herself. To be happy, it seems, is just to be in a certain sort of
psychological state or condition. Similarly when we say that so-and-so “is
happy” (as opposed to saying that he is leading a happy life). This
psychological usage, arguably, predominates in the current vernacular.
Researchers engaged in the self-described “science of happiness” usually
do not take themselves to be making value judgments when they proclaim
individuals in their studies to be happy. Nor, when asserting that a life
satisfaction study shows Utahans to be happier than New Yorkers, are they
committing themselves to the tendentious claim that Utahans are better
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Dan Haybron
off. (If they are, then the psychology journals that are publishing this
research may need to revise their peer-review protocols to include ethicists
among their referees.) And the many recent popular books on happiness,
as well as innumerable media accounts of research on happiness, nearly all
appear to take it for granted that they are talking about nothing more than
a psychological condition.
Henceforth ‘happiness’ will be used in the long-term psychological sense,
unless otherwise specified. Note, however, that a number of important
books and other works on “happiness” in recent decades have employed
the well-being sense of the term. Books of this sort appear to include
Almeder 2000, Annas 1993, 2011, Bloomfield 2014, Cahn and Vitrano
2015, Kenny and Kenny 2006, McMahon 2005, McPherson 2020,
Noddings 2003, Russell 2013, White 2006, and Vitrano 2014, though
again it is not always clear how a given author uses the term. For
discussion of the well-being notion, see the entry on well-being.[4]
2. Theories of happiness
2.1 The chief candidates
Philosophers have most commonly distinguished two accounts of
happiness: hedonism, and the life satisfaction theory. Hedonists identify
happiness with the individual’s balance of pleasant over unpleasant
experience, in the same way that welfare hedonists do.[5] The difference is
that the hedonist about happiness need not accept the stronger doctrine of
welfare hedonism; this emerges clearly in arguments against the classical
Utilitarian focus on happiness as the aim of social choice. Such arguments
tend to grant the identification of happiness with pleasure, but challenge
the idea that this should be our primary or sole concern, and often as well
the idea that happiness is all that matters for well-being.
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 Happiness
Life satisfaction theories identify happiness with having a favorable
attitude toward one’s life as a whole. This basic schema can be filled out in
a variety of ways, but typically involves some sort of global judgment: an
endorsement or affirmation of one’s life as a whole. This judgment may be
more or less explicit, and may involve or accompany some form of affect.
It may also involve or accompany some aggregate of judgments about
particular items or domains within one’s life.[6]
A third theory, the emotional state view, departs from hedonism in a
different way: instead of identifying happiness with pleasant experience, it
identifies happiness with an agent’s emotional condition as a whole, of
what is often called “emotional well-being.”[7] This includes
nonexperiential aspects of emotions and moods (or perhaps just moods),
and excludes pleasures that don’t directly involve the individual’s
emotional state. It might also include a person’s propensity for
experiencing various moods, which can vary over time, though several
authors have argued against this suggestion (e.g., Hill 2007, Klausen 2015,
Rossi 2018). Happiness on such a view is more nearly the opposite of
depression or anxiety—a broad psychological condition—whereas
hedonistic happiness is simply opposed to unpleasantness. For example, a
deeply distressed individual might distract herself enough with constant
activity to maintain a mostly pleasant existence—broken only by tearful
breakdowns during the odd quiet moment—thus perhaps counting as
happy on a hedonistic but not emotional state view. The states involved in
happiness, on an emotional state view, can range widely, far more so that
the ordinary notion of mood or emotion. On one proposal, happiness
involves three broad categories of affective state, including “endorsement”
states like joy versus sadness, “engagement” states like flow or a sense of
vitality, and “attunement” states like tranquility, emotional expansiveness
versus compression, and confidence. Given the departures from
commonsensical notions of being in a “good mood,” happiness is
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Dan Haybron
characterized in this proposal as “psychic affirmation,” or “psychic
flourishing” in pronounced forms.
A fourth family of views, hybrid theories, attempts an irenic solution to
our diverse intuitions about happiness: identify happiness with both life
satisfaction and pleasure or emotional state, perhaps along with other
states such as domain satisfactions. The most obvious candidate here is
subjective well-being, which is typically defined as a compound of life
satisfaction, domain satisfactions, and positive and negative affect.
(Researchers often seem to identify happiness with subjective well-being,
sometimes with life satisfaction, and perhaps most commonly with
emotional or hedonic state.) The chief appeal of hybrid theories is their
inclusiveness: all the components of subjective well-being seem
important, and there is probably no component of subjective well-being
that does not at times get included in “happiness” in ordinary usage.
2.2 Methodology: settling on a theory
How do we determine which theory is correct? Traditional philosophical
methods of conceptual or linguistic analysis can give us some guidance,
indicating that some accounts offer a better fit with the ordinary concept of
happiness. Thus it has been argued that hedonism is false to the concept of
happiness as we know it; the intuitions taken to support hedonism point
instead to an emotional state view (Haybron 2001). And some have argued
that life satisfaction is compatible with profoundly negative emotional
states like depression—a suffering artist might not value emotional
matters much, and wholeheartedly affirm her life (Carson 1981, Davis
1981b, Haybron 2005, Feldman 2010). Yet it might seem counterintuitive
to deem such a person happy. At the same time, people do sometimes use
‘happiness’ to denote states of life satisfaction: life satisfaction theories do
seem faithful to some ordinary uses of ‘happiness’. The trouble is that
HAPPINESS appears to be a “mongrel concept,” as Ned Block (1995)
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 Happiness
called the concept of consciousness: the ordinary notion is something of a
mess. We use the term to denote different things in different contexts, and
often have no clear notion of what we are referring to. This suggests that
accounts of happiness must be somewhat revisionary, and that we must
assess theories on grounds other than simple fidelity to the lay concept of
happiness—“descriptive adequacy,” in Sumner’s (1996) terms. One
candidate is practical utility: which conception of happiness best answers
to our interests in the notion? We talk about happiness because we care
about it. The question is why we care about it, and which psychological
states within the extension of the ordinary term make the most sense of
this concern. Even if there is no simple answer to the question what
happiness is, it may well turn out that our interests in happiness cluster so
strongly around a particular psychological kind that happiness can best, or
most profitably, be understood in terms of that type of state (Haybron
2003). Alternatively, we may choose to distinguish different varieties of
happiness. It will be less important how we use the word, however, than
that we be clear about the nature and significance of the phenomena that
interest us.
2.3 Life satisfaction versus affect-based accounts
The debate over theories of happiness falls along a couple of lines. The
most interesting questions concern the choice between life satisfaction and
affect-based views like hedonism and the emotional state theory.[8]
Proponents of life satisfaction see two major advantages to their account.
First, life satisfaction is holistic, ranging over the whole of one’s life, or
the totality of one’s life over a certain period of time. It reflects not just the
aggregate of moments in one’s life, but also the global quality of one’s life
taken as a whole (but see Raibley 2010). And we seem to care not just
about the total quantity of good in our lives, but about its distribution—a
happy ending, say, counts for more than a happy middle (Slote 1982,
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Dan Haybron
Velleman 1991). Second, life satisfaction seems more closely linked to our
priorities than affect is, as the suffering artist case illustrates. While a
focus on affect makes sense insofar as we care about such matters, most
people care about other things as well, and how their lives are going
relative to their priorities may not be fully mirrored in their affective
states. Life satisfaction theories thus seem to fit more closely with liberal
ideals of individual sovereignty, on which how well my life is going for
me is for me to decide. My satisfaction with my life seems to embody that
judgment. Of course a theory of happiness need not capture everything
that matters for well-being; the point is that a life satisfaction view might
explain why we should care so much about happiness, and so enjoy
substantive as well as intuitive support.[9]
But several objections have been raised against life satisfaction views. The
most common complaint has already been noted, namely that a person
could apparently be satisfied with her life even while leading a highly
unpleasant or emotionally distressed existence, and it can seem
counterintuitive to regard such a person as happy (see section 2.2). Some
life satisfaction theorists deny that such cases are possible (Benditt 1978),
but it could also be argued that such possibilities are part and parcel of life
satisfaction’s appeal: some people may not get much pleasure out of life
because they don’t care particularly about affective matters, and a life
satisfaction theory allows that they can, in their own fashion, be happy.
Two other objections are more substantive, raising questions about
whether life satisfaction has the right sort of importance. One concern is
whether people often enough have well-grounded attitudes of life
satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Evaluating one’s life as a whole can be a
complicated business, and there is some question whether people typically
have well-defined attitudes toward their lives that accurately reflect how
well their lives measure up relative to their priorities. Some research, for
instance, suggests that life satisfaction reports tend to reflect judgments
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 Happiness
made on the spot, drawing on whatever information comes readily to
mind, with substantial influences by transient contextual factors like the
weather, finding a dime, etc. (Schwarz and Strack 1999). Debate persists
over whether this work undermines the significance of life satisfaction
judgments, but it does raise a question whether life satisfaction attitudes
tend to be well-enough grounded to have the kind of importance that
people normally ascribe to happiness.
