In The How of Happiness, psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky (2008) tells the true story of Randy. By any measure, Randy lived a hard life. His dad and best friend both died by suicide. Growing up, his mother’s boyfriend treated him poorly. Randy’s first wife was unfaithful, and they divorced. Despite these setbacks, Randy is a happy person whose endless optimism can light up a room. He remarried and enjoys being a stepfather to three boys. His work life is rewarding. Randy says he survived his life stressors by seeing the “silver lining in the cloud.”

Overcoming serious challenges, as Randy did, people may feel a stronger sense of self-esteem and a deeper sense of purpose. Tough challenges, especially early in life, can foster personal growth and emotional resilience (Landauer & Whiting, 1979).

Are you a person who makes everyone around you smile and laugh? Have you, like Randy, bounced back from serious challenges and become stronger because of it? Our state of happiness or unhappiness colors our thoughts and our actions. Happy people perceive the world as a safer place. Their eyes are drawn toward emotionally positive information (Raila et al., 2015). They are more decisive and cooperate more easily. They live healthier and more energized and satisfied lives (Boehm et al., 2015; De Neve et al., 2013; Mauss et al., 2011; Stellar et al., 2015). We all get gloomy sometimes. When that happens, life as a whole may seem depressing and meaningless. Let your mood brighten, and your thinking broadens and becomes more playful and creative (Baas et al., 2008; Forgas, 2008; Fredrickson, 2013). Your relationships, your self-image, and your hopes for the future seem more promising.

This helps explain why college students’ happiness helps predict their life course. In one study, which surveyed thousands of U.S. college students in 1976 and restudied them at age 37, happy students had gone on to earn significantly more money than their less-happy-than-average peers (Diener et al., 2002). In another, the happiest 20-year-olds were not only more likely to marry, but also less likely to divorce (Stutzer & Frey, 2006).

Moreover—and this is one of psychology’s most consistent findings—when we feel happy we become more helpful. Psychologists call it the feel-good, do-good phenomenon (Salovey, 1990). Happiness doesn’t just feel good, it does good. In study after study, a mood-boosting experience (finding money, succeeding on a challenging task, recalling a happy event) has made people more likely to give money, pick up someone’s dropped papers, volunteer time, and do other good deeds.

The reverse is also true: Doing good promotes feeling good. One survey of more than 200,000 people in 136 countries found that, pretty much everywhere, people report feeling happier after spending money on others rather than themselves (Aknin et al., 2013; Dunn et al., 2014). Why does doing good feel so good? It strengthens our social relationships (Aknin et al., 2015; Yamaguchi et al., 2015). Some happiness coaches and instructors harness this force by asking their clients to perform a daily “random act of kindness” and to record how it made them feel.

William James was writing about the importance of happiness (“the secret motive for all [we] do”) as early as 1902. With the rise of positive psychology in the twenty-first century (Chapter 1), the study of happiness has become a main area of research. It is a key part of one of our big ideas in this text: Psychology explores human strengths as well as challenges. Part of happiness research is the study of subjective well-being—our feelings of happiness (sometimes defined as a high ratio of positive to negative feelings) or sense of satisfaction with life. This information, combined with objective measures of well-being, such as a person’s physical and economic condition, helps us make more informed quality-of-life judgments.

Are some days of the week happier than others? In what may be psychology’s biggest-ever data sample, one social psychologist (Kramer, 2010—at my [DM’s] request and in cooperation with Facebook) did a naturalistic observation of emotion words in “billions” of status updates. After eliminating exceptional days, such as holidays, he tracked the frequency of positive and negative emotion words by day of the week. The days with the most positive moods? Friday and Saturday (FIGURE 10.12). Similar analyses of questionnaire responses and 59 million Twitter messages found Friday to Sunday the week’s happiest days (Golder & Macy, 2011; Helliwell & Wang, 2015, Young & Lim, 2014). For you, too?

