Ideas that challenge the notion that we can be happier

The first is that there's growing literature that we are all born with what's called a, a "set point" for happiness, that part of happiness is genetically determined. And this is work that comes from the field of behaviour genetics, and it shows that identical twins are much, much more similar in their happiness levels, than are fraternal twins. So, this suggests that happiness is heritable; it is passed down through our families, and so, a large portion, about fifty percent (50%) of happiness is genetically determined. And so, that leads some researchers to conclude that maybe it is futile, or kind of not very worthwhile to try to change our happiness levels, because it's partly genetic.

A second reason to be pessimistic is that happiness has been shown to be a trait - it's an intrinsic part of our personality. And we know that personality does not change much over time. I mean, it can change, but it is very hard to change, right. For those of us who have tried to change our spouses, or our friends, we know how hard it is. Happiness is especially, very highly related to two core aspects of personality which are extroversion, being a sociable extroverted person, and neuroticism, being neurotic and emotionally unstable person. And so, if happiness is part of our personality, how can we really change it? Studies have shown that happiness is quite stable across people's lives, so, people who are unhappy when they are younger tend to, sort of, be unhappy, as they are older.

The final reason to be pessimistic and something that I am particularly interested in right now, something I am doing research on is a phenomenon called "hedonic adaptation." And what it shows is that human beings are remarkably adept at getting used to any positive changes in their lives. So, we move into a beautiful new house, we buy a new car, we get a new job- and at first it is really thrilling, it gives us a happiness boost, but over time we get used to that and no matter what kinds of ups or downs in life we have, we sort of, tend to go back to our baseline.

Now how long do you think it took for people on average to get back to their baseline, after getting married? Ten years, right after the wedding? Two years; now that's an average so, actually, what I am really interested in is what about those people who got happier when they got married, and stayed happier, for years and years, above their baseline?

Hedonistic adaptation is a phenomenon that we get used to really quickly the changes in our lives. And so, if that's the case, no matter what positive, thrilling, wonderful events happen to us, we won't be happier because we just get used to it and we just want more; we go back down to our baseline. So, those are three reasons to be pessimistic.

Tom Gilovich who is a professor at Cornell of psychology. looks at the differences in happiness that are related to material possessions versus experiences and what he does is ask people to look back at a time when they spent a bunch of money on a thing or spent a bunch of money on an experience and asked them how happy you are. He asks them a little bit later to talk about or to rate how satisfied they are with that particular experience or having spent money on a thing. It turns out that satisfaction goes down a lot when looking at people who spent their money on material possessions and satisfaction sort of persists in the upward direction, it goes up and it increases when people invest in experiences.

Again, these are some of the habits of thinking, expectations that we have: we should get things; we should worry about how hard challenges in life are going to be; that doesn’t fit in to our scientific understanding for what brings people the greatest amount of happiness.

The last thing I want to touch on is the way people think about happiness and money. Danny Kahneman from Princeton University has discovered by looking at the relationship between money and life satisfaction or happiness is that there is indeed an increase in happiness when you think about the income levels that allow people to have their basic needs met. But once you get to a certain threshold, which in his study was about $75,000 a year, the line plateaus. Happiness doesn’t continue to go up.

Again, there isn’t a good case to suggest that continually seeking more and more money is going to continually increase your happiness. Again, I’m simply trying to point out some of the obstacles in the way we think about the world and ourselves that might make it harder to pursue happiness.