2014-02-27 To J.

2014-02-27

Greetings J.,

The following reflection is based on the first chapter of Martin Seligman’s Flourish book, which I highly recommend reading, since in addition to learning you will notice an increase in your level of wellbeing.

In this chapter Seligman makes a brief description of the Theories of Authentic Happiness (Seligman 2004) and his Theory of Well-Being (Seligman 2012).

I attach the summary of the chapter to guide you in my argument.

SUMMARY OF WELL-BEING THEORY

Here then is well-being theory: well-being is a construct; and well-being, not happiness, is the topic of positive psychology. Well-being has five measurable elements (PERMA) that count toward it:

  • Positive emotion (of which happiness and life satisfaction are two aspects)

  • Engagement

  • Relationships

  • Meaning

  • Achievement

None of the element defines well-being individually, but each contributes to it. Some aspects of these five elements are measured subjectively by self-report, but other aspects are measured objectively.

In the Authentic Happiness Theory by contrast, happiness is the centerpiece of positive psychology. It is a real thing that is defined by the measurement of life satisfaction. Happiness has three aspects: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning, each of which feeds into life satisfaction and is measured entirely by subjective report.

There is one loose end to clarify: in authentic happiness theory, the strengths and virtues — kindness, social intelligence, humor, courage, integrity, and the like (there are twenty-four of them) —are the supports for engagement. You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way. In well-being theory, these twenty-four strengths underpin all five elements, not just engagement: deploying your highest strengths leads to more positive emotion, to more meaning, to more accomplishment, and to better relationships.

Authentic happiness theory is one-dimensional: it is about feeling good and it claims that the way we choose our life course is to try to maximize how we feel. Well-being theory is about all five pillars, the underpinnings of the five elements is the strengths. Well-being theory is plural in method as well as substance: positive emotion is a subjective variable, defined by what you think and feel. Engagement, meaning, relationships, and accomplishment have both subjective and objective components, since you can believe you have engagement, meaning, good relations, and high accomplishment and be wrong, even deluded. The upshot of this is that well-being cannot exist just in your own head: well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships, and accomplishment. The way we choose our course in life is to maximize all five of these elements.

This difference between happiness theory and well-being theory is of real moment. Happiness theory claims that the way we make choices is to estimate how much happiness (life satisfaction) will ensue, and then we take the course that maximizes future happiness. Maximizing happiness is the final common path of individual choice. As economist Richard Layard argues, that is how individuals choose and in addition maximizing happiness should become the gold standard measure for all policy decisions by government. Richard, the advisor to both prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown on unemployment, and my good friend and teacher, is a card-carrying economist, and his view — for an economist — is remarkable. It sensibly departs from the typical economist’s view of wealth: that the purpose of wealth is to produce more wealth. For Richard, the only rationale for increasing wealth is to increase happiness, so he promotes happiness, not only as the criterion by which we choose what to do as individuals, but as the single outcome measure that should be measured by government in order to decide what policies to pursue. While I welcome this development, it is another naked monism, and I disagree with the idea that happiness is the be-all and end-all of well-being and its best measure.

The final chapter of this book is about the politics and economics of well-being, but for now I want to give just one example of why happiness theory fails abysmally as the sole explanation of how we choose. It is well established that couples with children have on average lower happiness and life satisfaction than childless couples. If evolution had to rely on maximizing happiness, the human race would have died out long ago. So clearly either humans are massively deluded about how much life satisfaction children will bring or else we use some additional metric for choosing to reproduce. Similarly, if personal future happiness were our sole aim, we would leave our aging parents out on ice floes to die. So the happiness monism not only conflicts with the facts, but it is a poor moral guide as well: from happiness theory as a guide to life choice, some couples might choose to remain childless. When we broaden our view of well-being to include meaning and relationships, it becomes obvious why we choose to have children and why we choose to care for our aging parents.

Happiness and life satisfaction are one element of well-being and are useful subjective measures, but well-being cannot exist just in your own head. Public policy aimed only at subjective well-being is vulnerable to the Brave New World caricature in which the government promotes happiness simply by drugging the population with a euphoriant called “soma.” Just as we choose how to live by plural criteria, and not just to maximize happiness, truly useful measures of well-being for public policy will need to be a dashboard of both subjective and objective measures of positive emotion, engagement, meaning, good relationships, and positive accomplishment.

