well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense

joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have

striven to define happiness and identify its sources. Various research groups, including

positive psychology, endeavor to apply the scientific method to answer questions about

what "happiness" is, and how it might be attained. It is of such fundamental importance to the

human condition that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" were deemed to be unalienable

rights by the United States Declaration of Independence.

Philosophers and religious thinkers often define happiness in terms of living a good

life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness in this sense was used

to translate the Greek Eudaimonia, and is still used in virtue ethics.

Definition Happiness is a fuzzy concept and can mean

many different things to many people. Part of the challenge of a science of happiness

is to identify different concepts of happiness, and where applicable, split them into their

components. Related concepts are well-being, quality of life and flourishing. Some commentators

focus on the difference between the hedonistic tradition of seeking pleasant and avoiding

unpleasant experiences, and the eudaimonic tradition of living life in a full and deeply

satisfying way. The 2012 World Happiness Report stated that

in subjective well-being measures, the primary distinction is between cognitive life evaluations

and emotional reports. Emotional reports can be distinguished as of positive or negative

affect. Many but not all commentators regard positive and negative affect as carrying different

information, and needing to be separately measured and analyzed. Happiness is used in

both life evaluation, as in “How happy are you with your life as a whole?”, and in

emotional reports, as in “How happy are you now?,” and people seem able to use happiness

as appropriate in these verbal contexts. Research results

Research has produced many different views on causes of happiness, and on factors that

correlate with happiness, but no validated method has been found to substantially improve

long-term happiness in a meaningful way for most people.

Sonja Lyubomirsky concludes in her book The How of Happiness that 50 percent of a given

human's happiness level is genetically determined (based on twin studies), 10 percent is affected

by life circumstances and situation, and a remaining 40 percent of happiness is subject

to self-control. The results of the 75 year Grant study of

Harvard undergraduates show a high correlation of loving relationship, especially with parents,

with later life wellbeing. In the 2nd Edition of the Handbook of Emotions

(2000), evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby say that happiness comes from

"encountering unexpected positive events". In the 3rd Edition of the Handbook of Emotions

(2008), Michael Lewis says "happiness can be elicited by seeing a significant other".

According to Mark Leary, as reported in a November 1995 issue of Psychology Today, "we

are happiest when basking in the acceptance and praise of others". Sara Algoe and Jonathan

Haidt say that "happiness" may be the label for a family of related emotional states,

such as joy, amusement, satisfaction, gratification, euphoria, and triumph.

It has been argued that money cannot effectively "buy" much happiness unless it is used in

certain ways. "Beyond the point at which people have enough to comfortably feed, clothe, and

house themselves, having more money - even a lot more money - makes them only a little

bit happier." A Harvard Business School study found that "spending money on others actually

makes us happier than spending it on ourselves". Meditation has been found to lead to high

activity in the brain's left prefrontal cortex, which in turn has been found to correlate

with happiness. Psychologist Martin Seligman asserts that

happiness is not solely derived from external, momentary pleasures, and provides the acronym

PERMA to summarize Positive Psychology's correlational findings: humans seem happiest when they have

Pleasure (tasty food, warm baths, etc.), Engagement (or flow, the absorption of an

enjoyed yet challenging activity), Relationships (social ties have turned out

to be extremely reliable indicator of happiness), Meaning (a perceived quest or belonging to

something bigger), and Accomplishments (having realized tangible

goals). There have also been some studies of how religion

relates to happiness. Causal relationships remain unclear, but more religion is seen

in happier people. This correlation may be the result of community membership and not

necessarily belief in religion itself. Another component may have to do with ritual.

Abraham Harold Maslow, an American professor of psychology, founded humanistic psychology

in the 1930s. A visual aid he created to explain his theory, which he called the hierarchy

of needs, is a pyramid depicting the levels of human needs, psychological, and physical.

When a human being ascends the steps of the pyramid, he reaches self-actualization. Beyond

the routine of needs fulfillment, Maslow envisioned moments of extraordinary experience, known

as peak experiences, profound moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, during

which a person feels more whole, alive, self-sufficient, and yet a part of the world. This is similar

to the flow concept of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Self-determination theory relates intrinsic

motivation to three needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness.

Religious perspectives Buddhism

Happiness forms a central theme of Buddhist teachings. For ultimate freedom from suffering,

the Noble Eightfold Path leads its practitioner to Nirvana, a state of everlasting peace.

Ultimate happiness is only achieved by overcoming craving in all forms. More mundane forms of

happiness, such as acquiring wealth and maintaining good friendships, are also recognized as worthy

goals for lay people (see sukha). Buddhism also encourages the generation of loving kindness

and compassion, the desire for the happiness and welfare of all beings.

Catholicism The primary meaning of "happiness" in various

European languages involves good fortune, chance or happening. The meaning in Greek

philosophy, however, refers primarily to ethics. In Catholicism, the ultimate end of human

existence consists in felicity, Latin equivalent to the Greek eudaimonia, or "blessed happiness",

described by the 13th-century philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas as a Beatific Vision of God's

essence in the next life. Human complexities, like reason and cognition, can produce well-being

or happiness, but such form is limited and transitory. In temporal life, the contemplation

of God, the infinitely Beautiful, is the supreme delight of the will. Beatitudo, or perfect

happiness, as complete well-being, is to be attained not in this life, but the next.