Over the long run, our emotional ups and downs tend to balance out. This is true even over the course of the day. Positive emotion rises over the early to middle part of most days and then drops off (Kahneman et al., 2004; Watson, 2000). So, too, with day-to-day moods. A stressful event—an argument, a sick child, a car problem—triggers a bad mood. No surprise there. But by the next day, the gloom nearly always lifts (Affleck et al., 1994; Bolger et al., 1989; Stone & Neale, 1984). If anything, people tend to bounce back from a bad day to a better-than-usual good mood the following day. Even when negative events drag us down for longer periods, our bad mood usually ends. We may feel that our heart has broken during a romantic breakup, but eventually the wound heals.

Grief over the loss of a loved one or anxiety after a severe trauma can linger. But usually, even tragedy is not permanently depressing. People who have become blind or paralyzed may not completely recover their previous well-being, but those with an agreeable personality have usually recovered near-normal levels of day-to-day happiness (Boyce & Wood, 2011). So have those forced to go on kidney dialysis or to have permanent colostomies (Gerhart et al., 1994; Riis et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2009a). Even if you become paralyzed, explained psychologist Daniel Kahneman (2005), “you will gradually start thinking of other things, and the more time you spend thinking of other things, the less miserable you are going to be.” Contrary to what many people believe, even most patients “locked in” a motionless body do not indicate they want to die (Nizzi et al., 2012; Smith & Delargy, 2005). The surprising reality: We overestimate the duration of our emotions and underestimate our resilience—our ability to bounce back.

Would you be happier if you made more money? In a 2006 Gallup poll, 73 percent of Americans thought they would be. How important is “Being very well off financially”? “Very important” or “essential,” say 82 percent of entering U.S. college students (Eagen et al., 2016).

Money does buy happiness, up to a point. Having enough money to buy your way out of hunger and to enable a sense of control over your life predicts greater happiness (Fischer & Boer, 2011). Money’s power to buy happiness also depends on your current income. A $1000 annual wage increase would do a lot more for the average person in a very poor country than for the average person in a very rich one. But once one has enough money for comfort and security, piling up more and more matters less and less.

Consider: During the last four decades, the average U.S. citizen’s buying power almost tripled—enabling larger homes and twice as many cars per person, not to mention iPads and smart phones. Did it also buy more happiness? As FIGURE 10.13 shows, Americans have become no happier. In 1957, some 35 percent said they were “very happy,” as did slightly fewer—33 percent—in 2014. Ditto China, where living standards have risen but happiness has not (Davey & Rato, 2012; Easterlin et al., 2012). These findings lob a bombshell at modern materialism: Economic growth in wealthy countries has provided no apparent boost to morale or social well-being.

Why is it that, for those who are not poor, more and more money does not buy more and more happiness? More generally, why do our emotions seem to be attached to elastic bands that pull us back from highs or lows? Psychology has proposed two answers. Each suggests that happiness is relative.

My Happiness Is Relative to My Own Experience

We tend to judge new events by comparing them with our past experiences. Psychologists call this the adaptation-level phenomenon. Our past experiences act as neutral levels—sounds that seem neither loud nor soft, temperatures that seem neither hot nor cold, events that seem neither pleasant nor unpleasant. We then notice and react to variations up or down from these levels.

So, could we ever create a permanent social paradise? Probably not (Campbell, 1975; Di Tella et al., 2010). People who have experienced a recent windfall—from the lottery, an inheritance, or a surging economy—typically feel joy and satisfaction (Diener & Oishi, 2000; Gardner & Oswald, 2007). You would, too, if you woke up tomorrow with all your wishes granted. Wouldn’t you love to live in a world with no bills, no ills, and perfect grades? But after a time, you would gradually adapt to this new normal. Before long, you would again sometimes feel joy and satisfaction (when events exceed your expectations), sometimes feel let down (when they fall below), and sometimes feel neutral.

The point to remember: Feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, success and failure are judgments we make about ourselves, based partly on our prior experience (Rutledge et al., 2014).