From the above, the part that I would like to highlight is the one that relates the Theory of Well-Being with the Theory of Evolution. We are then faced with the danger of thinking that the search for happiness, understood as the maximization of positive affect, is the most appropriate path to follow. Seligman offers the example of couples with and without children and care for parents in support of this idea.

The origin of this reflection is the conversation we had at the beginning of the course in which, more or less correctly, you argued that the goal of life was to be happy. That day I did not completely agree with your opinion, but until reading the previous text I have not known why. Your statement, partially correct, has to be subjected to various nuances. Some of these nuances are already included in Seligman’s reasoning. The search for happiness (positive emotions) is only part of the individual’s complete well-being. Thus, let’s assume, that the goal in people’s lives is to flourish, to increase individual and other human well-being.

Next, I will present a personal example within the framework of Theory of Well-being. My example is focused on highlighting the nuance between the search for happiness and the search for personal well-being. For this I will use any university student. That university student whose main objective is the search for Happiness and the maximization of positive emotions, will be in constant search and movement for these. His main activities and motivations could be: going out to a party, having coffee with his friends, enjoying his free time walking, watching series or movies, etc. On the other hand, a university student whose objective is searching for their own flourishing and their individual well-being will be more likely to compensate their study hours with leisure hours. I consider that under objective measures, the second student will have higher levels of well-being than the previous one. Being possible that the first student shows, objectively measured, higher levels of happiness.

The maladaptiveness of happiness in this case will be shown in their academic performance. We can assume that the student oriented towards the pursuit of happiness will demonstrate a lower motivation towards their studies, since studying does not usually provoke positive affective states. This lower motivation may affect negatively the time and effort used by the student on their tasks. This lack of intrinsic motivation to study, on multiple occasions, will cause feelings of distress, tiredness, and boredom. On the other hand, relying on Well-being theory, the most adaptive attitude for a university student is to pursue their personal flourishing. As reflected in the chapter, the theory of Well-being is made up of five elements, three of them, common with the constructor of Happiness.

According to the first of these, positive emotions, the student whose attitude is the search for Well-being, will try to go out to party, drink coffee, watch series … to a lesser extent probably, due to time limitations, than the student oriented in pursuit of happiness. But still, it will demonstrate an attitude of seeking positive emotions. The second element, engagement or flow, is a state reached when the person feels completely absorbed in completing a task. The task must be challenging and complex so that all the student’s attention is focused on it and it can reach a state of Flow. Both students may have more or less experiences of flow performing a wide variety of tasks, but I lean on the idea that the student who varies more often from task has a greater opportunity to find himself in situations of flow, than the one who performs with higher frequency and monotony the same activities. The third element, meaning, is found in the performance of activities that are considered bigger and more important than the individual himself. As an example of these activities we can name the motivation to learn or apply knowledge with the aim of helping humanity. Conversely, selfish acts of pleasure are not usually related to the idea of meaning. The element of accomplishment is an idea that I personally relate to the concept of learning goals (Locke and Latham 1990). These types of goals provoke an intrinsic motivation oriented towards learning or mastering a certain task. In such a situation, people who demonstrate higher learning or accomplishment goals will have higher levels of well-being. As Seligman well argues, it is more likely to find this type of goals and objectives in tasks that pose a personal challenge to overcome, something that most leisure activities do not provoke. Finally, we find the element called positive relationships. A student who spends a larger portion of their time working will spend a lesser portion socializing, compared to socializing being a priority. The student who has less time to socialize must hierarchize and organize their time more efficiently to focus their efforts on those relationships that contribute and matter to them. Focusing like this, on relationships and people who really care about him. Assuming the above, their well-being will also be increased, even in a higher way, than that of a student who socializes without too much discrimination. It is interesting to note that these elements are characterized by their fundamentally intrinsic motivation. Such motivation is the most powerful and enduring engine of behavior. Thus, increasing the chances of academic success for the student whose goal is Well-being compared to the chances of the student whose goal is purely Happiness. And most importantly, the levels of Well-being of the student whose goal is the pursuit of Well-being will also be higher than those of the one whose goal is purely the pursuit of Happiness.

Regards,

Carlos

References

Seligman, Martin EP. 2004. Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Simon; Schuster.

Seligman, Martin EP. 2012. Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being. Simon; Schuster.

Locke, Edwin A, and Gary P Latham. 1990. A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance. Prentice-Hall, Inc.