Happiness Fall 2017 Class Notes

AUG 29

Audio from class: First section, parts a and b [1], [2]. Second section: [3]

• Course Introduction

• Some Problems of Happiness: notes
• Small Group Response / Peer introductions

• Course Mechanics and Assessment

• Course websites: alfino.org, courses (courses.alfino.org) and wiki (wiki.gonzaga.edu/faculty/alfino)
• Submit Roster Information
• Grading Schemes & Assignments
• Some values of anonymity / non-anonymity in developing philosophical skill.

AUG 31

Audio from class: [4] [5]

Note on Method

• Today's readings come from a history of happiness and a contemporary philosophical reflection on "living well" -- one of our core methods in the course will involve this kind of interdisciplinary study.
• In your group exercise today, you will be working with methods such as: generating cases, ordering cases by principles, "pumping intuitions".
• Thought experiment are part of a contemporary philosophers' toolkit. Nozick's "Experience Machine" is a thought experiment.

Some notes on Teaching Methods and Advice

• transparency and anonymity -- Saint names, pseudonyms, dropboxes, peer review, sharing student work, grade distributions
• Note on finding audio. In each class day's notes.
• Note on finding old class notes. At bottom of main wiki page.
• prep cycle -- check out "focus" notes on reading list, read, come to class, follow study questions from class, make notes in light of class, repeat.
• Note your responses to things in your notes so that you can go back and collect them for the My Philosophy of Happiness paper.
• Mark or note your readings so that you can answer study questions for use in short answer (Q&W) exercises and essay exams.

Cahn and Vitrano, "Living Well"

• considers how various philosophers would evaluate the contrast between the fictional cases of Pat and Lee

• Taylor and Frankfurt: P&L are equal. "living in accord with your desires" / according to what you love

• Living well: tied to distinctions between

• "successful lives" vs. "wasted lives"
• lives pursuing "intrinsically valuable" goals
• lives that are "works of art"
• fame and achievement vs. mission and meaning vs. satisfaction with one's own activities

• concern about the possibility of ideology or cultural bias.

• Wolf's list: computer games and crossword puzzles not on the list, but why not, asks Haidt?
• why disparage making money, swimming, driving cool cars?
• why do philosopher's think they can put philosophy at the top of the list?

• Example of Phil Saltman: Does happiness require maximizing accomplishment? Can unhappiness be associated with resignation from challenge?

• Cahn and Vitrano's answer: p. 21.

Small Group Work

• What is the relationship between happiness and achievement? Between happiness and using your talents? Is it an option, a favored option, a necessity?

Some general notes on Classical Views and the problem of criteria for living well

• Note how happiness emerges as a concern in Greek culture -- (and in other cultures -- will be looking at Buddhism later)
• Plato's (Socrates') view as exemplified in the Symposium -- finding happiness in the search for good accounts of things; knowledge.
• Structure of Symposium -- Love and Happiness as being drawn toward a transcendent and complete reality. (and later in Christianity)

• Specific term of Socrates' view -- eros --> desire --> lack vs. happiness --> fulfillment --> possession (self) -- problem of Alcibiades

• Aristotle's view -- telic, developmental, but also privileging the rational, similar problem as Plato. Not an account of happiness for the masses.

• Raises the question of criteria for living well -- How might it be true that happiness and realizing our nature are related? unrelated?

McMahon, "Chapter 1: The Highest Good"

1. Classical Greek Models of Happiness

Key theme: Greek cultural break with accommodation to destiny. Recognition of possibility of control of circumstances determining happiness.

Implicit historical narrative: Classical Greek philosophy has a point of connection with Periclean Athens, but develops Athenian cultural values in a radically new way. This begins a distinctive kind of narrative about happiness in the West.

1. The Greek Cultural Model

• Connection of the culture with tragedy, appreciation of fate, happiness as gift of gods.
• Dionysian culture
• Post-Socratic Schools -- Hellenism and Hellenistic culture (we'll be returning to some of these schools later in the course)

2. The Greek Philosophical Models in Greek Philosophical culture: Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Zeno.

A. Plato - Symposium gives us picture of Plato's view.

• Contrast the Symposium with the cult of Dionysius
• Reasoning our way to the Good (Happiness). Symposium as purification ritual (Summary including Alcibiades twist). bad desire/good desire. We will find real happiness in the pursuit of transcendent knowledge.
• Object of desire is transcendent. (Reminder about Platonic metaphysics.) "intellectual orgasm" (36)
• McMahon: "radical reappraisal of the standards of the world" 37

B. Aristotle (note McMahon pp. 41ff and Aristotle reading)

• end, function, craft, techne. Hierarchy of arts.
• end vs. final end -- the universal good is the final end, not relative. sec. 6-7.
• happiness as activity of the soul in accordance with virture (def., but also consequence of reasoning from nature of human life)
• Section 13: nature of the soul. two irrational elements: veg/appetitive and one rational. Note separation/relationship.
• As M notes, Aristotle's focus on the rational part of the soul leaves him with a similar problem as Plato -- a model of happines that few (not the Alcibiades in the world) will attain.