The third objection is somewhat intricate, so it will require some
explaining. The claim is that a wide range of life satisfaction attitudes
might be consistent with individuals’ perceptions of how well their lives
are going relative to what they care about, raising doubts about the
importance of life satisfaction (Haybron 2016). You might reasonably be
satisfied when getting very little of what you want, or dissatisfied when
getting most of what you want. One reason for this is that people tend to
have many incommensurable values, leaving it open how to add them up.
Looking at the various ups and downs of your life, it may be arbitrary
whether to rate your life a four out of ten, or a seven. A second reason is
that life satisfaction attitudes are not merely assessments of subjective
success or personal welfare: they involve assessments of whether one’s
life is good enough—satisfactory. Yet people’s values may radically
underdetermine where they should set the bar for a “good enough” life,
again rendering the judgment somewhat arbitrary. Given your values, you
might reasonably be satisfied with a two, or require a nine to be satisfied.
While it may seem important how well people see their lives going
relative to what they care about, it is not obviously so important whether
people see their lives going well enough that they are willing to judge
them satisfactory.
If life satisfaction attitudes are substantially arbitrary relative to subjective
success, then people might reasonably base those attitudes on other
factors, such as ethical ideals (e.g., valuing gratitude or noncomplacency)
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Dan Haybron
or pragmatic concerns (e.g., comforting oneself). Shifts in perspective
might also reasonably alter life satisfaction attitudes. After the funeral, you
might be highly satisfied with your life, whereas the high school reunion
leaves you dissatisfied; yet neither judgment need be mistaken, or less
authoritative.
As a result, life satisfaction attitudes may be poor indicators of well-being,
even from the individual’s own point of view. That people in a given
country register high levels of life satisfaction may reflect nothing more
than that they set the bar extremely low; they might be satisfied with
anything short of pure agony. Another country’s citizens might be
dissatisfied with their lives, but only because they set the bar much higher.
Relative to what they care about, people in the dissatisfied nation could be
better off than those in the satisfied nation. To take another example, a
cancer patient might be more satisfied with his life than he was before the
diagnosis, for he now looks at his life from a different perspective and
emphasizes different virtues like fortitude and gratitude as opposed to
(say) humility and non-complacency. Yet he need not think himself better
off at all: he might believe himself worse off than he was when he was less
satisfied. Neither judgment need seem to him or us to be mistaken: it’s just
that he now looks at his life differently. Indeed, he might think he’s doing
badly, even as he is satisfied with his life: he endorses it, warts and all, and
is grateful just have his not-so-good life rather than some of the much
worse alternatives.
For present purposes, the worry is that life satisfaction may not have the
kind of significance happiness is normally thought to have. This may pose
a difficulty for the identification of life satisfaction with happiness: for
people frequently seem to use happiness as a proxy for well-being, a
reasonably concrete and value-free stand-in that facilitates quick-and-dirty
assessments of welfare. Given the discovery that someone is happy, we
might infer that he is doing well; if we learn that someone is unhappy, we
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 Happiness
may conclude that she is doing poorly. Such inferences are defeasible: if
we later find that the happy Ned’s wife and friends secretly hate him, we
need not decide that he isn’t happy after all; we simply withdraw the
conclusion that he is doing well. So long as happiness tracks well-being
well enough in most cases, this sort of practice is perfectly respectable.
But if we identify happiness with life satisfaction, then we may have a
problem: maybe Sally is satisfied only because she values being grateful
for the good things in life. This sort of case may not be merely a
theoretical possibility: perhaps the very high rates of self-reported life
satisfaction in the United States and many other places substantially
reflects a broad acceptance of norms of gratitude and a general tendency to
emphasize the positives, or perhaps a sense that not to endorse your life
amounts to a lack of self-regard. It is not implausible that most people,
even those enduring great hardship, can readily find grounds for
satisfaction with their lives. Life may have to be pretty hard for a person to
be incapable of affirming it.
Despite these concerns there is significant intuitive appeal in the idea that
to be happy is to be satisfied with one’s life. Perhaps a different way of
conceiving life satisfaction, for instance dispensing with the global
judgment and aggregating particular satisfactions and dissatisfactions,
would lessen the force of these objections. Alternatively, it is possible that
idealized or qualified forms of life satisfaction would mitigate these
concerns for some purposes, such as a theory of well-being.[10]
2.4 Hedonism versus emotional state
A second set of issues concerns the differences between the two affect-
based views, hedonism and emotional state. The appeal of hedonism is
fairly obvious: the pleasantness of our experience is plainly a matter of
great significance; many have claimed it to be the only thing that matters.
What, by contrast, motivates the emotional state account, which bears
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Dan Haybron
obvious similarities to hedonism yet excludes many pleasures from
happiness? The question of motivation appears to be the chief worry
facing the emotional state theory: what’s to be gained by focusing on
emotional state rather than pleasure?
One argument for taking such a view is intuitive: some find it implausible
to think that psychologically superficial pleasures invariably make a
difference in how happy one is—the typical pleasure of eating a cracker,
say, or even the intense pleasure of an orgasm that nonetheless fails to
move one, as can happen with meaningless sexual activity. The intuitive
distinction seems akin to distinctions made by some ancient philosophers;
consider, for instance, the following passage from Epictetus’s Discourses:
‘I have a headache.’ Well, do not say ‘Alas!’ ‘I have an earache.’
Do not say ‘Alas!’ And I am not saying that it is not permissible to
groan, only do not groan in the centre of your being. (Discourses,
1.18.19, emphasis added).
The Stoics did not expect us never to feel unpleasant sensations, which
would plainly be impossible; rather, the idea was not to let such things get
to us, to impact our emotional conditions.
Why should anyone care to press such a distinction in characterizing
happiness? For most people, the hedonic difference between happiness on
an emotional state versus a hedonistic view is probably minimal. But
while little will be lost, what will be gained? One possibility is that the
more “central” affects involving our emotional conditions may bear a
special relation to the person or the self, whereas more “peripheral”
affects, like the pleasantness of eating a cracker, might pertain to the
subpersonal aspects of our psychologies. Since well-being is commonly
linked to ideas of self-fulfillment, this sort of distinction might signal a
difference in the importance of these states. Another reason to focus on
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 Happiness
emotional condition rather than experience alone may be the greater
psychological depth of the former: its impact on our mental lives,
physiology, and behavior is arguably deeper and more pervasive. This
enhances the explanatory and predictive significance of happiness, and
more importantly its desirability: happiness on this view is not merely
pleasant, but a major source of pleasure and other good outcomes
(Fredrickson 2004, Lyubomirsky, King et al. 2005). Compare health on
this score: while many think it matters chiefly or entirely because of its
connection with pleasure, there are few skeptics about the importance of
health. As well, emotional state views may capture the idea that happiness
concerns the individual’s psychological orientation or disposition: to be
happy, on an emotional state theory, is not just to be subjected to a certain
sequence of experiences, but for one’s very being to manifest a favorable
orientation toward the conditions of one’s life—a kind of psychic
affirmation of one’s life. This reflects a point of similarity with life
satisfaction views of happiness: contra hedonism, both views take
happiness to be substantially dispositional, involving some sort of
favorable orientation toward one’s life. But life satisfaction views tend to
emphasize reflective or rational endorsement, whereas emotional state
views emphasize the verdicts of our emotional natures.
While hedonism and emotional state theories are major contenders in the
contemporary literature, all affect-based theories confront the worries,
noted earlier, that motivate life satisfaction views—notably, their looser
connection with people’s priorities, as well as their limited ability to reflect
the quality of people’s lives taken as a whole.
2.5 Hybrid accounts
Given the limitations of narrower theories of happiness, a hybrid account
such as a subjective well-being theory may seem an attractive solution.
This strategy has not been fully explored in the philosophical literature,
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Dan Haybron
though Sumner’s “life satisfaction” theory may best be classified as a
hybrid (1996; see also Martin 2012). In any event, a hybrid approach
draws objections of its own. If we arrive at a hybrid theory by this route, it
could seem like either the marriage of two unpromising accounts, or of a
promising account with an unpromising one. Such a union may not yield
wholesome results. Second, people have different intuitions about what
counts as happiness, so that no theory can accommodate all of them. Any
theory that tries to thus risks pleasing no one. A third concern is that the
various components of any hybrid are liable to matter for quite different
reasons, so that happiness, thus understood, might fail to answer to any
coherent set of concerns. Ascriptions of happiness could be relatively
uninformative if they cast their net too widely.
3. The science of happiness
3.1 Can happiness be measured?
With the explosive rise of empirical research on happiness, a central
question is how far, and how, happiness might be measured.[11] There
seems to be no in-principle barrier to the idea of measuring, at least
roughly, how happy people are. Investigators may never enjoy the
precision of the “hedonimeter” once envisaged by Edgeworth to show just
how happy a person is (Edgeworth 1881). Indeed, such a device might be
impossible even in principle, since happiness might involve multiple
dimensions that either cannot be precisely quantified or summed together.
