Happiness research

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Happiness research is the study of the conditions under which people describe themselves as happy and / or are happy. The science of happiness has a humanistic claim. She wants to help maximize human happiness. It has been intensified in Germany since the 1980s through the work of the sociologist Alfred Bellebaum .

Subject and methods of empirical happiness research

object

Before one can measure happiness, one must be clear about what one should understand by “happiness”. First of all, a distinction must be made between chance happiness and happiness in life. Even though chance luck has an influence on happiness in life, it is not the focus of happiness research. Happiness can be called the goal and the meaning of life, because ultimately all other goals only come down to your own happiness or that of others (and thus your own). The sociologist Gerhard Schulze differentiates between two types of happiness. By "happiness 1" he understands freedom from suffering and want (this concept of happiness corresponds, for example, to the views of Epicurus and Schopenhauer ). "Glück 2", the beautiful life, builds on it. The first variant of happiness is therefore only the preliminary stage, the possibility of attaining true happiness, because one could ask with Schulze: What do you live for, if not for the good life?

Methods

The observation is not suitable as a method of happiness measurement because the assessment of happiness of other people is not independent of one's own mood. Even deriving a person's state of happiness from their objective living conditions does not lead to any useful results, since different people indicate different levels of happiness under the same conditions. The most common method is therefore questioning . It is not a question of whether the stated happiness is objectively justified in any way. Therefore happiness researchers call the inquired of them luck commonly known as subjective well-being (Engl. Subjective well-being , in short: SWB). Questions about happiness must be specified in terms of time and context in order to generate comparable answers. As an example, the question from the General Social Survey (GSS) should be presented here: "All in all, how would you describe your condition lately - Would you say that you are a) very happy, b) fairly happy, or c) are not so happy? "

Of course, the same methodological difficulties arise with happiness surveys that social research has to do with all other standardized surveys. Most of these problems can be circumvented with intelligent questionnaire construction. if the cognitive and communicative processes are taken into account when assessing one's own well-being.

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The neurobiology makes an important contribution to happiness research, by trying the awareness of emotions (eg. B. "I am happy") to explain brain physiology. The American neurologist Richard Davidson in particular has made a name for himself through his experiments . With the help of electroencephalography , he measured the brain activity of his test subjects. Davidson found out that the left front hemisphere is responsible for positive feelings (triggered in the experiment e.g. by funny film clips), while the right front hemisphere creates negative emotions. Davidson was able to confirm these results in further experiments using the imaging methods magnetic resonance tomography and positron emission tomography .

Disciplines of happiness research

Happiness research encompasses all disciplines that have set themselves the task of researching the conditions of happiness.

Philosophical happiness research

See also: philosophy of happiness

Probably the oldest concern with the question of human happiness comes from philosophy :

The oldest formal definition of happiness that has been handed down to us comes from Aristotle (384–322 BC): happiness is what a person strives for for his own sake and not in order to achieve something else . However, what happiness is in terms of content, Aristotle determined with the help of the so-called Ergon argument : Every living being has a certain task ( ergon ), which results from its possibilities and capabilities. Since man is sane, a happy life is one in which we develop and use this ability. For Aristotle, happiness is not a subjective feeling as it is in modern happiness research, but means the objective fulfillment of our rational nature. Pleasure as a subjective feeling can complement this fulfillment as a result of a reasonable and virtuous life. It cannot therefore be aimed for directly, but only achieved indirectly.

Unlike Aristotle, Epicurus (341–270 BC) did not define happiness positively, but rather negatively as the absence of pain and needs. This philosophy still underlies medicine today , which assumes that it is enough to heal people to make them happy. Even psychology followed this view up to Seligman . Therefore, to this day only a few psychologists have been concerned with happiness.

The concept of happiness Seneca (.. 1-65 AD) and the Stoics similar to Epicurus: Happiness is natural and to be disturbed only by outside influences. The Stoics hope for a remedy by consciously cultivated insensitivity to influences, which has become proverbial as "stoic calm".

Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) wrote that happiness is to get what you want. This philosophical definition forms the basis of those surveys in sociological research on happiness that search for “satisfaction”.

Wilhelm Schmid (* 1953) is considered the most important happiness philosopher of the present day in Germany. He emphasizes that he actually doesn't want to have anything to do with happiness, but that his clients keep asking about it and therefore write about this topic: "Many people are suddenly so crazy about happiness ..."