• Is the Greek Classical model of happiness (as seen in the Symposium and Aristotle's thought), a revelation of truth about happiness or the beginning of a repressive line of thought in happiness studies?
• If happiness requires a disciplined practice, how do you maintain solidarity with those who do not maintain the discipline (the Alcibiades problem)? Possible weakness of an individual enlightenment model of happiness.

SEP 5

Audio from class: [6] [7]

Methods

• conceptual analysis of subjective and objective in Vitrano; think of this as a basic dimension of theoretical space for happiness.
• Haybron's mention of method, p. 10.
• we're also acquiring bigger "classes of cases" to theorize from. (Jane and the Pidana)

Vitrano, The Subjectivity of Happiness

• "objectivist view" of happiness,

• connects happiness and the good life, living a good life.
• especially from Aristotle: happiness is objectively related to moral and prudential goodness, "living well" and "doing well"
• objectivists limit happiness to those who can develop their capacities and talents.

• subjectivist view:

• "satisfaction criterion" (note: an objectivist can still require that one also be satisfied with one's life)

• modified objectivism (adding constraints to subjectivism):

• Warner: satisfaction, but also of "important desires" that are thought "worthwhile". Simpson adds that the desires must actually be worthwhile.
• Annas: stronger still. We can assess our desires and goals objectively.
• Kekes: We can assess whether someone's satisfaction is warranted.
• Nozick: can't call someone happy if their emotions are unjustified and based on false evaluations

• Counterarguments to the objectivists:

• Case of Jane, who is happy in part because of her marriage, which she considers a success, but wrong about that because her husband is having an affair.

• might want to say that Jane would be "better off" knowing the truth, but then happiness and being "better off" are at odds, which is a problem for an objectivist who thinks happiness is the "best" state.

• second, to the extent that happiness is an emotion, we will have to credit the experience of the emotion as a form of fulfillment of the state.

• Other considerations supporting a subjectivist view:

• satisfaction criterion compatible with improvement. Someone can be happy and satisfied and yet they might still be happy if they made better moral and prudential decisions.
• therefore, subjectivism and appraisal are not incompatible.

• subjectivists explain behavior better.

• people actually behaves as though happiness were one among many goals.

Haybron, Dan. Chapter 1: "A Remarkable Fact"

• compares happy Socrates from a culture we regard as impoverished to us. and
• compares Amish, Maasai, and Inughuit to us.
• Paradoxical for our intuitions -- they are happy but don't have things we regard as necessary to happiness.
• International data on happiness -- What does it mean?
• the Piraha (Pidana) - outliers

• maybe happiness is too variable to have a theory about. his approach, p. 9-10
• advocates theorizing happiness as a psychological state, separate from life satisfaction.

Questions

• Do you have to achieve your goals to be happy?
• Do you have to have goals to be happy?
• What is your analysis of Jane's situation?
• What does it mean for our theory of happiness that there is happiness among the poorest people of earth and that cultures model happiness in significantly different ways (radically diff balances of PA/NA as in the Piraha)?

SEP 7

Audio from class: [8] [9]

Method notes

• Today we're exploring (through 14 centuries!) the range of the cultural phenomenon of Happiness, adding information from Roman culture and Christian culture. It's hard to have a good theory without a sense of the variability and behavior of the phenomena. History discloses this in unique ways.

Gilbert, Chapter 1. Journey to Elsewhen

• the difference, to the problem of happiness, from our ability to imagine a future.

• Calls "Nexting" predicting immediate future for me; "predicting" both conscious and unconscious. surprise. measurable in the very young and primates. Notice the levels of "nexting" from simple to entirely imagined futures.

• nexting happens in the frontal lobe; Phinneas Gage; lobotomies; tradeoffs between planning (being able to think about the future) and anxiety. N.N. - cognitive awareness of time without ability to imagine the future.

• Prospection and Emotion: 12% of time we think about the future. ways that we enjoy anticipation of a future (18), even as substitute, American optimism and distorted sense of the future. imagining the future changes our predictions about the likelihood of our imaginings coming true. Cancer patients more optimistic about future than the healthy.

• Control. study at 21ff. lots of specific results on control read 22.

Darrin McMahon, Chapter 2, Perpetual Felicity

• Note time period being covered: 0-500 ad Roman - Christian culture

• Roman culture of happiness: prosperity, fertility, power, luck. Also images of simplicity.

• "Horatian" images of happiness: Carpe Diem, read p. 72, note M's hypothesis: idyllic imagery a response to urban decadence and disorder. also contains an element of fantasy of plenty, of a "cornucopia". note critical element in Horace: p. 74: finds that the wealth of Roman culture may have undermined happiness.