If so, it could still be feasible to develop approximate measures of
happiness, or at least its various dimensions. Similarly, depression may not
admit of precise quantification in a single number, yet many useful if
imprecise measures of depression exist. In the case of happiness, it is
plausible that even current measures provide information about how
anxious, cheerful, satisfied, etc. people are, and thus tell us something
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 Happiness
about their happiness. Even the simplest self-report measures used in the
literature have been found to correlate well with many intuitively relevant
variables, such as friends’ reports, smiling, physiological measures, health,
longevity, and so forth (Pavot 2008).
Importantly, most scientific research needs only to discern patterns across
large numbers of individuals—to take an easy case, determining whether
widows tend to be less happy than newlyweds—and this is compatible
with substantial unreliability in assessing individual happiness. Similarly,
an inaccurate thermometer might be a poor guide to the temperature, but
readings from many such thermometers could correlate fairly well with
actual temperatures—telling us, for instance, that Minnesota is colder than
Florida.
This point reveals an important caveat: measures of happiness could
correlate well with how happy people are, thus telling us which groups of
people tend to be happier, while being completely wrong about absolute
levels of happiness. Self-reports of happiness, for instance, might correctly
indicate that unemployed people are considerably less happy than those
with jobs. But every one of those reports could be wrong, say if everyone
is unhappy yet claims to be happy, or vice-versa, so long as the
unemployed report lower happiness than the employed. Similarly, bad
thermometers may show that Minnesota is colder than Florida without
giving the correct temperature.
Two morals emerge from these reflections. First, self-report measures of
happiness could be reliable guides to relative happiness, though telling us
little about how happy, in absolute terms, people are. We may know who
is happier, that is, but not whether people are in fact happy. Second, even
comparisons of relative happiness will be inaccurate if the groups being
compared systematically bias their reports in different ways. This worry is
particularly acute for cross-cultural comparisons of happiness, where
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differing norms about happiness may undermine the comparability of self-
reports. The French might report lower happiness than Americans, for
instance, not because their lives are less satisfying or pleasant, but because
they tend to put a less positive spin on things. For this reason it may be
useful to employ instruments, including narrower questions or
physiological measures, that are less prone to cultural biasing.[12]
The discussion thus far has assumed that people can be wrong about how
happy they are. Is this plausible? Some have argued that (sincerely) self-
reported happiness cannot, even in principle, be mistaken. If you think
you’re happy, goes a common sentiment, then you are happy. This claim is
not plausible on a hedonistic or emotional state view of happiness, since
those theories take judgments of happiness to encompass not just how one
is feeling at the moment but also past states, and memories of those can
obviously be spurious. Further, it has been argued that even judgments of
how one feels at the present moment may often be mistaken, particularly
regarding moods like anxiety.[13]
The idea that sincere self-reports of happiness are incorrigible can only be
correct, it seems, given a quite specific conception of happiness—a kind of
life satisfaction theory of happiness on which people count as satisfied
with their lives so long as they are disposed to judge explicitly that they
are satisfied with their lives on the whole. Also assumed here is that self-
reports of happiness are in fact wholly grounded in life satisfaction
judgments like these—that is, that people take questions about
“happiness” to be questions about life satisfaction. Given these
assumptions, we can plausibly conclude that self-reports of happiness are
incorrigible. One question is whether happiness, thus conceived, is very
important. As well, it is unlikely that respondents invariably interpret
happiness questions as being about life satisfaction. At any rate, even life
satisfaction theorists might balk at this variant of the account, since life
satisfaction is sometimes taken to involve, not just explicit global
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 Happiness
judgments of life satisfaction, but also our responses to the particular
things or domains we care about. Some will hesitate to deem satisfied
people who hate many of the important things in their lives, however
satisfied they claim to be with their lives as a whole.
In a similar vein, the common practice of measuring happiness simply by
asking people to report explicitly on how “happy” they are is sometimes
defended on the grounds that it lets people decide for themselves what
happiness is. The reasoning again seems to presuppose, controversially,
that self-reports of happiness employ a life satisfaction view of happiness,
the idea being that whether you are satisfied (“happy”) will depend on
what you care about. Alternatively, the point might be literally to leave it
up to the respondent to decide whether ‘happy’ means hedonic state,
emotional state, life satisfaction, or something else. Thus one respondent’s
“I’m happy” might mean “my experience is generally pleasant,” while
another’s might mean “I am satisfied with my life as a whole.” It is not
clear, however, that asking ambiguous questions of this sort is a useful
enterprise, since different respondents will in effect be answering different
questions.
To measure happiness through self-reports, then, it may be wiser to
employ terms other than ‘happiness’ and its cognates—terms whose
meaning is relatively well-known and fixed. In other words, researchers
should decide in advance what they want to measure—be it life
satisfaction, hedonic state, emotional state, or something else—and then
ask questions that refer unambiguously to those states.[14] This stratagem
may be all the more necessary in cross-cultural work, where finding
suitable translations of ‘happy’ can be daunting—particularly when the
English meaning of the term remains a matter of contention (Wierzbicka
2004).
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This entry focuses on subjective well-being studies, since that work is
standardly deemed “happiness” research. But psychological research on
well-being can take other forms, notably in the “eudaimonic”—commonly
opposed to “hedonic”—literature, which assesses a broader range of
indicators taken to represent objective human needs, such as meaning,
personal growth, relatedness, autonomy, competence, etc.[15] (The
assimilation of subjective well-being to the “hedonic” realm may be
misleading, since life satisfaction seems primarily to be a non-hedonic
value, as noted earlier.) Other well-being instruments may not clearly fall
under either the “happiness” or eudaimonic rubrics, for instance extending
subjective well-being measures by adding questions about the extent to
which activities are seen as meaningful or worthwhile (White and Dolan
2009). An important question going forward is how far well-being
research needs to incorporate indicators beyond subjective well-being.
3.2 Empirical findings: overview
The scientific literature on happiness has grown to proportions far too
large for this article to do more than briefly touch on a few highlights.[16]
Here is a sampling of oft-cited claims:
1. Most people are happy
2. People adapt to most changes, tending to return over time to their
happiness “set point”
3. People are prone to make serious mistakes in assessing and pursuing
happiness
4. Material prosperity has a surprisingly modest impact on happiness
The first claim, that most people are happy, appears to be a consensus
position among subjective well-being researchers (for a seminal argument,
see Diener and Diener 1996). The contention reflects three lines of
evidence: most people, in most places, report being happy; most people
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report being satisfied with their lives; and most people experience more
positive affect than negative. On any of the major theories of happiness,
then, the evidence seems to show that most people are, indeed, happy. Yet
this conclusion might be resisted, on a couple of grounds. First, life
satisfaction theorists might question whether self-reports of life
satisfaction suffice to establish that people are in fact satisfied with their
lives. Perhaps self-reports can be mistaken, say if the individual believes
herself satisfied yet shows many signs of dissatisfaction in her behavior,
for instance complaining about or striving to change important things in
her life. Second, defenders of affect-based theories—hedonistic and
emotional state views—might reject the notion that a bare majority of
positive affect suffices for happiness. While the traditional view among
hedonists has indeed been that happiness requires no more than a >1:1
ratio of positive to negative affect, this contention has received little
defense and has been disputed in the recent literature. Some investigators
have claimed that “flourishing” requires greater than a 3:1 ratio of positive
to negative affect, as this ratio might represent a threshold for broadly
favorable psychological functioning (e.g., Larsen and Prizmic 2008).
While the evidence for any specific ratio is highly controversial, if
anything like this proportion were adopted as the threshold for happiness,
on a hedonistic or emotional state theory, then some of the evidence taken
to show that people are happy could in fact show the opposite. In any
event, the empirical claim relies heavily on nontrivial philosophical views
about the nature of happiness, illustrating one way in which philosophical
work on happiness can inform scientific research.
The second claim, regarding adaptation and set points, reflects well-known
findings that many major life events, like being disabled in an accident or
winning the lottery, appear strongly to impact happiness only for a
relatively brief period, after which individuals may return to a level of
happiness not very different from before.[17] As well, twin studies have
found that subjective well-being is substantially heritable, with .50 being a
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commonly accepted figure. Consequently many researchers have posited
that each individual has a characteristic “set point” level of happiness,
toward which he tends to gravitate over time. Such claims have caused
some consternation over whether the pursuit and promotion of happiness
are largely futile enterprises (Lykken and Tellegen 1996; Millgram 2000).
