What is Happiness?

By Jenson Barker
Definition of Happiness
• Happiness can be partitioned into two
factors:
– Hedonia (positive affect)
– Eudaimonia (life outcome satisfaction)
• ‘Enjoying and being content with particular
people or situations’
• Absence of negative emotion

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Kesebir and Diener (2009).
• Do Hedonia and Eudaimonia Co-occur?
• People rated their eudaimonic lifestyle as
‘happy’ and ‘very happy’.
• Most participants evaluated their hedonic
states as ‘positive’ and ‘very positive’.

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Figure 1: The Source or Causes of
Happiness

Sourced from: Funder, D. C. (2019). The personality puzzle: International student edition (8th ed.). W. W. Norton. ISBN: 99780393422009 Lyubomirsky, S., and
Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.

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Set-point
• The set-point refers to A) a person’s
baseline mood and B) an individual’s
standard way of reacting to stressful
events (Fujita & Diener, 2005).

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Brain Regions
• Negative emotion (Shackman, Tromp,
Stockbridge, Kaplan, Tillman & Fox, 2016).
• Amygdala & Orbitofrontal Cortex
• Transient happiness was associated with
no increase in activity in a particular region
(George, Ketter, Parekh, Horwitz,
Herscovitch & Post, 1995).
• Criticisms of this Approach

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Neurotransmitters
• Kringelbach and Berridge (2009).
• Dopamine
– Desire/reward
– Limitations
• Serotonin
• Endorphins

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Meta-traits: Stability and Plasticity
• Hirsh, DeYoung and Peterson (2009).
• Stability (Agreeableness, Neuroticism and
Agreeableness)
– ‘Being satiated’
– Behavioural Inhibition System
• Plasticity (Extraversion and Openness)
– Exploration and pleasure

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Traits in the Five Factor Model
• Furnham, A., & Cheng, H. (1997).
• Neuroticism (emotional stability)
– Volatility
– Withdrawal
• Extraversion
– Enthusiasm
– Assertiveness

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Life Circumstances (Schneider &
Schimmack, 2010).
• Informant and Self-report agreement
• Wealth
• Family life
• Educational attainment
• Health

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Is there a clear relationship between
Happiness and Life Outcomes?
• (Luhman, Schimmack, & Eid, 2011)
• Traits associated with happiness
(emotional stability and extraversion) could
cause higher reported happiness.

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Cognitions as a Cause of Happiness
• Lyubomirsky, Sheldon & Schkade (2005).
– Regular thoughts of gratitude
– Prosocial behaviour
– Goal attainment
– Present moment
• How does this relate to Hedonia?

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Ideology and Happiness
• Choma, Busseri and Sadava (2009).
• Political conservatism
– Disgust sensitivity (Inbar et al., 2012)
– Less negative emotion
• Political progressives/liberals
– More positive emotions

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Consequences of Happiness
• People who reported being happy more
often were higher in agreeableness,
extraversion and conscientiousness (Soto,
2015).
• Happy people tend to be more social,
optimistic, organised and friendly than
average (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005)

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Conclusions
• It is unclear whether happiness is a mere
state or an outcome.
• Happiness has three potential causes: set
point, intentional behaviour and life
circumstance.
• Happier people tend to be wealthier, more
educated and better socially connected.

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References
• Choma, B. L., Busseri, M. A., & Sadava, S. W. (2009). Liberal and conservative political ideologies: Different routes to
happiness?. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(3), 502-505.
• Diener, E., & Lucas, R. E. (1999). Personality and subjective well-being. In D. Kahneman, E. Diener, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), Well-being: The
Foundations of Hedonic Psychology . Russell Sage Foundation, 213-263.
• Funder, D. C. (2019). The personality puzzle: International student edition (8th ed.). W. W. Norton. ISBN: 99780393422009
• Furnham, A., & Cheng, H. (1997). Personality and happiness. Psychological Reports, 80(3), 761-762.
• George, M. S., Ketter, T. A., Parekh, P. I., Horwitz, B., Herscovitch, P., & Post, R. M. (1995). Brain activity during transient sadness and
happiness in healthy women. American Journal of Psychiatry, 152(3), 341-351.
• Hirsh, J. B., DeYoung, C. G., & Peterson, J. B. (2009). Metatraits of the Big Five differentially predict engagement and restraint of
behavior. Journal of Personality, 77(4), 1085-1102.
• Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D., Iyer, R., & Haidt, J. (2012). Disgust sensitivity, political conservatism, and voting. Social Psychological and
Personality Science, 3(5), 537-544.
• Kesebir, P., & Diener, E. (2009). In pursuit of happiness: Empirical answers to philosophical questions. In The Science of Well-being, 1(1),
59-74.
• Kringelbach, M. L., & Berridge, K. C. (2009). Towards a functional neuroanatomy of pleasure and happiness. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences, 13(11), 479-487.
• Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General
Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.
• Mogilner, C., Kamvar, S. D., & Aaker, J. (2011). The shifting meaning of happiness. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(4),
395-402.
• Schneider, L., & Schimmack, U. (2010). Examining sources of self-informant agreement in life-satisfaction judgments. Journal of
Research in Personality, 44(2), 207-212.
• Shackman, A. J., Tromp, D. P., Stockbridge, M. D., Kaplan, C. M., Tillman, R. M., & Fox, A. S. (2016). Dispositional negativity: An
integrative psychological and neurobiological perspective. Psychological Bulletin, 142(12), 1275.
• Soto, C. J. (2015). Is happiness good for your personality? Concurrent and prospective relations of the big five with subjective well‐
being. Journal of Personality, 83(1), 45-55.

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