• Early Christian Model of Happiness: 76-77: "worship of sorrow", major symbol about execution, but this is also a path to become blessed, beatitude, makarios (Greek). -- radical inversion of classical and Roman thought. To be happy is to walk in the way of the Lord.

• Judaic culture of happiness/blessedness term: Asher -- note how terms and concepts from Hellenic/Judaic/Roman cultures are being mixed. Happiness model as a path or program of formation. (cf. East/West) Beatitudes from Matthew, p. 82. change in role of suffering Judaic to Christian...

• Story of Perpetua and Felicitas (150ad). Martyrdom and Happiness.

• Transitions in Christian thought on happiness after Early Christianity: Augustine, Pseudo-Dyonisius, Aquinas

• Augustine, 96: personal history, symbol of Christian critique of pagan conception, yet also assimilation of Hellenic culture. "To be happy is to be suffused with truth, to 'have God within the soul," to "enjoy God". Note the big development here: positive happiness as a state of Christian joy. Also, Augustine makes the argument that the classical model fails to deliver this sort of happiness. City of God: explaining sacking of Rome, but also a model of Christian Happiness writ large. Also, an articulation of the doctrine of original sin. Need for grace in salvation. Pelagian controversy. Note summary at 105. Along with shaping so much of Christian theology, Augustine shaped the Christian conception of happiness.

• John the Scot (Eriugena) 847 ad, problem: how do we return to God from our exile? new articulation of free will (note importance to later history of happiness). rediscovers Pseudo-Dionysius, falsely thought to be contemporary of Paul (who mentions a Dionysius): Erugena's Dionysius was really a 6th century Syrian influenced by neoplatonism. mystical traditions both pagan (Plotinus) and christian (desert fathers)113. Great example of the fusion of classical and Christian thought. Platonic, Neo-Platonic, and Christian. Mystical bliss as a higher form of happiness.

• Aquinas distinction between perfect and imperfect happiness. Idea of order of creation, ladder of being. (Ladders everywhere. Also a version in Plato's divided line.) Humans on top among mortal creatures. (need to appreciate how "hot" Aristotle was in 13th century Paris, among university students! some concerns for the church: condemnation of theses including the idea of happiness here.) Fusion with Aristotlean conception of nature, to an extent. note p. 126. connects Aristotle's ideal of contemplation to Christian spirituality.

Questions

1. What is radically distinctive about Christian models of happiness and what is borrowed from the philosophical and historical culture of the time?

2. How does the existence and function of the pre-frontal brain complicate the problem of happiness?

SEP 12

Audio from class: [10] [11]

Method Notes

Today's reading is an overview of research which might help us build a "construct" for happiness. Brief mention of a structure for understanding how constructs (theories) develop through observation and experiment.

A core philosophical method, especially these days, is to try to synthesize the results of diverse research programs to represent a construct for something that, in the case of happiness for example, is too complex to know precisely.

Haidt, "Chapter 5: The Pursuit of Happiness"

(gloss on "elephant" vs. "rider")

• Major theme -- happiness as internal or external pursuit.

• About the structure of pleasure....

• diminishes on repeat...evolutionary gloss
• pre-goal attainment positive affect vs. post-goal attainment positive affect (Davidson)
• Progress Principle: happiness in the journey -- "Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing."

• The Adaptation Principle

• we return to baselines for + and - experiences
• we are sensitive to changes more than absolutes.

• Problem: If the adaptation principle and heritability of happiness are both true, does it matter much what we do?

• Attempt to "outrun" adaptation is "hedonic treadmill"

• Buddha and Epictetus take a relatively "internal" path. Haidt suggests research shows this to be somewhat extreme direction to go -- there are things to strive for outside of yourself. (Kind of lumping alot together, but we'll be looking at this more.)

• Haidt's list of happiness makers and unmakers(correlates and major causes)
• Adaptation (habituation, also relative sensitivity to change -- nb. bottom of p. 85), hedonic treadmill, set point theory (heritability of happiness).
• Bob and Mary comparison (87): relationship, meaningfulness. Bob's list more susceptible to adaptation. (Note some initial complications: Does marriage make people happy or do happy people marry? wealth effects (good topic for research paper).

• Small group discussion with Report using Google Form: In 20 minutes, develop a set of critical responses (or a single response) in 200-300 words to the following question: Why are so many people in the culture focused on raising their kids to be like Bob when it looks like Mary has more of the components of happiness in her life? Don't be reluctant to challenge perceived presuppositions of the question. You might want to agree on a strategy such as 3-5 minutes individual study and reflection, 10 minutes to produce the paragraph (5 minutes to get a draft, 5 to improve).

• Happiness Formula

• H = Set point + Conditions + Voluntary action
• Is the lack of adaptation for cosmetic surgery disturbing or comforting? what's shallow vs. what matters.
• from 92f: Noise, Commuting, Lack of Control, Shame, Relationships,
• "It is vain to say that human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it." (Charlotte Bronte, 1847) (He implies that the inward path to happiness involves a choice of inaction. Consider some assumptions people have about people who meditation.)