This list could be expanded at will. Among the philosophical authors, Baltasar Gracián (hand oracle ), Arthur Schopenhauer ( aphorisms on wisdom ), Friedrich Nietzsche ( Also sprach Zarathustra ) and Gertrud Höhler ( happiness ) could be named, who like many other philosophers also deal with the topic of "happiness" have busy.

Physiological happiness research

Using fMRI and EEG it is possible to measure the blood flow in areas of the brain. In the last few decades, many experiments have been carried out to find out which feelings lead to activities in which areas of the brain. In this context, positive emotions and feelings of happiness were also researched. It is shown that a higher activity of the left prefrontal cortex (PFC) correlates strongly with an open, curious attitude towards stimuli, while a higher activity of the right PFC correlates with a more fearful withdrawal attitude. In further experiments, Davidson et al. a. show a corresponding connection between brain activity and personal assessment of happiness / satisfaction: greater activity of the left PFC correlated significantly with higher subjective satisfaction.

Psychological happiness research

The contribution of psychology to the study of happiness overlaps in some areas with empirical and sociological research on happiness. It is primarily defined by the people involved - psychologists.

Michael Argyle (1925–2002) was one of the pioneers in the psychology of happiness. His "Oxford Happiness Inventory" (OHI) does not measure happiness with a single question, as is often the case in sociological surveys, but with a whole catalog of questions based on the model of the neuroticism tests by Eysenck and Maudsley. Even more important than his findings is a confession: “The research on happiness has not been theory driven” (no theory precedes research on happiness ). Although he notes attempts to underlay the simultaneities observed with explanations, there was no unified theory of happiness in psychology. This means that the psychology of the time was primarily limited to observing happiness as a phenomenon without developing theories about its causes and subsequently testing them experimentally, as is standard procedure in natural science, for example .

In the years that followed, however, the predominantly experimentally oriented psychology raised the question of how feelings and memories affect the assessment of one's own well-being and which judgment processes play a role in this. Many of these results are summarized in the edited volumes by Strack , Argyle and Schwarz (1991) and by Kahneman , Diener and Schwarz (1999).

At the beginning of 1998, Martin EP Seligman , professor at the University of Pennsylvania , took over the presidency of the American Psychological Association (APA), the largest psychological association in the world , for one year . In this association it is customary for each president to choose a topic for his presidential year. On the first day of his tenure, on January 1, 1998, Seligman invited two colleagues to Akumal , Mexico, to introduce them to his topic: Psychology should no longer be limited to freeing people from suffering, “from minus” as it were 5 to zero ”, but also to make healthy people happy for the first time, ie to raise them“ from zero to +5 ”. Ray Fowler, managing director of the APA, and Mihály Csíkszentmihályi , who carried out psychological research on happiness under the art name “ Flow ” at a time when it was still frowned upon in the circles of psychologists in the USA, were invited.

Economic happiness research

Under the title “Happiness Economics”, economic research has also addressed the problem of happiness. It was discovered that the pursuit of happiness is an economic driver.

The downside of this happy consumption is the stress with which the necessary money has to be earned. The Swiss economics professor Mathias Binswanger speaks of a "treadmill" that is similar to the running wheel in the cage of a trapped hamster ( hedonistic treadmill ). According to the unanimous opinion of several experts, a remedy promises a disengagement from the need for more and a balanced relationship between performance and enjoyment (“ work-life balance ”).

Herbert Laszlo sees the problem philosophically as the "curse of Epicurus". Epicurus taught: “We always need joy when it is missing and we suffer from it. But if we don't suffer, we don't need them. ”The result is marketing that creates suffering by“ awakening needs ”because - according to Epicurus - one believes that happy people cannot sell anything. Another problem in Happiness Economics is envy of material things. The British economist Richard Layard examined personal satisfaction as a function of the material or time wealth of the people around them. The participants in the study felt significantly less satisfied when the environment was richer in material things, while they showed almost no envy of time prosperity (longer vacation). He concludes from this that a policy geared towards the common good with a strong tax progression should remove the incentive to amass more material wealth through extra work. However, since most people perceive the personal burden of taxes more strongly than the advantages of redistribution or the positive steering effects towards reduced gainful employment, most people's initial reaction to higher taxes is negative.

