What is happiness according to Psychology?

These are the conclusions about happiness reached by psychology.

Happiness is one of those concepts as important and used as it is difficult to define. That is where much of its importance lies: most people assume that the issue of how we can become happy is something important, but at the same time, it is very difficult to reach clear and specific conclusions when talking about it.

Partly because happiness is, as an idea, something very abstract and changeable; probably, even the same individual will tend to define it in very different ways depending on the mood he or she is experiencing at any given moment.

However, if there is a scientific discipline capable of helping us if there is a scientific discipline capable of helping us to understand as objectively as possible what happiness is, it is psychology.. So, let's see what this phenomenon consists of according to research carried out by psychologists over the years.

Early philosophical research on happiness.

There are several ways to understand what happiness is, and the first research done about it emerged from philosophy several centuries ago, especially from the Renaissance, when humanism arises and importance is given to the welfare of human beings as something with value in itself.

Since at that time there were practically no technological tools and solutions to try to study emotions and mental processes, the task of these thinkers was focused, among other things, on distinguish between different definitions of happiness, so as not to pass from one to another without realizing it and to maintain consistency when trying to study this phenomenon.. Thus, it was mainly a conceptual task, based on ordering ideas rather than contrasting hypotheses with empirical data.

Thus, two conceptions of happiness emerged: the hedonistic and the life satisfaction conception.. The former, represented especially by utilitarian philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham, pointed out that happiness was above all a matter of making pleasure prevail over displeasure, so that most of the time pleasurable experiences would eclipse those that produced Pain or displeasure.

In this logic, several thinkers in favor of this vision also pointed out that beyond trying to "refill the reservoir" of pleasurable experiences on an individual basis, the desirable thing was to make as many people as possible experience as much pleasure as possible.

In short, this way of being happy puts the focus on the need to manage and administer actions and experiences associated with pleasure, and to avoid situations that produce displeasure..

On the other hand, the conception of life satisfaction emphasizes the idea that human beings are happy or unhappy based on a global assessment of their lives, a process that goes beyond the act of experiencing the present moment and the stimuli that reach us. and the stimuli that come to us from the environment in which we are. Thus, those who are able to judge favorably their life trajectory, as well as their future prospects based on what they have learned about themselves and their way of interacting with the world, would be happy.

The meaning of the word happiness according to psychology.

So far we have seen a number of key ideas arising from philosophy, but... what does psychology say about happiness? Ultimately, in the second half of the 19th century a part of philosophy devoted to studying behavior and mental processes became independent of its speculation-based origins and went on to seek evidence and empirical evidence in general, giving rise to psychology, and with this transition, certain objects of study of philosophers came to be redefined so that they could be approached scientifically.

From the point of view of psychology, happiness is characterized as a state of mind with a strong emotional charge, but also based on ideas and beliefs. a state of mind with a strong emotional charge, but which is also based on ideas and beliefs.. In this sense, happiness encompasses both emotions and cognitive elements (i.e. thoughts structured in interwoven concepts, often through language). And from this point of view, it takes into account both the short-term logic of hedonism and that of life satisfaction, inspired by more abstract and long-term mental operations.

Although in psychology there is no very clear consensus on what it means to be happy, there are several very interesting findings that bring us closer to a more nuanced and complete vision of happiness. They are the following.

1. People adapt their capacity to be happy to crisis contexts.

One of the characteristics of happiness is that When people go through experiences of great discomfort or a major crisis that affects the quality of life, the quality of life adapts, causing the minimum requirements for happiness to form a lower threshold. the minimum requirements for happiness to form a lower threshold. For example, people tend to assume that they could not be happy if they lost the ability to see with their eyes, but research reveals that those with acquired blindness are generally just as happy as the rest of the population.

2. The level of happiness adapts to social references.

The way in which we are or are not happy depends to a large extent on the type of people we have as references, and the living conditions they have.and the living conditions we attribute to them. For example, people with worse living conditions are less happy if in their daily lives they are exposed to many other people who live significantly better than they do.

3. Material prosperity does not guarantee happiness

Although having the ability to have everything we need to live comfortably makes us more likely to be happy, it does not guarantee happiness, does not guarantee happiness.. Moreover, at a certain point, the lifestyle that in most cases is necessary to maintain a high level of wealth seems to counteract the positive impact that these material goods provide in the form of hedonic pleasure.

4. Happiness depends on what we tell ourselves about our lives.

In a way, the philosophers of the life satisfaction conception of happiness were right: it is difficult to be happy if we limit ourselves to simply filling our lives with pleasant moments.. This accumulation-based logic does not necessarily go hand in hand with a sense of making progress in life, or of achieving something meaningful for oneself or for society.

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Bibliographical references:

• Bentham, J. (1780). "Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, How to be Measured". In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. London: T. Payne and Sons.
• Mayerfeld, J. (1996). The Moral Asymmetry of Happiness and Suffering. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 34: pp. 317 - 338.
• Mulligan, K. (2016). Happiness, Luck and Satisfaction. Argumenta, 1(2): pp. 133 - 145.
• Oishi, S.; Choi, H.; Buttrick, N., et al. (2019). The psychologically rich life questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality, 81: pp. 257 - 270.
• Phillips, J.; Misenheimer, L.; Knobe, J. (2011). The Ordinary Concept of Happiness (and Others Like It). Emotion Review, 71: pp. 929 - 937.