• Flow (experience sampling) and Seligman's "Pleasures" vs. "Gratifications"; Strengths test used to be at this site: [12], but it's now a general site for Seligman's work.

• Ways of working against your happiness (Lessons from the research)

• False hypotheses about material goods.
• Comparisons and biases. Conspicuous consumption is a zero sum game. p. 101 -- Seems to support the inward strategy
• Paradox of Choice: We say more choices will make us happier, but there is counter-evidence. Schwartz maximizers and satisficers.

• • Note concluding reflection: What are we to make of the Calcutta reports?

• Whole group discussion: What are some of the promises and pitfalls of an internal vs. external strategy for happiness?

Rethinking Haidt's Happiness Formula

• Haidt's formula: *H = Set point + Conditions + Voluntary action
• Set point might be better thought of as "initial affect profile"
• Relationship between Conditions and Voluntary action unclear. Actions change some conditions and habitual or dispositional responses might also create good conditions, yet not be wholly conscious and hence not wholly voluntary(?)
• Conditions (ranging from fated to chosen) and Responses to Conditions
• Meta -- actions and practices that we engage to develop and strengthen an orientation to life that will promote happiness and well being. These include practices that improve cognitive and emotive responses. (Haidt's "internal strategies". Also some of the capacities developed by the happiness practica.

SEP 14

Audio from class: [13] [14]

Gilbert, Chapter 2: The View from in Here

• Twins: Lroi and Reba. How to assess their preference?

• Types of happiness: emotional, moral, judgement happiness.

• How can the twins be happy? What is the role of "objective conditions"?

• Subjectivity of Yellow, 32. Nozick's experience machine, 35. Happy Frank, p. 37. (Perhaps goal of this analysis is to see that normal understanding of happiness includes life happiness, virtues, and perfective activities.)

• 40: How similar are two people's experience of happiness? How would you know?

• problem: we don't compare experiences, we compare memories of experiences.

• Describer's study on memory of color swatch, 41. What do we access when we make happiness judgements?

• How reliable is our judgement from one minute to the next?

• Interviewer substitution studies Daniel Simon's Lab: [15]. Other perceptual aspects, 43-44.

• Conclusion: 44-45: read. Not so much about how bad we are at noticing change, but how, if we aren't paying attention, memory kicks in.

• Happiness scales

• Language squishing and Experience stretching: Addresses the question: Does the range of my experience of happiness lead me to talk differently about an identical experience (of the cake) as someone else, or does it cause me to experience things differently? (Point about guitar experience (52) -- moving targets problem.)

• Language squishing hyp: We "squeeze" our happiness scale (language) to fit the range of our objective exp.

• R&L feel exactly like you do (about a birthday cake, for example) but talk about it differently.
• consistent with the idea that the same feeling or state could receive a higher assessment by someone with limited experience.

• Experience stretching hyp: We take the range of our objective experience and stretch it to fit our scale.

• R&L talk about experiences the same as you do but feel something different.
• consistent with the idea that someone is having a different experience because of their limited background.
• maybe a rich background of experience (exotic experience, diverse or challenging experience, luxurious experience, experience of rarefied environments) "ruins" mundane experience. In which case, absence of peak experiences is not a problem.

Another way of putting the R&L problem: When R&L give something an 8 is it like what you experience when you (presumably as someone with broader and more diverse experience) give something an 8?

• Drawing a conclusion: Our relationship to our judgements about happiness is changed by our experience of happiness and vice versa, creating a kind of ambiguity in intersubjective assessments of happiness.

• Small group discussion: Thinking about R&L and "experience stretching" and "language squishing", what are the major variables that affect whether two people are having getting the "same hedonic effect" from an experience or different effects? Can enriched experience (luxury, peak experiences, exotic experiences) "ruin you"? Does connoisseurship pose a risk to happiness? Does the "moving targets" problem come into the picture here?

Haybron, Chapter 2: What is Happiness?

• takes us into a rich phenomenal account of emotional state happiness

• endorsement -- some difficulty understanding this: not a judgement, but a feeling from satisfying criteria you accept as counting toward the claim, "my life is positively good"

• examples -- feeling from actual endorsements, but also from savoring accomplishment or appreciating need fulfillment (parents seeing contented children, a full pantry...)

• engagement - vitality and flow
• attunement -- peace of mind, tranquility, confidence, expansiveness

• Is Haybron making a recommendation or describing objective, transcultural features of emotional happiness?

• Problem of "false happiness" -- discrepancies such as Robert's (also Happy Frank) -- adaptive unconscious might be part of the explanation -- interesting that we can go wrong in this way. mood propensity or dispositional happiness.

• Can you also be happy and not know it?

• The Haybron discussion also gets at the idea of superficial vs. deep happiness. Ricard, or the sage, presumably have it.

