Why Happiness Is Wrong

With the growing concern of depression hitting an all-time high in the United States, suicide outnumbering homicide 2 to 1 (CDC) and suicide being the seventh reason for death in Japan, psychology is revisiting the treatments that have been standard since WWII. Psychologists are turning a keen focus on “what is right with people instead of what is wrong” advises Martin Seligman, leading authority in the field of Positive Psychology “Unless people learn the science of happiness - how their brains work and what they need to change in their lives- it will remain elusive” agrees Elizabeth Dunn, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and happiness expert. To understand the issue this essay will show how and

Take a look at winning the lotto happiness “it is short lived and the price you pay for that happiness is long term angst” argues Svend Brinkmann professor of psychology and researcher at University of Aalborg, Denmark. In addition, buying that new car, getting married, having kids, all the propaganda heard on commercials- will not get that well-being that people are searching for. Would you prefer short term happiness when in the long run you are going to experience unhappiness for a longer

Researchers call a tendency to pursue happiness by boosting positive emotion; the pleasant life, tendency to pursue happiness via the gratifications the good life and the tendency to pursue happiness via using our strengths towards something larger than ourselves; the meaningful life. A person who uses all three routes to happiness leads the full life. Recent empirical evidence suggests that those who lead the full life possess greater life satisfaction (Petersen). According to Dan Gilbert psychologist at Harvard University, “Human beings have something that we think of as a psychological immune system that help change views of the world so that we can feel better about the world in which they find themselves in.” They contain two types of happiness: natural happiness which is what we experience when get what we want and synthetic happiness: when we make it what we want when we did not get what we want. People think synthetic happiness is an inferior kind of happiness” (Gilbert). Why do they think that? Because what kind of economic engine would keep churning if we believed that not getting what we want could make us just as happy as getting