HI & LOIS

My Happiness Is Relative to Your Success

We are always comparing ourselves with others. And whether we feel good or bad depends on our perception of just how successful those others are (Lyubomirsky, 2001). We are slow-witted or clumsy only when others are smarter or more graceful. When we sense that we are worse off than others with whom we compare ourselves, we experience relative deprivation.

When expectations soar above achievements, we feel disappointed. Thus, the middle- and upper-income people in a given country, who can compare themselves with the relatively poor, tend to have greater life satisfaction than their less-fortunate fellow citizens. Nevertheless, once people reach a moderate income level, further increases buy smaller increases in happiness. Why? Because as people climb the ladder of success, they mostly compare themselves with local peers who are at or above their current level (Gruder, 1977; Suls & Tesch, 1978; Zell & Alicke, 2010).

Just as comparing ourselves with those who are better off creates envy, so counting our blessings as we compare ourselves with those worse off boosts our contentment. In one study, university women considered others’ suffering (Dermer et al., 1979). They viewed vivid images of how grim city life could be in 1900. They imagined and then wrote about various personal tragedies, such as being burned and disfigured. Later, the women expressed greater satisfaction with their own lives. Similarly, when mildly depressed people have read about someone who was even more depressed, they felt somewhat better (Gibbons, 1986). “I cried because I had no shoes,” states a Persian saying, “until I met a man who had no feet.”

Happy people share many characteristics (TABLE 10.1). But what makes one person so filled with joy, day after day, and others so gloomy? Here, as in so many other areas, the answer is found in the interplay between nature and nurture.

Sources: DeNeve & Cooper, 1998; Diener et al., 2003, 2011; Headey et al., 2010; Lucas et al., 2004; Myers, 1993, 2000; Myers & Diener, 1995, 1996; Steel et al., 2008. Veenhoven (2014) offers a database of 13,000+ correlates of happiness at WorldDatabaseofHappiness.eur.nl.

Genes matter. Studies of hundreds of identical and fraternal twins indicate that heredity accounts for about 50 percent of the difference among people’s happiness ratings (Gigantesco et al., 2011; Lykken & Tellegen, 1996). Identical twins raised apart are often similarly happy.

But our personal history and our culture matter, too. On the personal level, as we saw earlier, our emotions tend to balance around a level defined by our experiences. On the cultural level, groups vary in the traits they value. Self-esteem matters more to Westerners, who value individualism. Social acceptance and harmony matter more in cultures that stress family and community, such as in Japan (Diener et al., 2003; Fulmer et al., 2010; Uchida & Kitayama, 2009).

Depending on our genes, our outlook, and our recent experiences, our happiness seems to vary around our “happiness set point.” Some of us seem to be ever upbeat; others, more negative. Even so, our satisfaction with life can change (Lucas & Donnellan, 2007). As researchers studying human strengths will tell you, happiness rises and falls, and we can control some of the factors that make us more or less happy (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009).

If we can enhance our happiness on an individual level, could we use happiness research to refocus our national priorities? Many psychologists believe we could. Many political leaders agree: 43 nations have begun measuring their citizens’ well-being (Diener et al., 2015). Happy societies are not only prosperous but are also places where people trust one another, feel free, and enjoy close relationships (Helliwell et al., 2013; Oishi & Schimmack, 2010; Sachs, 2012). Thus, when debating such issues as economic inequality, tax rates, divorce laws, and health care, people’s psychological well-being should be a prime consideration. Such measures may help guide nations toward policies that decrease stress, foster human flourishing, and promote “the pursuit of happiness.”

Scientifically Proven Ways to Have a Happier Life¹

Your happiness, like your cholesterol level, is genetically influenced. Yet as cholesterol is also influenced by diet and exercise, so happiness is to some extent under your personal control (Nes, 2010; Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009). Here are 10 research-based suggestions for building your personal strengths to increase your satisfaction with life.