However, the dominant view now seems to be that the early claims about
extreme adaptation and set points were exaggerated: while adaptation is a
very real phenomenon, many factors—including disability—can have
substantial, and lasting, effects on how happy people are.[18] This point
was already apparent from the literature on correlates and causes of
happiness, discussed below: if things like relationships and engaging work
are important for happiness, then happiness is probably not simply a
matter of personality or temperament. As well, the large cross-national
differences in measured happiness are unlikely to be entirely an artifact of
personality variables. Note that even highly heritable traits can be strongly
susceptible to improvement. Better living conditions have raised the
stature of men in the Netherlands by eight inches—going from short (five
foot four) to tall (over six feet)—in the last 150 years (Fogel 2005). Yet
height is considered much more heritable than happiness, with typical
heritability estimates ranging from .60 to over .90 (e.g., Silventoinen,
Sammalisto et al. 2003).[19]
3.3 The sources of happiness
The question of mistakes will be taken up in section 5.2. But the last claim
—that material prosperity has relatively modest impacts on happiness—
has lately become the subject of heated debate. For some time the standard
view among subjective well-being researchers was that, beyond a low
threshold where basic needs are met, economic gains have only a small
impact on happiness levels. According to the well-known “Easterlin
Paradox,” for instance, wealthier people do tend to be happier within
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nations, but richer nations are little happier than less prosperous
counterparts, and—most strikingly—economic growth has virtually no
impact (Easterlin 1974). In the U.S., for example, measured happiness has
not increased significantly since at least 1947, despite massive increases in
wealth and income. In short, once you’re out of poverty, absolute levels of
wealth and income make little difference in how happy people are.
Against these claims, some authors have argued that absolute income has a
large impact on happiness across the income spectrum (e.g., Stevenson
and Wolfers 2008). The question continues to be much debated, but in
2010 a pair of large-scale studies using Gallup data sets, including
improved measures of life satisfaction and affect, suggested that both sides
may be partly right (Kahneman and Deaton 2010; Diener, Ng et al. 2010).
Surveying large numbers of Americans in one case, and what is claimed to
be the first globally representative sample of humanity in the other, these
studies found that income does indeed correlate substantially (.44 in the
global sample), at all levels, with life satisfaction—strictly speaking, a
“life evaluation” measure that asks respondents to rate their lives without
saying whether they are satisfied. Yet the correlation of household income
with the affect measures is far weaker: globally, .17 for positive affect,
–.09 for negative affect; and in the United States, essentially zero above
$75,000 (though quite strong at low income levels). For more recent
discussions of empirical work, see Jebb et al. 2018 along with relevant
chapters in Diener et al. 2018 and the annual World Happiness Reports
from 2012 onward (Helliwell et al. 2012). Research on the complex
money-happiness relationship resists simple characterization, but a crude
summary is that the connection tends to be positive and substantial, strong
at lower income levels while modest to weak or even negative at higher
incomes, and stronger and less prone to satiation for life evaluation than
emotional well-being metrics. But again, these are very rough
generalizations that gloss over a variety of important factors and admit of
many exceptions across both individuals and societies.
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In short, the relationship between money and happiness may depend on
which theory of happiness we accept: on a life satisfaction view, the
relationship may be strong; whereas affect-based views may yield a much
weaker connection, again above some modest threshold. Here, again,
philosophical views about the nature and significance of happiness may
play an important role in understanding empirical results and their
practical upshot. Economic growth, for instance, has long been a top
priority for governments, and findings about its impact on human well-
being may have substantial implications for policy.
It is important to note that studies of this nature focus on generic trends,
not specific cases, and there is no dispute that significant exceptions exist
—notably, populations that enjoy high levels of happiness amid low levels
of material prosperity. Among others, a number of Latin American
countries, Maasai herders, Inughuit hunter-gatherers, and Amish
communities have registered highly positive results in subjective well-
being studies, sometimes higher than those in many affluent nations, and
numerous informal accounts accord with the data.[20] Such “positive
outliers” suggest that some societies can support high levels of happiness
with extremely modest material holdings. The importance of money for
happiness may depend strongly on what kind of society one inhabits. An
interesting question, particularly in light of common environmental
concerns, is how far the lessons of such societies can, or should, be
transferred to other social forms, where material attainment and happiness
are presently more tightly coupled. Perhaps some degree of decoupling of
happiness and money would be desirable.
So the role of money in happiness appears, at this juncture, to be a mixed
bag, depending heavily on how we conceive of happiness and what range
of societies we are considering. What (else), then, does matter most for
happiness? There is no definitive list of the main sources of happiness in
the literature, partly because it is not clear how to divide them up. But the
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 Happiness
following items seem generally to be accepted as among the chief
correlates of happiness: supportive relationships, engagement in
interesting and challenging activities, material and physical security, a
sense of meaning or purpose, a positive outlook, and autonomy or control.
[21] Significant correlates may also include—among many others—
religion, good governance, trust, helping others, values (e.g., having non-
materialistic values), achieving goals, not being unemployed, and
connection with the natural environment.[22]
An illustrative study of the correlates of happiness from a global
perspective is the Gallup World Poll study noted earlier (Diener, Ng et al.
2010; see also Jebb et al. 2020). In that study, the life satisfaction measure
was more strongly related to material prosperity, as noted above:
household income, along with possession of luxury conveniences and
satisfaction with standard of living. The affect measures, by contrast,
correlated most strongly with what the authors call “psychosocial
prosperity”: whether people reported being treated with respect in the last
day, having family and friends to count on, learning something new, doing
what they do best, and choosing how their time was spent.
What these results show depends partly on the reliability of the measures.
One possible source of error is that this study might exaggerate the
relationship between life satisfaction and material attainments through the
use of a “ladder” scale for life evaluation, ladders being associated with
material aspirations. Errors might also arise through salience biases
whereby material concerns might be more easily recalled than other
important values, such as whether one has succeeded in having children;
or through differences in positivity biases across income levels (perhaps
wealthier people tend to be more “positive-responding” than poorer
individuals). Another question is whether the affect measures adequately
track the various dimensions of people’s emotional lives. However, the
results are roughly consonant with other research, so they are unlikely to
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be entirely an artifact of the instruments used in this study.[23] A further
point of uncertainty is the causal story behind the correlations—whether
the correlates, like psychosocial prosperity, cause happiness; whether
happiness causes them; whether other factors cause both; or, as is likely,
some combination of the three.
Such concerns duly noted, the research plausibly suggests that, on
average, material progress has some tendency to help people to better get
what they want in life, as found in the life satisfaction measures, while
relationships and engaging activities are more important for people’s
emotional lives. What this means for happiness depends on which view of
happiness is correct.
4. The importance of happiness
4.1 Doubts about the value of happiness
Were you to survey public attitudes about the value of happiness, at least
in liberal Western democracies, you would likely find considerable support
for the proposition that happiness is all that really matters for human well-
being. Many philosophers over the ages have likewise endorsed such a
view, typically assuming a hedonistic account of happiness. (A few, like
Almeder 2000, have identified well-being with happiness understood as
life satisfaction.)
Most philosophers, however, have rejected hedonistic and other mental
state accounts of well-being, and with them the idea that happiness could
suffice for well-being.[24] (See the entry on well-being.) Objections to
mental state theories of well-being tend to cluster around two sets of
concerns. First, it is widely believed that the non-mental conditions of our
lives matter for well-being: whether our families really love us, whether
our putative achievements are genuine, whether the things we care about
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 Happiness
actually obtain. The most influential objection of this sort is Robert
Nozick’s experience machine case, wherein we are asked to imagine a
virtual reality device that can perfectly simulate any reality for its user,
who will think the experience is genuine (Nozick 1974). Would you plug
in to such a machine for life? Most people would not, and the case is
widely taken to vitiate mental state theories of well-being. Beyond having
positive mental states, it seems to matter both that our lives go well and
that our state of mind is appropriately related to how things are.[25]
A second set of objections concerns various ways in which a happy person
might nonetheless seem intuitively to be leading an impoverished or
stunted life. The most influential of these worries involves adaptation,
where individuals facing oppressive circumstances scale back their
expectations and find contentment in “small mercies,” as Sen put it.[26]
Even a slave might come to internalize the values of his oppressors and be
happy, and this strikes most as an unenviable life indeed. Related worries
involve people with diminished capacities (blindness, Down Syndrome),
or choosing to lead narrow and cramped or simpleminded lives (e.g.,
counting blades of grass). Worries about impoverished lives are a prime
motivator of Aristotelian theories of well-being, which emphasize the full
and proper exercise of our human capacities.
In the face of these and other objections most commentators have
concluded that neither happiness nor any other mental state can suffice for
well-being. Philosophical interest in happiness has consequently flagged,
since its theoretical importance becomes unclear if it does not play a
starring role in our account of the good.
Even as happiness might fail to suffice for well-being, well-being itself
may be only one component of a good life, and not the most important one
at that. Here ‘good life’ means a life that is good all things considered,
taking account of all the values that matter in life, whether they benefit the
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individual or not. Kant, for example, considered both morality and well-
being to be important but distinct elements of a good life. Yet morality
should be our first priority, never to be sacrificed for personal happiness.