The economist Wolfgang Maennig and his team have looked at the time-dependent effects on happiness and life satisfaction and have also demonstrated gender-specific and education-dependent differences.

Social science happiness research

From a social science point of view, “happiness” ideas were initially examined more in ethnological or religious sociological contexts (cf. Heil ). Machiavelli analytically treated Fortuna (Fortune) as a prerequisite for political success. Marx and Engels were very reluctant to conceptualize the classless society . In the case of the sociological classics, it can be stated that they took topics of “ unhappiness ” as their starting point.

One of the oldest occupations with the problem of human happiness is that branch of empirical social research (not to be confused with empirical happiness research), which calls itself "happiness research", in some sources also "happiness measurement".

The sociological "happiness measurement" is based on the idea that it should be possible to determine by questioning the conditions under which people are more or less happy. Various happiness indicators are determined in these surveys .

In Germany, the (now emeritus) professor of sociology at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Alfred Bellebaum , founded and runs the “Institute for Happiness Research” in Vallendar . The doyen of Dutch happiness research is the Dutch professor Ruut Veenhoven . He runs an extensive database at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in which all of his scientific papers on the subject of happiness are collected. His dissertation , entitled Conditions of Happiness , submitted on June 12, 1984 at Erasmus University Rotterdam, became important for sociological research on happiness. In view of the large number of such surveys, the secondary evaluations, in which the results of several surveys are examined and evaluated either simultaneously or as a development over time, are of great importance.

Above all, the surveys conducted by cross- cultural social research , in which the happiness level of individual countries is compared, have received a lot of media coverage. Regardless of this, there is an unmistakable guide book on the subject of "How do I become happy?"

An effect of sociological research on happiness on politics and lifestyle is only just beginning to develop because the branch of research has only recently received greater attention. In the meantime, Great Britain collects not only other sustainability indicators but also the subjective well-being of its residents nationwide in order to be able to make better politics.

Studies show that the willingness to describe oneself as happy does not increase to the same extent as the standard of living , and can even decrease as the standard of living rises . In the field of applied research, Ernst Gehmacher and Giselher Guttmann carried out a study in 1986 on behalf of the then Austrian building minister Heinrich Übleis , which was supposed to make sociological research on happiness useful for planning a motorway.

The American psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky criticizes the fact that surveys are unable to answer the question of which comes first: happiness or its accompanying circumstances. For example, the observation that people with strong social ties are happier than the average does not provide any information about whether friends make happy or whether happy people make friends more easily.

However, this criticism is now being taken up by some researchers by conducting long-term studies to determine which direction the causality is going.

Experimental happiness research and optimal stress

Experimental happiness research is one of the most recent forms of happiness research. The IFEG - Institute for Experimental Happiness Research was founded on December 4th, 2002, but is based on the preparatory work of Herbert Laszlo , who has been systematically dealing with questions of happiness and its causes since 1976.

The basis of experimental happiness research is the doctrine that only experiments can clarify a connection between cause and effect, while surveys only provide correlations. Social psychologist Werner Herkner formulates: "A science that aims to produce useful theories cannot be satisfied with correlation data alone."

Experimental happiness research explicitly recognizes the postulate of causality in the same way that it is also valid in natural science: as a mandate to look for a suitable, credible cause for every observation.

On this basis, experimental happiness research has developed the following definitions and theories:

Definitions

Happiness is a feeling of elation that is characterized by the desire to continue as long as it lasts and by the desire to return if one remembers it. His ecstatic moments raise this state of mind beyond satisfaction or contentment .

To make this definition more precise, the following basic terms are added as "partial characterizations" according to Eike von Savigny :

  1. The state of mind is an inner experience that can also be accompanied by negative feelings. Experience shows that grief or fear can also lead to a state that is consciously strived for without coercion. Examples are driving in the mountain-and-valley train and the so-called "Russian melancholy".
  2. Desire is a spontaneous act of appetite that can also go against the conscious “wanting”. Even what one wishes for but “doesn't want” for rational reasons is happiness.
  3. Persistence affects the state of mind, not the conditions under which it arose. On the contrary, observations suggest that only constant, surprising changes maintain the state of mind that we call happiness.
  4. Recurrence is understood here as an object of desire independent of the real possibility.

Happiness according to this definition largely corresponds to the " eudaimonía " according to Aristotle (Aristoteles: Die Nikomachische Ethik. German by Olof Gigon . Artemis Verlag, Zurich 1967), the " flow " according to Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and (regardless of the missing definition there) the " self-realization " after Abraham Maslow .

