Happiness Fall 2015 Study Questions

Return to Happiness

SEP 3

1. What is philosophically and practically significant about the rise of Greek philosophy for the study of happiness?

2. Describe Plato's model for happiness. What would his basic argument about the nature of happiness be?

3. Describe Aristotle's model for happiness. What would his basic argument about the nature of happiness be?

3. What would we have to know to settle the question about Pat and Lee raised by Cahn and Vitrano?

SEP 8

1. How do you distinguish objectivist and subjectivist positions? Why is the distinction complicated?

2. What is Aristotle's core argument for his view of Happiness? What is Happiness for Aristotle?

3. What are some strengths and weaknesses of Aristotle's view?

SEP 10

1. In light of Haidt's discussion, how might you explain the phrase, "Happiness is in the journey"?

2. How can we account for the similar outcomes of lottery winners and paraplegics?

3. According to Haidt, what are some of the factors in your life that might increase your happiness in an enduring way?

SEP 15

1. Using Schimmack as an example, how do researchers build scientific models or constructs of happiness?

2. What do we know about top down vs. bottom up constructs of happiness? How might this knowledge affect internal vs. external strategies?

3. What do we know about the relationship between positive and negative affect?

SEP 17

1. What are some of the major structural and historic features of the human brain?

2. How do tensions between automatic and controlled processes relate to the problem of happiness?

3. What does a broadly evolutionary (biological) approach to consciousness suggest about the possibilities for improving happiness?

SEP 22

1. Which of the main researched factors in Argyle seem to provide the most credible evidence for various aspects of a Happiness construct?

2. What are some of the methodological difficulties in looking at correlational data on Happiness? How do you address some of those difficulties?

SEP 24

1. What are some of the main difficulties in measuring levels of SWB across nations, according to Diener and Suh?

2. What are some of the principle results and explanatory theories for national differences in SWB, according to Diener and Suh?

3. What considerations might enter into advising a national government to adopt more individualistic strategies for raising national SWB?

SEP 29

1. What is Epictetus' advice about happiness? Critically evaluate it in light of your current knowledge and thinking about happiness.

OCT 1

1. What is Epicurus's advice about happiness?

2. What is the implicit model of desire and pleasure in Epicurus' thought?

OCT 6

1. What is negative visualization and why do Stoics recommend its practice?

2. Could the practice of negative visualization produce high affect states including joy? Consider competing arguments and yours and others reported experiences.

3. What is Irvine's critique of the stoic "dichotomy of control"?

4. How does Irvine's "trichotomy of control" and "internal goal setting" address the problem of ambition or goal setting in stoicism?

OCT 8

1. Identify and contrast images of happiness from roman culture (Horace) and early christianity (Perpetua and Felicitas).

2. How did the Christian doctrine of salvation and happiness emerge and develope in the first 14 centuries of Chrisitianity, especially in the works of Augustine, John the Scot, and Aquinas?

OCT 13

1. How does the renaissance thought of Pico della Mirandola constitute a break and continuity with the history of church thought on the possibility and nature of happiness?

2. How does the Protestant Reformation, and Luther's thought in particular, reorient the discussion of happiness in Christianity?

3. Taking into consideration also Locke's thought, how would you characterize the emerging model of happiness in Enlightenment Europe?

OCT 15

1. What is the basic analysis of the causes of our unhappiness in Patanjali's yoga?

2. How does Donna Farhi make use of the doctrines of the five kleshas and the Brahmivihara to create a modern statement of yogic teaching?

OCT 20

1. What is psychology of suffering is implicit in the Buddhist metaphysical paradigm?

2. How does the Buddha articulate the value of meditation?

OCT 22

Midterm

OCT 27

1. In what ways does Ricard's analysis of suffering and the ego provide an updated psychology for traditional buddhism?

2. Is egolessness, as Ricard explicates it, a promising happiness strategy?

OCT 29

1. What is the structure of savoring, according to Bryant, and how is it related to other similar processes?

2. What evidence do we have for an evolutionary and neurological basis to gratitude?

3. What evidence do we have for the belief that engaging in gratitude behaviors can improve longer term happiness?

NOV 3

Bryant, Chapter 8: Enhancing Savoring

• Theoretical Issues:

• How much can savoring do given set point theory?
• Similar efforts: savoring a common feature
• Savoring in a construct relationship with Coping

• Factors Enhancing both Coping and Savoring:

• Social Support (sharing feelings with others),
• Writing about life experiences,
• Downward hedonic contrast (neg. vis.),
• Humor,
• Spirituality & Religion,
• Awareness of Fleetingness of Experience.

• Essential Pre-conditions for Savoring

• Freedom from Social and Esteem Concerns: explicated largely in terms of mindfulness...
• Present Focus: goes back to what might seem odd about mindfulness as preparatory to savoring.
• Attentional Focus

• Exercises

• Vacation in Daily Life
• Life Review -- "chaining"
• Camera Exercise

Additional Issues:

• The connection between savoring and gratitude (handout from Chapter 5 on ereserves)
• Savoring and Connoisseurship: Does Savoring require (or is it enhanced by) connoisseurship? How does that square with Epicurean simplicity?

Watkins, Chapter 9: Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being

• CS Lewis on praise: completes enjoyment.
• Focus on emotional benefits of expressing gratitude.
• Distinguishes gratitude as a practice vs. trait. Traits are relatively fixed aspects of personality.
• Wants to see if disposition to gratitude predicts SWB. GRAT --> SWLS. Also interested in contribution of G to affective H or "state happiness".
• Findings:

• Grateful people have positive memory bias.
• Grateful people have postivie intrusive memory bias

• Researching the direction of causation -- p. 172ff: if it's possible to manipulate gratitude conditions and see a quasi-functional relationship on mood. Seems to have been weakly confirmed. Still possible to have bidirectional causation. Are happy people grateful or grateful people happier? (Note that practically it might not matter. E.g. if G and SWB are in a feedback loop)
• Series of studies on emotional benefits, gratefulness as a cause p. 174ff -- "Participants in the grateful condition felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about the future than students in both of the other comparison conditions." 174. Second study tested specific technique of downward comparison and compared it to control and "hassles" condition.

• How does gratitude contribute to happiness?

• 1: emotional boost from "gift" character of gratitude experiences.
• 2: counteracting hedonic habituation
• 3: focusing attention away from upward comparisons toward downward comparisons. might help with delayed gratification.
• 4: coping -- evidence from p. 178ff, less PTSD in grateful people.
• 5: increasing accessibility and recollection of pleasant life events -- note, this follows from memory bias studies (p. 179)
• 6: increasing actual number or positive events -- esp. through social network. social benefits.
• 7: decrease depressed mood

• Feedback loop in gratitude effects.

Gilbert, Chapter 1. Journey to Elsewhen

• the difference, to the problem of happiness, from our ability to imagine a future.
• Nexting; partially culturally acquired (pause to consider general cultural features of this training); frontal lobe; Phinneas Gage; lobotomies; N.N.
• Prospection and Emotion: ways that we enjoy anticipation of a future (18), even as substitute, American optimism and distorted sense of the future.
• Control. study at 21ff.