Questions

1. Do peak experiences matter to our overall happiness? Won't we just fit our experience to our language?

2. How does the evidence of our difficulty in comparing experiences affect the problem of understanding happiness?

3. How universal is Haybron's model of emotional state happiness?

4. Does Haybron's model keep Hs and Hl separate?

SEP 19

Audio from class: [16] [17]

Philosophical Methods at Work

• In our group discussion work, you will be asked to speculate and draw inferences from Haidt's discussion of the the nature of the brain.
• With Gilbert, we are asking about the deeper implications of psychological research related to self-knowledge and capacities for self-awareness.
• The last part of the Gilbert chapter involves a "meta-theoretical" discussion. Philosophical investigations often raise meta-theoretical problems.

Haidt, "The Divided Self"

• metaphors from Plato and Buddha. Training metaphor in both. Plato's horses: rational and irrational desire. H's: elephant and rider. point: reason-based metaphors for consciousness don't explain our funny behavior with respect to our well-being. We seem more conflicted than a reason based model would suggest.
• Akrasia [18] -- csness is not univocal. You can try to make reason speak for you, but knowledge of the brain suggests that's the wrong way to talk.
• Freud: ego, id, superego.
• Four major structures of brains to consider while theorizing about happiness:

• Mind vs. Body - gut brain. neurons all over. GI and immune system illnesses intersect with psychological conditions such as stress and depression.
• Left vs. Right -Michael Gazzaniga, collected evidence on split brain patients (severing corpus collasum to reduce seizures), controlled experiments with patients report of l/r brain function. split brains in everyday life... Why does this matter if you don't have a split brain???

• "confabulation" - implications for our picture of csness.
• reminder that lateralization doesn't negate coordination.
• Consciousness and coherence are an achievement!

• New vs. Old -neo-cortex and frontal cortex recent - case of U VA schoolteacher in his forties who starts acting weird - massive tumor in frontal cortex. (Phineas Gage) -- moment of appreciation for the orbitofrontal cortex. Rationality embodied in part in our capacity to suppress urges and integrate desires in a social world. esp. orbitofrontal cortex (p. 12). Our rationality may be less of a stand-alone faculty than something that is socially enacted. (again, embodied cognition is trending here, but also explains connection with frontal cortex.) Also, Kluver-Bucy Syndrome: [19]
• Note on "repligate" -- Consider some skepticism about priming studies. For More: [20]

• Controlled vs. Automatic - priming research, 13. Larger background theory that rider evolved to serve the elephant. Important paper by Hugo Mercier & Dan Sperber, "Why do Humans Reason?" [21]
• Note on "repligate" -- Consider some skepticism about priming studies. For More: [22]

• Small group discussion: What is the importance of "keeping the brain in mind" while thinking about happiness? Is there room for skeptical doubt about it? Consider the potential importance of each of the features of the brain Haidt discusses for thinking about happiness?

• Two Big examples of phenomena that arise from these structures and features of the brain.

• Self-Control: Studied, famous in relation to failures of self control 18: Mischel and Impulse control [23] Poe and the "imp of the perverse"; 19: Wegner on ironic processes (don't think of a white bear). point: shows automatic and controlled processes at odds.
• Disgust 21: disgust - incest scenario -

• 22 q. final statement about rider and elephant. "We make pronouncements, vows, and resolutions, and then are surprised by our own powerlessness to carry them out. We sometimes fall into the view that we are fighting with our unconscious, our id, or our animal self. But really we are the whole thing. We are the rider, and we are the elephant. Both have their strengths and special skills."

Gilbert, Chapter 3: Outside Looking In

• How well do we know what we're feeling?

• Determining that something is scary comes before understanding it. (That's scary.) automatic processes can help or distort our preferred reactions.

• Maybe you can be happy and "not know it" in the sense of not being aware that this (state, experience structure, etc.) is normal to happiness.

• Capilano Bridge Study -- fear and arousal. reading without awareness. you can have an experience and not be present to it or aware of it.

• Blindsight - visual experience and awareness of that experience are generated by distinct parts of the brain. 62.

• Alexithymia - mismatch of experience and awareness of experience or lack of introspective awareness, leading to impoverished vocab of phen. experience. You could be happy and not know it. (Will you "know it when you see it"?) (That's scary, too.) But another claim being made here is about variation in people's aptitude for emotional self-description. This seems related to "emotional intelligence." (Discussion: Do people vary in this way? What, if any, intervention might alter one's capacity for emotional self-decription?)

• p. 63: "They (alexithymics) seem to have feelings, they just don't seem to know about them."

• Objectivity issue summarized: 64.
• Addressing Measurement Issues: 1) imperfect measures are still measures; 2) real time reports by individuals are still pretty reliable (1st person perspective has some privilege); 3) law of large numbers can help

• physical correlates, multiple measures, avoid priming,
• Law of Large Numbers -- resolves some issues of subjectivity.
• "problem of subjective experience" -- relation between knowledge of patterns and individual. point, bottom of p. 69. "law of larger numbers" to the rescue.

