Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2012: The Science Behind the Smile. An Interview with Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert who is widely known for his 2006 best seller, Stumbling on Happiness.
- What did researchers discover?
- What are the sources of happiness?
- What makes us happy day to day?
- What things can we do to increase our happiness?
Key excerpts to follow:
Q: What did all these happiness researchers discover?
- …research confirms what we always suspected…people who are in good romantic relationships are happier than those who aren’t. Healthy people are happier than sick people. People who participate in their churches are happier than those who don’t. Rich people are happier than poor people. And so on.
- …some surprises. For example, while all these things do make people happier, it’s astonishing how little any one of them matters. Yes, a new house or a new spouse will make you happier, but not much and not for long.
- …people expect positive events to make them much happier than those events actually do, and they expect negative events to make them unhappier than they actually do…A recent study showed that very few experiences affect us for more than three months. When good things happen, we celebrate for a while and then sober up. When bad things happen, we weep and whine for a while and then pick ourselves up and get on with it.
- …One reason is that people are good at synthesizing happiness—at finding silver linings. Most people are more resilient than they realize
Q: Many managers would say that contented people aren’t the most productive employees, so you want to keep people a little uncomfortable, maybe a little anxious, about their jobs.
- Remember, contentment doesn’t mean sitting and staring at the wall. That’s what people do when they’re bored, and people hate being bored. We know that people are happiest when they’re appropriately challenged—when they’re trying to achieve goals that are difficult but not out of reach
- …Challenge and threat are not the same thing. People blossom when challenged and wither when threatened… Psychologists have studied reward and punishment for a century, and the bottom line is perfectly clear: Reward works better.
Q: What else do we know now about the sources of happiness?
- …If I wanted to predict your happiness, and I could know only one thing about you, I wouldn’t want to know your gender, religion, health, or income. I’d want to know about your social network—about your friends and family and the strength of your bonds with them.
Q: Beyond having rich networks, what makes us happy day to day?
- …the frequency of your positive experiences is a much better predictor of your happiness than is the intensity of your positive experiences. When we think about what would make us happy, we tend to think of intense events—going on a date with a movie star, winning a Pulitzer, buying a yacht. But Diener and his colleagues have shown that how good your experiences are doesn’t matter nearly as much as how many good experiences you have. Somebody who has a dozen mildly nice things happen each day is likely to be happier than somebody who has a single truly amazing thing happen. So wear comfortable shoes, give your wife a big kiss, sneak a french fry. It sounds like small stuff, and it is. But the small stuff matters.
- …We imagine that one or two big things will have a profound effect. But it looks like happiness is the sum of hundreds of small things. The things you can do to increase your happiness are obvious and small and take just a little time. But you have to do them every day and wait for the results.
Q: What are those little things we can do to increase our happiness?
- …They won’t surprise you…The main things are to commit to some simple behaviors—meditating, exercising, getting enough sleep—and to practice altruism. One of the most selfish things you can do is help others. Volunteer at a homeless shelter. You may or may not help the homeless, but you will almost surely help yourself. And nurture your social connections. Twice a week, write down three things you’re grateful for, and tell someone why. I know these sound like homilies from your grandmother. Well, your grandmother was smart.
Live & Learn 