Happiness Hypothesis 'And' A Formula For Happiness

During this class we have been looking at many different pieces of literature that talk about happiness. Most of the stories and articles point to the same conclusion, money does make people happier until they hit a certain income then the feeling level out. The authors of the stories and articles will include other factors that cause people to be happier with their lives. There are three articles that connect very well with each other. These three include Chapter five in The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, “A Formula for Happiness” by Arthur C. Brooks, and “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being” by Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A.

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt talks about many different things throughout

the entire novel. In chapter five, the main point that he is trying to bring across is the pursuit of happiness. Within the chapter, Haidt challenges the idea that happiness only comes from within ourselves not found in external objects. Haidt believes there are many external conditions that effects the happiness of a human being. He explains many different ways of improving one’s happiness by changing the external circumstances. This idea agrees with the ideas stated in “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being” by Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. In this article they state that “income and education are most closely related to life evaluation but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions” (Kahneman 2010). This helps support Haidt’s argument that external circumstances can change someone’s happiness. This is true because many people are starting to go back to college to get a better education so they are able to be paid a higher salary. They will even go back to college to completely learn a whole new major and then change jobs because they are unhappy with their previous job. They decide to change one of their outside conditions that is causing them to be unhappy. This has led to more happiness in the world as more people like their job. It’s also true because people that have better health tend to be more happy then those who are not as healthy. People live far better lives if they are healthy than if they are always sick. The people that are sick all the time will limit themselves because they might not want to get anyone else sick or they aren’t in a well enough state to do the task they wanted.
In the article A Formula for Happiness, Brooks’ talks about research that has been done by the University of Chicago and University of Minnesota.

The results of the research that were uncovered by these universities was very surprising. In research that was conducted by the University of Minnesota they separated two identical twins at birth and gave to two different families with different backgrounds. After some time, the researchers discovered that we inherit a surprising proportion of our happiness. It is almost 48 percent of our happiness is inherited from our parents (Brooks, 2013). The research results also support Haidt’s argument that external conditions do have an impact on our happiness. About 40 percent of our happiness comes from isolated events and one-time event like getting into the college that someone always dreamed about getting into or having that dream job that they have always been looking for (Brooks, 2013). Additionally, after about half of our happiness is inherited and almost 40 percent of our happiness comes from past experiences there is about 12 percent (give or take a few percent) that we are able to have under control. This 12 percent is including the four basic values that we all try to pursue. These four basic values are faith, family, community and work. People pursue the values because we can control these values to an extent. We are not able to control who is in our family but we are able to control our faith, community and

work.
All of these pieces connect with each other because they all talk about happiness. These pieces supported each other by showing our outside surrounding do effect our happiness. Money is the biggest contributor to someone’s happiness until you hit about $75,000 then the happiness levels out. This does not imply that people that have an income under $75,000 are unhappy but it is more likely for them to be unhappy more frequently. This could be due to the fact that they might have more stress in their lives about paying bills or supplying food for their family. Therefor depending on where they live, this $75,000 might not be enough for the cost of living in their state. Haidt in chapter five talks about how even spending your money wisely will help you become a happier person. If they were to spend their money wiser then they wouldn’t have to worry as much about providing for their family or paying the bills. Haidt starts to talk about how even though we do find happiness in external objects no matter how much we change them they will not bring us more happiness. This is not a true statement because there are many things that we can change out to make ourselves happier even if we had one before. One great example is friends or significant others. Many times people get upset with their friends because they are mean to them and causes them to be unhappy for a while. If that mean friend is always mean to them then they are able to get rid of that friend and a better friend that isn’t mean to them. Personally for myself there are many things that someone could change out for better versions of the same thing and it will make me happier. If someone was to give me a better house or better car this would make myself happier than when I had the smaller house or the worse car. Now it might not make me happier if the house is just barely bigger than my previous house but if the house was dramatically bigger than it would definitely make me exceedingly happier. This is true for most people, many people in the world would love to have a bigger house and then that would make them happier. The people that are barely scraping by would be ecstatic to be given a bigger house or even if they were able to afford a bigger house. People that are near the poverty level would take anything to make their lives better. The things they take would more than likely make them happier because it would be less things they have to be worried about buying or providing for their family.
There are many things in the world that would affect someone’s happiness. People would say that extra money would always be nice to have so they are able to go out and spend it on maybe a nice dinner or something they have wanted to buy for a long time but the research shows that people that have a household income of $150,000 are not any happier than people that have a household income of $75,000. The people that make less than $75,000 are frequently less happy. This proves that money does buy happiness to a point. These pieces are prove that our external environment and conditions effect our happiness. People are able to try and change their conditions to bring them more happiness and for many people that will work. Everyone has the right to be happy so why don’t we all change the things that make us unhappy.