Philosophical views The Chinese Confucian thinker Mencius, who

2300 years ago sought to give advice to the ruthless political leaders of the warring

states period, was convinced that the mind played a mediating role between the "lesser

self" (the physiological self) and the "greater self" (the moral self) and that getting the

priorities right between these two would lead to sage-hood. He argued that if we did not

feel satisfaction or pleasure in nourishing one's "vital force" with "righteous deeds",

that force would shrivel up (Mencius,6A:15 2A:2). More specifically, he mentions the

experience of intoxicating joy if one celebrates the practice of the great virtues, especially

through music. Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) the Muslim Sufi thinker

wrote the Alchemy of Happiness, a manual of spiritual instruction throughout the Muslim

world and widely practiced today. The Hindu thinker Patanjali, author of the

Yoga Sutras, wrote quite exhaustively on the psychological and ontological roots of bliss.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, written in 350 BCE, Aristotle stated that happiness (also

being well and doing well) is the only thing that humans desire for its own sake, unlike

riches, honor, health or friendship. He observed that men sought riches, or honor, or health

not only for their own sake but also in order to be happy. Note that eudaimonia, the term

we translate as "happiness", is for Aristotle an activity rather than an emotion or a state.

Thus understood, the happy life is the good life, that is, a life in which a person fulfills

human nature in an excellent way. Specifically, Aristotle argues that the good life is the

life of excellent rational activity. He arrives at this claim with the Function Argument.

Basically, if it's right, every living thing has a function, that which it uniquely does.

For humans, Aristotle contends, our function is to reason, since it is that alone that

we uniquely do. And performing one's function well, or excellently, is one's good. Thus,

the life of excellent rational activity is the happy life. Aristotle does not leave it

that, however. For he argues that there is a second best life for those incapable of

excellent rational activity. This second best life is the life of moral virtue.

Many ethicists make arguments for how humans should behave, either individually or collectively,

based on the resulting happiness of such behavior. Utilitarians, such as John Stuart Mill and

Jeremy Bentham, advocated the greatest happiness principle as a guide for ethical behavior.

Also according to St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, man's last end is happiness: "all

men agree in desiring the last end, which is happiness." However, where utilitarians

focused on reasoning about consequences as the primary tool for reaching happiness, Aquinas

agreed with Aristotle that happiness cannot be reached solely through reasoning about

consequences of acts, but also requires a pursuit of good causes for acts, such as habits

according to virtue. In turn, which habits and acts that normally lead to happiness is

according to Aquinas caused by laws: natural law and divine law. These laws, in turn, were

according to Aquinas caused by a first cause, or God.

According to Aquinas, happiness consists in an "operation of the speculative intellect":

"Consequently happiness consists principally in such an operation, viz. in the contemplation

of Divine things." And, "the last end cannot consist in the active life, which pertains

to the practical intellect." So: "Therefore the last and perfect happiness, which we await

in the life to come, consists entirely in contemplation. But imperfect happiness, such

as can be had here, consists first and principally in contemplation, but secondarily, in an operation

of the practical intellect directing human actions and passions."

Economic views Common market health measures such as GDP

and GNP have been used as a measure of successful policy. On average richer nations tend to

be happier than poorer nations, but this effect seems to diminish with wealth. This has been

explained by the fact that the dependency is not linear but logarithmic, i.e., the same

percentual increase in the GNP produces the same increase in happiness for wealthy countries

as for poor countries. Libertarian think tank Cato Institute claims

that economic freedom correlates strongly with happiness preferably within the context

of a western mixed economy, with free press and a democracy. According to certain standards,

East European countries (ruled by Communist parties) were less happy than Western ones,

even less happy than other equally poor countries. It has been argued that happiness measures

could be used not as a replacement for more traditional measures, but as a supplement.

According to professor Edward Glaeser, people constantly make choices that decrease their

happiness, because they have also more important aims. Therefore, the government should not

decrease the alternatives available for the citizen by patronizing them but let the citizen

keep a maximal freedom of choice. It has been argued that happiness at work

is one of the driving forces behind positive outcomes at work, rather than just being a

resultant product. Measures of happiness

Several scales have been used to measure happiness: The Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) is a

four-item scale, measuring global subjective happiness. The scale requires participants

to use absolute ratings to characterize themselves as happy or unhappy individuals, as well as

it asks to what extent they identify themselves with descriptions of happy and unhappy individuals.

The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is used to detect the relation between

personality traits and positive or negative affects at this moment, today, the past few

days, the past week, the past few weeks, the past year, and generally (on average). PANAS

is a 20-item questionnaire, which uses a five-point Likert scale (1 = very slightly or not at

all, 5 = extremely). A longer version with additional affect scales is available in a

manual. The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) is

a global cognitive assessment of life satisfaction. The SWLS requires a person to use a seven-item

scale to state their agreement or disagreement (1 = strongly disagree, 4 = neither agree

nor disagree, 7 = strongly agree) with five statements about their life.

The UK began to measure national well being in 2012, following Bhutan which already measured

gross national happiness. Happiness and health

Richard Davidson's 2012 bestseller The Emotional Life of Your Brain argues that positive emotion

and happiness benefit your long-term health. From a study conducted in 2005 by Andrew Steptow

and Michael Marmot, findings have found that happiness is clearly related to biological

markers that play an important role in health. At University College London, Steptow and

Marmot collected health and well-being data from 116 men and 100 women. All 216 participants

were middle-aged, British civil servants between the ages of 45 and 59. The researchers aimed

to analyze whether there was any association between well-being and three biological markers:

heart rate, cortisol levels, and plasma fibrinogen levels. Interestingly, the participants who

rated themselves the least happy had cortisol levels that were 48% higher than those who

rated themselves as the most happy. The least happy subjects also had a large plasma fibrinogen

response to two stress-inducing tasks: the Stroop test, and tracing a star seen in a

mirror image. In Happy People Live Longer, Frey reports

that happy people live 14% longer, increasing longevity 7.5 to 10 years.

Steptow and Marmot furthered their studies by using their participants three years later

to repeat the physiological measurements. They found that participants who scored high

in positive emotion continued to have lower levels of cortisol and fibrinogen, as well

as a lower heart rate.