Theory of optimal stress

Happiness arises - not only, but also - through stress that makes optimal use of human abilities. Laszlo has coined the term “optimal use” for this.

In addition, the partial characterization of the basic terms used with significance for this theory: Stress is the sum of the effects of stress parameters on the organism. Stress is to be understood as the sum of all work and performance parameters affecting the individual. Specifically, it is information from outside or inside, which also includes decisions made by people and which prompts people to use their abilities. This information can be provided verbally, but also non-verbally, for example through an observation or a sound. Stress caused by strokes of fate or by the community (“bullying”) is also included in this term and can be understood in the broadest sense as “information”.

In addition to physical and mental strength, resilience also includes abilities, skills and personality traits, willingness to perform and motivation. These parameters form a unit with the load parameters and together with them influence the load. Abilities and skills are all ways that humans can control their activities, including in the direction of calming down. This theory largely corresponds to the “flow channel” according to Csikszentmihalyi (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow. The secret of happiness. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-608-95783-9 ) and the “Eustress” according to Hans Selye. The Austrian Academy for Occupational Medicine coined the expression "felicitogenesis" for the application of this theory in working life. Happiness researcher Simone Langendörfer also argues in her book Great Desire for Very Much Happiness that, in the long term, optimal stress on a person has not only health effects, but also economic effects.

Theory of the control loop of stress and boredom

Experimental happiness research is based on the cybernetics developed by Norbert Wiener , the theory of control loops. In addition to the control loops that keep a value constant within a certain range, such as the control of body temperature, Wiener also knows control loops that "oversteer" and thus generate uncontrolled deflections in both directions. An example is the body temperature in some infectious diseases, which fluctuates between fever and chills.

Experimental happiness research assumes that the control loop of short-term stress on people is “overridden” in the sense of Wiener, that is, it leads to undesirable fluctuations between boredom and stress. She is actively looking for ways to turn this override off.

Applied happiness research

All attempts to derive general rules according to which people can be happy from personal happiness experiences and their accompanying circumstances belong here, primarily represented by the extensive advisory literature .

The Institute for Experimental Happiness Research (IFEG) has been collecting corresponding happiness advice from the media in the German and English-speaking areas since 2004, as a science funding supported by the Vienna media observation service Observer . There is also a comprehensive archive of past and present books published in this field. Work is being carried out on the systematic processing of the material available in this area. The main questions are:

  • What advice is given particularly often?
  • What contradictions are there against this advice and between this advice?
  • What are the possible prejudices and secondary intentions behind the advice given?