In fact there is a broad consensus, or near-consensus, among ethical
theorists on a doctrine we might call the priority of virtue: broadly and
crudely speaking, the demands of virtue or morality trump other values in
life.[27] We ought above all to act and live well, or at least not badly or
wrongly. This view need not take the strong form of insisting that we must
always act as virtuously as possible, or that moral reasons always take
precedence. But it does mean, at least, that when being happy requires
acting badly, one’s happiness must be sacrificed. If it would be wrong to
leave your family, in which you are unhappy, then you must remain
unhappy, or find more acceptable ways to seek happiness.
The mainstream views in all three of the major approaches to ethical
theory—consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics—agree on some
form of the priority of virtue. Where these views chiefly differ is not on
the importance of being good, but on whether being good necessarily
benefits us. Virtue ethicists tend to answer in the affirmative, the other two
schools in the negative. Building virtue into well-being, as Aristotelians
do, may seem to yield a more demanding ethics, and in some ways it does.
Yet many deontologists and consequentialists—notably Kant—advocate
sterner, more starkly moralistic visions of the good life than Aristotle
would ever have dreamt of (e.g., Singer 1972).
Happiness, in short, is believed by most philosophers to be insufficient for
well-being, and still less important for the good life. These points may
seem to vitiate any substantial role for happiness in ethical thought.
However, well-being itself is still regarded as a central concept in ethical
thought, denoting one of the chief elements of a good life even if not the
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sole element. And there are reasons for thinking happiness important, both
practically and theoretically, despite the worries noted above.
4.2 Restoring happiness to the theory of well-being
Even if happiness does not suffice for well-being—a point that not all
philosophers would accept—it might still rate a privileged spot in theories
of well-being. This could happen in either of two ways.
First, happiness could be a major component of a theory of well-being.
Objective list theories of well-being sometimes include happiness or
related mental states such as enjoyment among the fundamental
constituents of well-being. A more ambitious proposal, originated by L.W.
Sumner, identifies well-being with authentic happiness—happiness that is
authentic in the sense of being both informed and autonomous (Sumner
1996). The root idea is that well-being involves being happy, where one’s
happiness is a response of one’s own (autonomous), to a life that genuinely
is one’s own (informed). The authenticity constraint is meant to address
both experience machine-type worries and “happy slave” objections
relating to adaptation, where happiness may be non-autonomous,
depending on manipulation or the uncritical acceptance of oppressive
values. Since these have been the most influential objections to mental
state accounts of well-being, Sumner’s approach promises to considerably
strengthen the position of happiness-centered approaches to well-being,
and several philosophers have developed variants or close relations of the
authentic happiness theory (Brülde 2007, Haybron 2008a, Tiberius and
Plakias 2010, Višak 2015). The approach remains fairly new, however, so
its long-term prospects remain unclear.[28]
A second strategy forsakes the project of giving a unitary theory of well-
being, recognizing instead a family of two or more kinds of prudential
value. Happiness could be central to, or even exhaustive of, one of those
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values. Shelly Kagan, for instance, has suggested that welfare hedonism
could be correct as a theory of how well a person is doing, but not of how
well a person’s life is going, which should perhaps be regarded as a
distinct value (Kagan 1992, 1994). In short, we might distinguish narrow
and wide well-being concepts. An experience machine user might be
doing well in the narrow sense, but not the wide—she is doing well,
though her life is quite sad. Happiness might, then, suffice for well-being,
but only in the narrow sense. Others have made similar points, but uptake
has been limited, perhaps because distinguishing multiple concepts of
prudential value makes the already difficult job of giving a theory of well-
being much harder, as Kagan pointedly observes.[29] An interesting
possibility is that the locution ‘happy life’, and the corresponding well-
being sense of happiness, actually refers to a specific variety of well-being
—perhaps well-being in the wide sense just suggested, or well-being taken
as an ideal state, an ultimate goal of deliberation. This might explain the
continued use of ‘happiness’ for the well-being notion in the philosophical
literature, rather than the more standard ‘wellbeing.’
4.3 Is happiness overrated?
The preceding section discussed ways that happiness might figure
prominently even in non-mental state theories of well-being. The question
there concerned the role of happiness in theories of well-being. This is a
different question from how important happiness is for well-being itself.
Even a theory of well-being that includes no mention at all of happiness
can allow that happiness is nonetheless a major component or contributor
to well-being, because of its relation to the things that ultimately constitute
well-being. If you hold a desire theory of well-being, for instance, you will
very likely allow that, for most people, happiness is a central aspect of
well-being, since most people very much desire to be happy. Indeed, some
desire theorists have argued that the account actually yields a form of
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hedonism, on the grounds that people ultimately desire nothing else but
happiness or pleasure (Sidgwick 1907 [1966], Brandt 1979, 1989).
Happiness may be thought important even on theories normally believed
to take a dismissive view of it. Aristotelians identify well-being with
virtuous activity, yet Aristotle plainly takes this to be a highly pleasant
condition, indeed the most pleasant kind of life there is (see, e.g., NE, Bk.
I 8; Bk. VII 13). You cannot flourish, on Aristotelian terms, without being
happy, and unhappiness is clearly incompatible with well-being. Even the
Stoics, who notoriously regard all but a virtuous inner state as at best
indifferent, would still assign happiness a kind of importance: at the very
least, to be unhappy would be unvirtuous; and virtue itself arguably entails
a kind of happiness, namely a pleasant state of tranquility. As well,
happiness would likely be a preferred indifferent in most cases, to be
chosen over unhappiness. To be sure, both Aristotelian and Stoic accounts
are clear that happiness alone does not suffice for well-being, that its
significance is not what common opinion takes it to be, and that some
kinds of happiness can be worthless or even bad. But neither denies that
happiness is somehow quite important for human well-being.
In fact it is questionable whether any major school of philosophical
thought denies outright the importance of happiness, at least on one of the
plausible accounts of the matter. Doubts about its significance probably
owe to several factors. Some skeptics, for example, focus on relatively
weak conceptions of happiness, such as the idea that it is little more than
the simple emotion of feeling happy—an idea that few hedonists or
emotional state theorists would accept. Or, alternatively, assuming that a
concern for happiness has only to do with positive states. Yet ‘happiness’
also serves as a blanket term for a domain of concern that involves both
positive and negative states, namely the kinds of mental states involved in
being happy or unhappy. Just as “health” care tends to focus mainly on ill
health, so might happiness researchers choose to focus much of their effort
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Dan Haybron
on the study and alleviation of unhappiness—depression, suffering,
anxiety, and other conditions whose importance is uncontroversial. The
study of happiness need be no more concerned with smiles than with
frowns.
5. The pursuit and promotion of happiness
5.1 Normative issues
The last set of questions we will examine centers on the pursuit of
happiness, both individual and collective. Most of the popular literature on
happiness discusses how to make oneself happier, with little attention
given to whether this is an appropriate goal, or how various means of
pursuing happiness measure up from an ethical standpoint. More broadly,
how if at all should one pursue happiness as part of a good life?
We saw earlier that most philosophers regard happiness as secondary to
morality in a good life. The individual pursuit of happiness may be subject
to nonmoral norms as well, prudence being the most obvious among them.
Prudential norms need not be as plain as “don’t shoot yourself in the foot.”
On Sumner’s authentic happiness view of well-being, for instance, we
stand to gain little by pursuing happiness in inauthentic ways, for instance
through self-deception or powerful drugs like Huxley’s soma, which
guarantees happiness come what may (Huxley 1932 [2005]). The view
raises interesting questions about the benefits of less extreme
pharmaceuticals, such as the therapeutic use of antidepressants; such
medications can make life more pleasant, but many people worry whether
they pose a threat to authenticity, perhaps undercutting their benefits. It is
possible that such drugs involve prudential tradeoffs, promoting well-
being in some ways while undermining it in others; whether the tradeoffs
are worth it will depend on how, in a given case, the balance is struck.
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 Happiness
Another possibility is that such drugs sometimes promote authenticity, if
for instance a depressive disorder prevents a person from being “himself.”
Looking to more broadly ethical, but not yet moral, norms, it may be
possible to act badly without acting either immorally or imprudently.
While Aristotle himself regarded acting badly as inherently imprudent, his
catalogue of virtues is instructive, as many of them (wit, friendliness, etc.)
are not what we normally regard as moral virtues. Some morally
permissible methods of pursuing happiness may nonetheless be
inappropriate because they conflict with such “ethical” virtues. They
might, for instance, be undignified or imbecilic.