SEP 21

Audio from class: [24] [25]

Arglyle, "Causes and Correlates of Happiness"

• Age
• Education
• Social Status
• Income
• Marriage
• Ethnicity
• Employment
• Leisure
• Religion
• Life Events

Synopsis by major factor:

• Age

• The older are slightly happier, notably in positive affect. Some evidence that women become less happy with age. In assessing causality, we might need to acknowledge a cohort effect (older people are those who survive, hence not nec. representative of a sampling of all age groups). Older people are less satisfied than others with their future prospects.
• Old people could have lower expectations, and hence their greater self-reported happiness might not be comparable to a younger person's self-reported happiness. (Consider Cantril's study that found older people more satisfied with past and current lives (less with future).)
• Puzzle: objective conditions are worse for old people (health, depression and loneliness!), yet they are more satisfied. (Neural degeneration has got to be on the table as a hypothesis.) Actually, declining aspirations, "environmental mastery", and autonomy increases might help explain this. Also, old people participate in their religion more. A boost.

• Education

• The educated are slightly happier (on PA, not reduced NA). Effect weak in US. Data suggest the education effect is greater in poorer countries. Control for income and job status effects and there is still a slight effect from education. [From personal achievement? Finding enduring sources of flow and pleasure?] But income and job status account for most of the education effect.

• Social Status

• About twice the effect of education or age (could be seeing combined effect of both), but half of the effect is from job status. Greater effect for stratified societies. [How professors are treated in Italy, for example.]
• Note 356: social class predicts a big bundle of goods that also have measurable happiness effects: housing, relationships, and leisure. Also, diff classes DO different things.

• Income

• Average correlation of .17 across studies. See chart on p. 356 -- curvilinear, with slight upward tail at highest incomes. (intriguing)
• Steep relation of income from poverty to material sufficiency.
• Diener found a stronger correlation when using multiple income measures (such and GNP, purchasing power indexes, etc.)
• Bradburn pay raise studies in '69. (see cartoon) Inglehart studies in 90's: people who say their $ situation improved also report high satisfaction.
• Famous Myers and Diener 1996 study: "In the United States, average personal income has risen from $4,000 in 1970 to $16,000 in 1990 (in 1990 dollars), but there has been no change in average happiness or satisfaction." Some evidence that happiness is sensitive to economic downturns (Belgium), some evidence of variation in strength of effect across culture.
• Lottery winner studies may not be a good way to test income effects since you get lots of disruptions with winning the lottery.
• Cluster effect with income: Income comes with host of other goods: p. 358.
• Comparison groups and relative changes may be stronger than absolute income levels. (Note "pay fairness" increases income satisfaction. Gonzaga note.) Women's pay (358).
• Michalo's "goal achievement gap model" p. 358: "whereby happiness is said to be due to the gap between aspirations and achievements and this gap is due to comparisons with both "average folks" and one's own past life (see figure 18.3).

Other Resources:

• Kahneman and Deaton, "High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being"
• Graham, et. al, "The Easterlin Paradox and Other Paradoxes: Why both sides of the Debate May be Correct"

• Marriage

• Average effect from meta-analysis of .14. Stronger effects for young. Does more for women than men, though stronger effect on male health.
• Causal model: Married people have higher social well being indicators (mental and physical health). These indicators are independent factors for happiness. Marriage is a source of emotional and material support. Married people just take better care of themselves. Men might benefit from emotional support more since women provide that to male spouses more than males? (differently?)
• Effects of marriage has a life-stage dimension to them. (figure 18.4) Having children has a small effect.
• Reverse causation is a consideration, but hard to support since 90% of people get married.
• Good example in this section of distinguishing between correlational data and causal discussion.
• Construct for marriage: strong social and emotional support, material help, companionship.

• Might be interesting to look at research comparing marriage to other types of social support systems. Why are people in your age group delaying marriage? Is it making them happier?

• Ethnicity

• Widely confirmed studies show that average happiness for US African Americans is lower than for US whites.
• Mostly accounted for by income, education, and job status.
• Interestingly, African American children enjoy higher self-esteem than white kids.

• Employment

• Studies of unemployed and retired help isolate effects.
• Unemployed significantly less happy: "The unemployed in nearly all countries are much less happy than those at work. Inglehart (1990) found that 61 percent of the unemployed were satisfied, compared with 78 percent of manual workers."
• Strong effects when unemployment is low; different ways of looking at employment effects (363).
• Causal model: income and self-esteem account for most of effect.

• Leisure

• Relatively strong correlation: .2 in meta-studies.
• Leisure effects observed in lots of contexts (social relations from work, adolescent leisure habits, even a short walk. Sport and exercise include both social effects and release of endorphins. Like religion, leisure activities have multi-faceted effects on happiness.
• Flow is a factor. Comparisons of high engagement and high apathy (tv) leisure activities.
• TV watching as a leisure activity. Predicted low SWB, but has some positive effects. Soap opera watchers!
• Volunteer and charity work were found to generate high levels of joy, exceeded only by dancing!