See also

literature

  • Michael Argyle: The Psychology of Happiness. Routledge Publisher, London 2001, ISBN 0-415-22665-1 .
  • Aristotle : The Nicomachean Ethics. German by Olof Gigon . Artemis Verlag, Zurich 1967.
  • Augustinus , Aurelius: De beata vita / About happiness. German by Ingeborg Schwarz-Kirchenbauer and Willi Philipp Schwarz. Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-15-007831-8 .
  • Alfred Bellebaum , Robert Hettlage (ed.): Happiness has many faces. Approaches to a skilful way of life. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-17517-1 .
  • Gregory Berns: Satisfaction. Why only new things make us happy. Campus, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-593-37910-4 .
  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow. The secret of happiness. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-608-95783-9 .
  • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow at work. The secret of happiness in the workplace. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-608-93532-0 .
  • Sigmund Freud : Works (study edition). Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-596-27309-9 .
  • Bruno S. Frey , Alois Stutzer: Happiness and economics. How the economy and institutions affect well-being. Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton 2002, ISBN 0-691-06997-2 .
  • Ernst Gehmacher: Better luck with understanding. Franz Kreuzer in conversation with Viktor Frankl, Robert Jungk , Arnold Keyserling, Erwin Ringel and Paul Watzlawick . Franz Deuticke Verlag, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-216-07859-0 .
  • Wolff Horbach: 77 ways to happiness . Gräfe and Unzer Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8338-1136-4 .
  • Daniel Kahneman , Ed Diener, Norbert Schwarz (Eds.): Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology . Russell Sage Foundation, New York 1999
  • Herbert Laszlo : luck and economy . Infothek Verlag, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902346-38-4 .
  • Simone Langendörfer: Great desire for a lot of luck: Self-fulfilling management. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-7358-9 .
  • Abraham H. Maslow: Motivation and Personality . Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-17395-6 .
  • Anna Theresia Maurberger: The vocabulary in the sense of "joy" and "happiness" in today's German . Diss. Phil., Leopold-Franzens-University, Innsbruck 1975
  • Darrin M. McMahon: Happiness, a history. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006, ISBN 0-87113-886-7 .
  • Christoph Meier: Luck. A philosophy of agreement. Strub Verlag, Kreuzlingen 2006, ISBN 3-85923-050-6 .
  • Fritz Strack , Michael Argyle, Norbert Schwarz (eds.): Well-Being: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Pergamon Press, Oxford 1991.
  • Paul Thierbach: On the way to a general theory of happiness. An inventory of happiness research. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 3-640-57799-X .
  • Wilhelm Wundt : Principles of Physiological Psychology. Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1887.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Schulze: The beautiful life and its enemies . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2008, ISBN 3-596-17789-8 .
  2. ^ Ruut Veenhoven: Conditions of Happiness . Reidel Publishing, Dordrecht / Boston / Lancaster 1989.
  3. ^ Ed Diener: Subjective Well-being . In: Psychological Bulletin , 95, pp. 542-575.
  4. ↑ norc.org .
  5. ↑ Paul Thierbach: On the way to a general theory of happiness. An inventory of happiness research. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 3-640-57799-X .
  6. ^ Norbert Schwarz , Fritz Strack : Reports of subjective well-being: Judgmental processes and their methodological implications . In D. Kahneman , E. Diener, N. Schwarz (eds.): Well-being: The foundations of hedonistic psychology . Russell Sage Foundation, New York 1999, pp. 61-84.
  7. ↑ ibid.
  8. ↑ The Nicomachean Ethics , translated by Olof Gigon . Artemis Verlag, Zurich 1967.
  9. ↑ Epicurus , translated by Johannes Mewaldt, Philosophy of Joy . Alfred Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1973, ISBN 3-520-19805-3 .
  10. ↑ Seneca: From the blissful life . Kröner, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-520-00514-X .
  11. ^ De beata vita , Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-15-007831-8 .
  12. ↑ Horx: Trend Report 2007 . P. 73.
  13. ↑ happiness. Everything you need to know about it and why it isn't the most important thing in life . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-458-17373-1 .
  14. ^ Urry et al .: Making a live worth living .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. psyphz.psych.wisc.edu.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / psyphz.psych.wisc.edu  
  15. ↑ The Treadmills of Happiness . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2006, ISBN 978-3-451-05809-7 .
  16. ↑ The Great Book of Happiness. Verlag 55PLUS, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-902441-22-4 , p. 160.
  17. ↑ The happy company. Change of course for politics and business . Campus Verlag Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-593-37663-6 .
  18. ^ Richard Layard : Happiness: has social science a clue? .
  19. ^ W. Maennig, M. Steenbeck, M. Wilhelm: Rhythms and Cycles in Happiness . 2013.
  20. ↑ Sustainable Development . ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. UK Sustainable Development.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sustainable-development.gov.uk
  21. ↑ Better luck with your mind. Verlag Deuticke, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-216-07859-0 .
  22. ↑ The How of Happiness . University of California at Riverside, Penguin Press, New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-59420-148-6 .
  23. ↑ Minutes of the meeting ( memento of the original from September 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) IFEG - Institute for Experimental Happiness Research.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ifeg.at
  24. ^ Herkner: textbook social psychology. Verlag Hans Huber, Bern 1991, ISBN 3-456-81989-7 .
  25. ^ Csíkszentmihályi: Flow . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-608-95783-9 .
  26. ↑ Maslow: Psychology of Being . Fischer 1988, ISBN 3-596-42195-0 .
  27. ^ Olaf Sonntag with reference to Neumann / Schüler: Sports medical functional diagnostics . JA Barth Verlag, Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-335-00126-5 , p. 172 f.
  28. ^ Selye: Stress . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1982, ISBN 3-499-17072-8 .
  29. ^ IFEG Symposium 2007.
  30. ↑ Simone Langendörfer: The book - Great desire for very good luck.
  31. ^ Wiener: The Human Use of Human Beings, Cybernetics and Society. Eyre and Spottiswoode, London 1954.