Outwardly virtuous conduct undertaken in the name of personal happiness
might, if wrongly motivated, be incompatible with genuine virtue. One
might, for instance, engage in philanthropy solely to make oneself happier,
and indeed work hard at fine-tuning one’s assistance to maximize the
hedonic payoff. This sort of conduct would not obviously instantiate the
virtue of compassion or kindness, and indeed might be reasonably deemed
contemptible. Similarly, it might be admirable, morally or otherwise, to be
grateful for the good things in one’s life. Yet the virtue of gratitude might
be undermined by certain kinds of gratitude intervention, whereby one
tries to become happier by focusing on the things one is grateful for. If
expressions of gratitude become phony or purely instrumental, the sole
reason for giving thanks being to become happy—and not that one
actually has something to be thankful for—then the “gratitude” might
cease to be admirable, and may indeed be unvirtuous.[30]
5.2 Mistakes in the pursuit of happiness
A different question is what means of pursuing happiness are most
effective. This is fundamentally an empirical question, but there are some
in-principle issues that philosophical reflection might inform. One oft-
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Dan Haybron
heard claim, commonly called the “paradox of hedonism,” is that the
pursuit of happiness is self-defeating; to be happy, don’t pursue happiness.
It is not clear how to interpret this dictum, however, so that it is both
interesting and true. It is plainly imprudent to make happiness one’s focus
at every moment, but doubtful that this has often been denied. Yet never
considering happiness also seems an improbable strategy for becoming
happier. If you are choosing among several equally worthwhile
occupations, and have good evidence that some of them will make you
miserable, while one of them is likely to be highly fulfilling, it would not
seem imprudent to take that information into account. Yet to do so just is
to pursue happiness. The so-called paradox of hedonism is perhaps best
seen as a vague caution against focusing too much on making oneself
happy, not a blanket dismissal of the prospects for expressly seeking
happiness—and for this modest point there is good empirical evidence
(Schooler, Ariely et al. 2003, Lyubomirsky 2007).
That happiness is sometimes worth seeking does not mean we will always
do a good job of it (Haybron 2008b). In recent decades a massive body of
empirical evidence has gathered on various ways in which people seem
systematically prone to make mistakes in the pursuit of their interests,
including happiness. Such tendencies have been suggested in several
domains relating to the pursuit of happiness, including (with recent
surveys cited):
1. Assessing how happy we are, or were in the past (Haybron 2007)
2. Predicting (“forecasting”) what will make us happy (Gilbert 2006)
3. Choosing rationally (Kahneman and Tversky 2000, Gilovitch, Griffin
et al. 2002, Hsee and Hastie 2006)
A related body of literature explores the costs and benefits of (ostensibly)
making it easier to pursue happiness by increasing people’s options; it
turns out that having more choices might often make people less happy,
Summer 2020 Edition 35
 Happiness
for instance by increasing the burdens of deliberation or the likelihood of
regret (Schwartz 2004). Less discussed in this context, but highly relevant,
is the large body of research indicating that human psychology and
behavior are remarkably prone to unconscious social and other situational
influences, most infamously reported in the Milgram obedience
experiments (Doris 2002, 2015, Haybron 2014). Human functioning, and
the pursuit of happiness, may be more profoundly social than many
commentators have assumed.[31]
Taken together, this research bears heavily on two central questions in the
philosophical literature: first, the broad character of human nature (e.g., in
what sense are we rational animals? How should we conceive of human
autonomy?); second, the philosophical ideals of the good society and good
government.
5.3 The politics of happiness
Just a decade ago the idea of happiness policy was something of a novelty.
While it remains on the fringes in some locales, notably the United States,
in much of the world there has been a surge of interest in making
happiness an explicit target of policy consideration. Attention has largely
shifted, however, to a broader focus on well-being to reflect not just
happiness but also other welfare concerns of citizens, and dozens of
governments now incorporate well-being metrics in their national
statistics.[32]
Let’s consider the rationale for policies aimed at promoting well-being. In
political thought, the modern liberal tradition has tended to assume an
optimistic view of human nature and the individual’s capacities for
prudent choice. Partly for this reason, the preservation and expansion of
individual freedoms, including people’s options, is widely taken to be a
central goal, if not the goal, of legitimate governments. People should be
36 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dan Haybron
freed to seek the good life as they see it, and beyond that the state should,
by and large, stay out of the well-being-promotion business.
This vision of the good society rests on empirical assumptions that have
been the subject of considerable debate. If it turns out that people
systematically and predictably err in the pursuit of their interests, then it
may be possible for governments to devise policies that correct for such
mistakes.[33] Of course, government intervention can introduce other sorts
of mistakes, and there is some debate about whether such measures are
likely to do more harm than good (e.g., Glaeser 2006).
But even if governments cannot effectively counteract human imprudence,
it may still be that people fare better in social forms that influence or even
constrain choices in ways that make serious mistakes less likely. (Food
culture and its impact on health may be an instructive example here.) The
idea that people tend to fare best when their lives are substantially
constrained or guided by their social and physical context has recently
been dubbed contextualism; the contrary view, that people do best when
their lives are, as much as possible, determined by the individuals
themselves, is individualism (Haybron 2008b). Recent contextualists
include communitarians and many perfectionists, though contextualism is
not a political doctrine and is compatible with liberalism and even
libertarian political morality. Contextualism about the promotion of well-
being is related to recent work in moral psychology that emphasizes the
social character of human agency, such as situationism and social
intuitionism.[34]
Quite apart from matters of efficacy, there are moral questions about the
state promotion of happiness, which has been a major subject of debate,
both because of the literature on mistakes and research suggesting that the
traditional focus of state efforts to promote well-being, economic growth,
has a surprisingly modest impact on happiness. One concern is
Summer 2020 Edition 37
 Happiness
paternalism: does happiness-based policy infringe too much on personal
liberty? Some fear a politics that may too closely approximate Huxley’s
Brave New World, where the state ensures a drug-induced happiness for
all (Huxley 1932 [2005]). Extant policy suggestions, however, have been
more modest. Efforts to steer choice, for instance in favor of retirement
savings, may be paternalistic, but advocates argue that such policies can be
sufficiently light-handed that no one should object to them, in some cases
even going so far as to deem it “libertarian paternalism” (Thaler and
Sunstein 2008).[35] The idea is that gentle “nudges,” like setting default
options on hiring forms to setting aside money for retirement, interfere
only trivially with choice, imposing little or no cost for those who wish to
choose differently, and would very likely be welcomed by most of those
targeted.
Also relatively light-handed, and perhaps not paternalistic at all, are state
efforts to promote happiness directly through social policy, for instance by
prioritizing unemployment over economic growth on the grounds that the
former has a larger impact on happiness. Other policies might include
trying to reduce commute times, or making walkable neighborhoods and
green space a priority in urban planning, again on happiness grounds.
Some may deem such measures paternalistic insofar as they trade freedom
(in the form of economic prosperity) for a substantive good, happiness,
that people value unevenly, though it has also been argued that refusing to
take citizens’ values like happiness into consideration in policy
deliberation on their behalf can amount to paternalism (Haybron and
Alexandrova 2013).
A related sort of objection to happiness-based policy argues that
happiness, or even well-being, is simply the wrong object of policy, which
ought instead to focus on the promotion of resources or capabilities
(Rawls 1971, Nussbaum 2000, Quong 2011, Sen 2009). Several reasons
have been cited for this sort of view, one being that policies aimed at
38 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dan Haybron
promoting happiness or well-being violate commonly accepted
requirements of “liberal neutrality,” according to which policy must be
neutral among conceptions of the good. According to this constraint,
governments must not promote any view of the good life, and happiness-
based policy might be argued to flout it. Worries about paternalism also
surface here, the idea being that states should only focus on affording
people the option to be happy or whatever, leaving the actual achievement
of well-being up to the autonomous individual. As we just saw, however, it
is not clear how far happiness policy initiatives actually infringe on
personal liberty or autonomy. A further worry is that, happiness isn’t
really, or primarily, what matters for human well-being (Nussbaum 2008).
But a major motivation for thinking happiness the wrong object of policy
is that neither happiness nor well-being are the appropriate focus of a
theory of justice. What justice requires of society, on this view, is not that
it make us happy; we do not have a right to be happy. Rather, justice
demands only that each has sufficient opportunity (in the form of
resources or capabilities, say) to achieve a good life, or that each gets a
fair share of the benefits of social cooperation. However plausible such
points may be, it is not clear how far they apply to many proposals for
happiness-based policy, save the strongest claims that happiness should be
the sole aim of policy: many policy decisions are not primarily concerned
with questions of social justice, nor with constitutional fundamentals, the
focus of some theories of justice. Happiness could be a poor candidate for
the “currency” of justice, yet still remain a major policy concern. Indeed,
the chief target of happiness policy advocates has been, not theories of
justice, but governments’ overwhelming emphasis on promoting GDP and
other indices of economic growth. This is not, in the main, a debate about
justice, and as of yet the philosophical literature has not extensively
engaged with it.
Summer 2020 Edition 39
 Happiness
However, the push for happiness-based policy is a recent development. In
coming years, such questions will likely receive considerably more
attention in the philosophical literature.