• Religion

• The strength of religion on happiness is positive, sensitive to church attendance, strength of commitment, related to meaningfulness and sense of purpose (an independent variable). Overall modest effect, but stronger for those more involved in their church. note demographic factors: single, old, sick benefit most from religious participation. US effect stronger. (Why do protestants get more happiness from their religion than Catholics?)
• Reverse causation: Are happier people more likely to be religious?
• Causal model: Religion works through social support, increasing esteem and meaningfulness.
• Kirpatrick 1992 study: self-reported relationship with God has similar effects as other relationships.

• Life events and activities (especially on affect)

• "' A study in five Eu European countries found that the main causes of joy were said to be relationships with friends, the basic pleasures of food, drink, and sex, and success experiences (Scherer etal. 1986)."..."Frequency of sexual intercourse also correlates with happiness, as does satisfaction with sex life, being in love, and frequency of interaction with spouse, but having liberal sexual attitudes has a negative relationship." "...alcohol, in modest doses, has the greatest effects on positive mood."

• Competencies -- Some other factors or attributes that might be causal. For young women, attractiveness, especially at young ages, has strong effect on happiness. Height in men. health (with causation in both directions). social skills predict happiness. health can be viewed as a competency: high correlation (look back at Bob and Mary comparison)

• Note policy point: This article is from early days in the policy discussion. But the basic point has been the same: Why do we put so much emphasis on increasing GDP is happiness is affected by so many other things?

SEP 26

Audio from class: [26] [27]

Methodological Point for the Day

• So far we've been talking alot about "happy vs. happier," but we now we need to start tracking qualitatively different forms of happiness. Cultures give us a way to look at this, but Gilbert's discussion of the interpretive power of the mind.

Diener and Suh, "National Differences in SWB"

• With this article, income is once again highlighted as a factor, but now in the context of cross nation comparisons. The major issue here is, "How does culture and national grouping interact with perceptions and judgements of happiness? (Note problem of relation of national borders to tribe, ethnicity, and region.)

• Methodological Difficulties:

• 1. Measurement Issues -- gloss on "artifacts" as measurement problems. Example: different ways of administering a survey, moment to moment variation affecting results.

• Wealth is clustered with other factors that predict H, such as rights, equality, fulfillment of needs, and individualism.
• Transnational similarities (p. 435, in all nations most people are happy) might reflect some tendency to for judgements to be group-relative.
• General validity concerns about self reports are offset by research using multiple measures.
• Example of Russian / US student comparison, 437, west/east berliners -- second measure -- event memory bias -- confirms self-reports. Also, column B: mood memory

• 2. Are nations meaningful units of analysis? Nationality predicts SWB in general and in sub groups (gender/age).438b

• 3. Scale structure invariance -- non-technical version: what if the terms used in happiness surveys have different "weights" or relationships with each other and with happiness? Some evidence of scale invariance. (Note that a validated construct, such as LS/PA+NA, might be the basis for showing scale invariance. Cf to Gilbert.

• Happiness Across Nations:

• After accounting for measurement and methodological issues, there are real and substantive differences in well-being across nations. While wealthier nations are generally happier, there are complexities to the causal model. National income correlates with non-economic goods such as rights, equality, fulfillment of basic needs, and individualism (list at 436). These factors have effects on both SWB and income that have not been isolated. (at 441: real ambiguity about causal paths in this analysis: is it wealth or the correlates of wealth that are causal for happiness? Thought Experiment: the Nazi's won, but they really know how to boost GDP. Could you imagine the society being just as happy?

• Some details: .69 correlate between purchasing power and LS-SWB, lower, but sig. correlations with affect.

• Individualism

• Individualism correlates with higher reported SWB, but also higher suicide rates. Collectivists may be working with a different model of happiness or just a different attitude about its importance. (Carol Graham, Happiness Around the World, is the main successor research that I'm aware of. 1999 vs. 2009). Individualism is linked with wealth, so hard to separate effects. Note specific differences in valuation between individualist vs. collectivist culture. (442) Problem (I think): SWB is more salient to individualists.

• Small Group discussion: Do you see the data on individualism and SWB supporting the idea that individualism (along with the political and economic culture is clusters with) is a better universal strategy for happiness or supporting the idea that individualist and collectivist cultures are pursuing different kinds of happiness?

• Some non-correlates: homogeneity, population density.

Different models for explaining cultural differences are presented:

1. innate needs approach, Veenhoven, explains lack of growth in SWB in rich countries.
2. theory of goal striving, SWB relative to goal pursuits, which are different between rich and poor nations.
3. models of emotional socialization, different cultures/nations social young to affect in different ways.
4. genetic explanations.

?

