Books on Happiness / Happiness_ The Science Behind Your Smile
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Happiness
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Happiness
THE SCIENCE BEHIND YOUR SMILE
Daniel Nettle
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in
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Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Daniel Nettle 2005
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 0–19–280558–4
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd., St Ives plc
Contents
|
Introduction |
1 |
1 |
Comfort and joy |
7 |
2 |
Bread and circuses |
45 |
3 |
Love and work |
65 |
4 |
Worriers and enthusiasts |
91 |
5 |
Wanting and liking |
115 |
6 |
Panaceas and placebos |
141 |
7 |
A design for living |
161 |
|
Further reading |
185 |
|
Notes |
187 |
|
References |
198 |
|
Index |
213 |
v
List of figures
1.1 Faces displaying basic emotions, used by Paul Ekman in his research.
© Paul Ekman 1976–2004.
1.2 Three different senses of the term ‘happiness’. 2.1 Grumpy old men.
Clockwise: © The Times/Camera Press, London; © Ann Ronan Picture Library/HIP/TopFoto.co.uk; © Bettmann/ Corbis; © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis; © TopFoto.co. uk; courtesy of Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
2.2 Distribution of responses to the question of how life has turned out.
2.3 Scale of where participants think they will be in ten years’ time.
3.1 Life satisfaction in contemporary Britain by social class, as defined by occupation.
3.2 Life satisfaction in contemporary Britain by marital status at age 42.
4.1 Average happiness rating of British adults on a 5 point scale, by neuroticism personality score.
4.2 Average happiness rating of British adults on a 5 point scale, by extroversion score.
5.1 Electric pleasure: a rat self-administering brain stimulation reward.
vi
Happiness is an ideal not of reason but of imagination
IMMANUEL KANT, GRUNDLEGUNG ZUR
METAPHYSIK DER SITTEN
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment
BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON
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Introduction
‘We hold these truths to be self-evident,’ wrote Thomas Jefferson in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, ‘that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. Of these three, it is the third that seems most able to imbue our lives with purpose. Without its guiding light, there would be no way of knowing what to do with life and liberty, or so it would seem. Jefferson’s rights one and two wake the horse up and open the stable door, but only number three—the pursuit of happiness—is going to make it go anywhere.
The idea that happiness is central to the point of the human experience goes back to the ancients. The Greek philosopher Aristippus argued in the fourth century BC that the goal of life is to maximize the totality of one’s pleasures. If this is true, which is more debatable than it might seem, then happiness becomes the overarching explanatory concept in all of psychology, and surely the most urgent of personal questions for any human being to solve. More than this, happiness also moves to the centre of political and economic
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