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Related Entries
Aquinas, Saint Thomas | Aristotle | Bentham, Jeremy | character, moral:
empirical approaches | communitarianism | consequentialism | economics:
philosophy of | emotion | ethics: ancient | ethics: virtue | hedonism | Kant,
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approaches | pain | paternalism | Plato | pleasure | well-being
Acknowledgments
For helpful comments, many thanks are due to Anna Alexandrova, Robert
Biswas-Diener, Thomas Carson, Irwin Goldstein, Richard Lucas, Jason
Raibley, Eric Schwitzgebel, Stephen Schueller, Adam Shriver, Edward
Zalta, and an anonymous referee for the SEP. Portions of Section 2 are
adapted from Haybron 2008, “Philosophy and the Science of Subjective
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Well-Being,” in Eid and Larsen, The Science of Subjective Well-Being, and
used with kind permission of Guilford Press.
Notes to Happiness
1. This article focuses on the standard division between descriptive and
evaluative senses of ‘happiness’ (see also Feldman 2010, Sumner 1996).
But that distinction may be challenged, or there might be evaluative
elements in the “psychological” sense of ‘happiness’ even if it is not
equivalent to well-being. For example, some argue that pleasure is itself
partly an evaluative kind (e.g., Goldstein 1989). Phillips et al. have argued
that the folk concept of happiness is be a mix of psychological and
evaluative, drawing on a series of studies (Phillips, Misenheimer, et al.
2011; Phillips et al. 2017).
2. This claim holds only as a rough generalization, with some exceptions.
Chekola 2007 and Murphy 2001, for instance, appear to use ‘happiness’ as
a descriptive term for a life that is successful from the agent’s point of
view. While there are other senses of ‘happiness’ and cognates, this article
discusses only the main philosophically significant uses of ‘happiness’ and
cognates; on other senses, see Davis 1981b, Goldstein 1973, Suikkanen
2011 and Thomas 1968. Readers should note that many philosophical
works do not clearly distinguish the psychological and well-being notions,
and it is not always clear how a given author employs the term. In some
cases ‘happiness’ takes neither the psychological nor well-being meaning,
and so it may be unclear how the discussion relates to broader
philosophical debates such as those covered in this article. A further
wrinkle is that there is a growing body of non-Western and cross-cultural
work on happiness, and it is plausible that the philosophical landscape
depicted in this article will need revision if it is to accommodate the
diversity of human thinking about (or not thinking about, as the case may
be) happiness and well-being. See, for example, a 2019 special issue on
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“Cross-Cultural Studies of Well-Being” assembled by Flanagan,
Letourneau and Zhao, including Flanagan et al. 2019, Euler 2019 and
Zhang 2019 among others; also, Joshanloo 2013, Joshanloo and Weijers
2019, Purcell 2014, and Samson 2019. The largest body of non-Western
scholarship on happiness, usually in something like the well-being sense,
engages with Asian philosophy and religion; e.g., Fraser 2013, Ho et al.
2014, Joshanloo 2014, Kim 2020, Luo 2018, Wong 2013, and Zhang
2019.
3. Possible examples of theories grounded in failures properly to
distinguish these projects include Smart and Hare’s accounts, on which
happiness is basically about one’s mental states; but it is also partly
evaluative, in that (for example) we cannot properly call someone happy if
we find her desires, pleasures, circumstances, etc. to be repulsive or
otherwise undesirable (Hare 1963, Smart 1973; see also Nozick 1989). It
is not clear what the point of such a concept would be, or what of
substance—rather than merely linguistic usage—is at issue between such
theories and other accounts of ‘happiness.’ While the main philosophical
issues relate to matters of substance, it may sometimes be useful to pursue
a linguistic approach focused on the meaning of “happiness.” For
example, in a textbook surveying philosophical theories of happiness it
might be desirable to cover the full range of philosophical work under that
rubric, leaving it open whether the literature on ‘happiness’ concerns one,
two, or more subject matters. A risk of that approach is that some
commentators stipulate that their theories are not in competition with
much of the literature on “happiness,” so that it would be misleading to
suggest that, for example, Aristotle (in English translation) and Sumner
disagree about the nature of happiness. Any apparent disagreement is
purely verbal.
4. For some recent examples of articles on the well-being sense, see
Angier 2015, Capuccino 2013, Cashen 2012, Kristjánsson 2010, 2012,
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2018, and Vitrano 2010. Most historical work on “happiness,” at least in
pre-modern philosophy, employs the well-being sense. Most empirical
researchers employ the term in the psychological sense; for an apparent
exception, see Seligman 2002, though he has lately shifted focus away
from the term ‘happiness’ (Seligman 2011). For reviews of the
philosophical literature, see Badhwar 2015, Den Uyl and Machan 1983,
and the chapters in Section III of David et al. 2015. Accessible
introductory texts include Mulnix and Mulnix 2015a. Recent anthologies
of the philosophical literature include Cahn and Vitrano 2008 and Mulnix
and Mulnix 2015b. Bortolotti 2009 and Snow and Trivigno 2014 are
edited collections of new papers. An accessible collection of papers by
philosophers and other researchers can be found in the Spring 2004 issue
of Daedalus. An influential discussion of different happiness concepts,
focusing mainly on the well-being notion, is Kraut 1979.
5. See, e.g., Blackson 2009; Brandt 1959, Brandt 1979, 1989, 1992;
Campbell 1973; Carson 1978a, 1978b, 1979, 1981; Davis 1981b, 1981a;
Ebenstein 1991; Feldman 2010; Griffin 1979, 1986; Kazez 2007;
Mayerfeld 1996, 1999; Morris 2011; Sen 1987a; Sprigge 1987, 1991;
Wilson 1968; Zamuner 2013. For a recent extended defense of hedonism
about happiness, see Feldman 2010. Among psychologists, see e.g.
Parducci 1995 and Kahneman 1999.
6. Variants of the life satisfaction view appear to include Barrow 1980,
1991, Benditt 1974, 1978, Brülde 2007, Buss 2004, Campbell 1973,
Goldman 2016, 2019, Montague 1967, Mulligan 2016, Nozick 1989,
Rescher 1972, 1980, Skidelsky 2017, Suikkanen 2011, Sumner 1996,
2000, Telfer 1980, and Von Wright 1963. While Goldman and Mulligan
characterize happiness as an emotion, the relevant emotion appears to
constitute an attitude of life satisfaction. Those making life satisfaction
central or identical to well-being, or “happiness” in the well-being sense,
appear to include (in addition to some of the aforementioned authors)
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Almeder 2000, Kekes 1982, 1988, 1992, McFall 1989, Meynell 1969,
Scruton 1975, Tatarkiewicz 1976, Thomas 1968, Tiberius 2008, Tiberius
and Plakias 2010, Vitrano 2010. Empirical researchers often identify life
satisfaction and happiness—notably, Veenhoven 1984, 1997.
7. Emotional state theories seem to have become the most common view
in the last decade or so. Authors who appear to endorse some form of this
approach include Badhwar 2014, Becker 2012, Besser-Jones 2013,
Haybron 2005, 2008b, Kauppinen 2013, Klausen 2015, 2019, de Lazari-
Radek and Singer 2014, May 2015, Raibley 2011, Rodogno 2016, Rossi
2018, Rossi and Tappolet 2016, Sizer 2010, Tiberius 2018, Višak 2015,
and possibly Bok 2010b. A prominent contribution from the lay literature
is Ricard 2006. For discussions of particular emotions and moods in the
context of happiness or well-being, see Griswold 1996 on tranquility and
Roberts 2019 on joy. Because hedonistic and emotional state theories have
seldom been distinguished, some ostensibly “hedonistic” approaches to
happiness might more accurately be characterized as emotional state
views. Among empirical researchers, for instance, affect-based approaches
to happiness are typically described as hedonistic, yet normally focus on
moods and emotions rather than (e.g.) sensory pleasures and pains.
8. The moniker “affect-based” is problematic given that some variants of
hedonism conceive of pleasure in non-affective terms, for instance as an
attitude of liking or being pleased, where this attitude need not involve
affect (e.g., Feldman 2004, 2010). It is possible that such theories, which
bear similarities to the life satisfaction view, should be distinguished from
more familiar varieties of hedonism.
9. On the significance of life satisfaction for well-being research, see
Alexandrova 2005, 2008, Tiberius and Plakias 2010.
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10. See Alexandrova 2005, 2008, Tiberius 2006, Tiberius and Plakias
2010, Suikkanen 2011.
11. For recent discussions of measurement issues, see, e.g., Adler 2019,
Alexandrova 2017, Alexandrova and Haybron 2016, Angner 2008, 2009,
2010, 2011, 2013, de Boer 2014, Cohen Kaminitz forthcoming, Fleurbaey
and Blanchet 2013, Hausman 2010, Haybron 2016, OECD 2013, White
2013, Skidelsky 2014, Stiglitz et al. 2009, van der Deijl 2016a, 2016b,
2017, Wodak 2019, Wren-Lewis 2014.