Gilbert, Chapter 4: In the Blind Spot of the Mind's Eye

• Comparions of Adolph Fisher & George Eastman. Point: Need to 2nd guess how we impose seemingly objective criteria on others' lives.

• Just because it's easier for us to imagine that a certain kind of future will bring happiness, and what we imagine might even be in line with objective research, it doesn't follow that other futures won't.

• Brain reweaves experience: study with cars and stop signs/yield signs. Information acquired after the event alters memory of the event.
• Two highly confirmed results: Memory fills in. We don't typically notice it happening. Word list excercise. 80 -- literal and metaphorical blindspots. experiments with interrupted sentences. We fill in.

• Model of Mind (84) Prior to 19th century:

"philosophers had thought of the senses as conduits that allowed information about the properties of objects in the world to travel from the object and into the mind. The mind was like a movie screen in which the object was rebroadcast. The operation broke down on occasion, hence people occasionally saw things as they were not. But when the senses were working properly, they showed what was there. This theory of realism was described in 1690 by the philosopher John Locke: brains "believe" they don't "make believe" .

• Model of Mind brought in with Kant at beginning of 1800's:

Kant's idealism: "Kant's new theory of idealism claimed that our perceptions are not the result of a physiological process by which our eyes somehow transmit an image of the world into our brains but rather, they are the result of a psychological process that combines what our eyes see with what we already think, feel, know, want, and believe, and then uses this combination of sensory information and preexisting knowledge to construct our perception of reality. "

• false belief test -- [28]

• Still, we act like realists: truck moving study-- we are first realists, but we learn to adopt an idealist perspective in social communication.
• We experience the world as if our interpretations were part of reality. We do not realize we are seeing an interpretation.
• We fill in details: imagine a plate of spaghetti. Very important for thinking about how we fill in the future. We carry out the exercise of imagining, and even make estimates of satisfaction, but the result depends upon which of the family of experiences picked out by "plate of spaghetti" we have in mind.
• point for happiness theories: p. 89.
• closes by giving you the narratives that make sense of the Fisher/Eastman comparison.

SEP 28

Audio from class: [29] [30]

Haybron, Chapter 3, "Life Satisfaction"

• More cases of lives that require narratives to understand: Moresse "Pop" Bickham. Note what Bickham says. It's possible that Bickham has deployed a powerful version of the "internal strategy".
• Haybron considers whether we should infer from his life satisfaction that he was happy

• Claim: You can judge your life favorably no matter how you feel. (Probe this.)
• Claim: (33) There may be a diff between being satisfied with your life and judging that it is going well.

• Comment: Bickham is the extreme case in which its hard to get our intuitions around the idea that Hs and Hl could go together. But let's do our own investigation of this.

• Was Wittgenstein's "wonderful" life plausibly happy or satisfying?

• LS defined at p. 35: "To be satisfied with your life is to regard it as going well enough by your standards."

• That's a puzzling definition since early he convinced us that you "satisfied" and "going well" can be judged separately.

• Claim: It's a mistake to call life satisfaction a hedonic good because it is "not just a question of pleasure"

• Comment: This doesn't tell us that it doesn't also involve a kind of feeling. The fact that it involves judgement doesn't mean emotion isn't involved.

• Small Group Problem: How do you make life satisfaction judgements? How will you decide if your life is "going well" in the coming 2-3 years? Can you be satisfied with your life even if some aspects are not going well? When you think of what is good in your life, do you experience a kind of affect?

• Problems with LS judgements:

• they are global judgments of complex sets of events over time. too reductive a judgement to make 1 - 10.
• it sounds like a simple judgement of the relationship between expectation and outcome (like ordering a steak), but it isn't, really, now is it?

• Good point: more like assessing a "goal-achievement gap" -- example of tenure happiness study

• determining "well enough" is pretty subjective (variable). -- maybe, but that could be explained within the "goal-achievement gap" model since we're always "resetting" in one direction or another ("Things won are done." or "I guess that's not working") recall point about hedonic structure of this.
• most people seem to be able to assert satisfaction with their lives independently of whether they were "choiceworthy"

• For Haybron, this implies that Hl judgements are basically much less relevant to assessing happiness than emotional states. He even suggests with the Calcutta workers reports that they are not grounded judgements.

*kidney patients, colostomy patients.

Short Writing Assignment due this Sunday at midnight!

• Please write a 400 word answer to one of the following questions:

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way:

1. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file. If possible put your word count in the file.
2. Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font.
3. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "Short Happiness Writing 1".
4. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Q&W dropbox.

OCT 3

Audio from class: [31] [32]

OCT 5

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OCT 10

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OCT 12

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OCT 17

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OCT 19

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OCT 24

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OCT 26

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OCT 31

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NOV 2

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NOV 7

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NOV 9

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NOV 14

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NOV 16

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NOV 21

t day pre

NOV 28

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NOV 30

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DEC 5

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DEC 7

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DEC 12/14

last week of semester