12. See, e.g., Krueger, Kahneman, et al. 2009.
13. See, e.g., Haybron 2007, Schwitzgebel and Hurlburt 2007,
Schwitzgebel 2008, 2011, Goldstein 1981, 2002.
14. Good examples can be found in the Gallup studies discussed in section
3.3 (Kahneman and Deaton 2010; Diener, Ng, et al. 2010). These studies
roughly assess both life satisfaction and emotional state, using a suite of
inquiries about particular types of affect to get at the latter. Compare the
World Values Survey, which uses a “happiness” question and a “life
satisfaction” question (e.g., Inglehart, Foa, et al. 2008). Straightforwardly
hedonistic measures of subjective well-being are less common, one sign
being whether physical pain is assessed, but seem to figure most
prominently in time-use studies.
15. For example, Ryff 1989, Waterman 1993, Ryan and Deci 2001, Keyes
2002, Seligman 2002, Seligman 2011. Two excellent collections of papers
on eudaimonic psychology, including both empirical and philosophical
contributions, are Vittersø 2016 and Waterman 2013.
16. For scholarly reviews of this literature, see David et al. 2013, Diener et
al. 2018a, 2018b. A more extensive list of suggested readings to get started
on various aspects of the literature on happiness and well-being is
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maintained on the webpages of the Happiness and Well-Being Project (see
the link in the Other Internet Resources). Philosophical engagement with
empirical research on happiness has picked up considerably in recent
years, monographs including, e.g., Alexandrova 2017, Badhwar 2014,
Besser 2014, Bishop 2015, Bok 2010b, Feldman 2010, Flanagan 2007,
Kenny and Kenny 2006, Sumner 1996, Tiberius 2008, 2014, Wren-Lewis
2019. There has also been some collaborative work on happiness between
philosophers and empirical researchers; for instance, Ahuvia et al. 2015,
Intelisano et al. 2019, Oishi et al., and other teams funded by the
Happiness and Well-Being Project (again, see Other Internet Resources).
In experimental philosophy, recent studies include Phillips et al. 2011,
2014, 2017, Robbins et al. 2018, as well as the experience machine studies
cited below.
17. For reviews of this literature, see Frederick and Loewenstein 1999,
Lucas 2008, Luhmann and Intelisano 2018.
18. See, e.g., Diener, Lucas, et al. 2006, Lucas, Clark, et al. 2004a, 2004b,
Lucas 2008, Diener 2008, Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, et al. 2005, Easterlin
2003, Easterlin 2005, Inglehart and Klingemann 2000, Inglehart, Foa, et
al. 2008, Headey 2007, 2008, Luhmann and Intelisano 2018.
19. Heritability figures must be read with considerable caution: among
other things, they reflect only the amount of variation within the studied
population that can be explained by genes, roughly speaking. If your
subjects live in relatively homogeneous environments, heritability findings
will increase. Since twin studies tend not to include twins separated and
placed in radically different environments—say, contemporary Manhattan
versus San Bushmen, or 19th century versus contemporary Dutchmen—
they often overstate the heritability of traits relative to the full spectrum of
human societies, and correspondingly understate the role of environment.
For philosophical discussion, see Bishop 2015, Sosis 2012, 2014.
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20. E.g., Biswas-Diener, Vittersø, et al. 2005, Biswas-Diener 2018,
Graham 2009, Diener and Suh 2000, Inglehart and Klingemann 2000,
Inglehart, Foa, et al. 2008. For a striking informal account of a hunter-
gatherer society, the Pirahã, see Everett 2009. What these findings show
about well-being depends on the importance of happiness for it (see
section 4). Note that high happiness can coexist with low longevity, which
is clearly important on most views of well-being. For this reason,
happiness measures may be unable to tell the whole story about well-being
even if we accept a mental state view of well-being. For an effort rectify
this limitation within happiness research, see Veenhoven 2005.
21. For useful surveys and lists, see Myers and Diener 1995, Argyle 1999,
2002, Layard 2005, Bok 2010a, Diener et al. 2018, Jebb et al. 2020, and
the annual World Happiness Reports starting with Helliwell et al. 2012.
Philosophical discussions of the causes and correlates of happiness
include, e.g., Ahuvia et al. 2015, Andreou 2010, Brülde 2014, Haybron
2013a, Lauinger 2015, Morris 2015, Setiya 2014, Tiberius 2017, Wren-
Lewis 2019.
22. On the last, see, e.g., Kellert and Wilson 1995, Frumkin 2001,
Haybron 2011, Capaldi et al. 2015, Lumber et al. 2017, Bosch and Bird
2018, Houlden et al. 2018.
23. Importantly, this study and the Stevenson and Wolfers study use log
income instead of raw income, which substantially accounts for the
stronger income-life satisfaction correlations than those found in earlier
research. While neither metric is unambiguously superior, log income has
the advantage of tracking proportional differences in income: a major
question, for instance, is the impact of economic growth on happiness. For
this purpose, the impact of, say, a five percent gain in income is more
relevant than that of a $500 increase, which might represent a large gain
for some, small for others.
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Dan Haybron
24. For recent discussion of these and other doubts about the value of
happiness, see Belliotti 2004, 2013.
25. Recent years have seen lively debate about the experience machine
case. Some examples include Bramble 2016, Hawkins 2016, Kraut 2018,
Lin 2015, Stevenson 2018, and Weijers 2011. Empirical studies of lay
intuitions include De Brigard 2010, Hindricks and Douven 2018, Weijers
2014.
26. See, e.g., Elster 1983, Millgram 2000, Nussbaum 2000, Sen 1987b,
2009, van der Deijl 2017b, Mitchell 2018.
27. The consensus ends, however, on the question of what virtue entails.
Indeed, skeptics about (conventional) morality such as Nietzsche might
hold that virtue—acting well—entails immorality, at least relative to
conventional standards of morality (see also, e.g., the discussion of
“Gaugin” in Williams 1981, and “Admirable Immorality” in Slote 1983).
This is one reason to frame the view broadly, in terms of virtue, rather than
morality. Hurka’s excellent, accessible discussion of the good life may
seem to reject the priority of virtue, but his treatment of virtue as a
“lesser” good concerns its contribution to the sum of intrinsic value in a
life, not the importance of doing the right thing (Hurka 2010).
28. Besides authentic happiness theories, there have been a number of
other recent proposals to incorporate happiness as one among other
constituents of well-being, e.g., Bishop 2012, 2015, Fletcher 2013,
Jayawickreme and Pawelski 2013, MacLeod 2015, Raibley 2012, 2013,
Rodogno 2016, Rossi and Tappolet 2016. Badhwar 2014 notably
incorporates an emotional state conception of happiness in an Aristotelian
account of well-being as “happiness in an objectively worthwhile life.”
29. Other authors who have expressed doubts about the unity of well-
being include Griffin 2000, 2007, Raz 1986, 2004, Scanlon 1999,
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Alexandrova 2017. 35. For worries about even this sort of paternalism, see Hausman and
Welch 2009.
30. Recent philosophical discussions of norms governing the proper
pursuit of happiness include Badhwar 2008, 2014, Beck and Stroop 2014, Copyright © 2020 by the author
Haybron 2013b, Kahane 2012, Spahn 2015, Tiberius 2008, Walker 2011. Dan Haybron

31. A sampling of other recent philosophical work on human limitations in

the pursuit of happiness includes Angner 2016, Besser 2013, Billon 2016,
Paul 2014. A comprehensive review of the empirical literature in this area
is Haybron 2008b.

32. While most policy discussion embeds happiness metrics such as life
satisfaction or emotional well-being in a broader approach that considers
other outcomes as well, there is significant support for a narrower focus on
happiness, notably in Layard 2005 and Clark et al. 2018. Good sources on
the policy debate include the World Happiness Reports published annually
since Helliwell et al. 2012, annual reports from the Global Happiness
Council from 2018 onward, resources available through the OECD,
Stiglitz et al. 2009, Stiglitz et al. 2019, Diener et al. 2009, Adler and
Fleurbaey 2015. Philosophical discussions include, among others, Adler
2019, Alexandrova 2018, Angner 2009, Austin 2015, Bagaric and
McConvill 2005, Becker 2012, Bok 2010a, Fleurbaey and Blanchet 2013,
Hausman 2010, Haybron and Alexandrova 2013, Haybron and Tiberius
2015, Hersch 2015, 2020, Kenny and Kenny 2006, Metz 2014, Moller
2011, Nussbaum 2010, Singh and Alexandrova forthcoming, Sugden
2008, Trout and Buttar 2000, van der Rijt 2015, White 2013, Wren-Lewis
2013, and other sources noted below.

33. See, e.g., Trout 2005, Loewenstein and Haisley 2008, Thaler and
Sunstein 2008, Trout 2009.

34. E.g., Ross and Nisbett 1991, Haidt 2001, Doris 2002, Doris 2009,
Doris 2015, Christakis, Fowler, et al. 2009, Haybron 2014.

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