Kelly Walter Carney sent me a link to an article on happiness published today in the Los Angeles Times. The author, Marnell Jameson, talks about the emprical research on happiness conducted mostly by psychologists over the last few decades. She notes that there has been something of an explosion in research on happiness since 2000. She appears to have talked to some of the leaders in the field, most notably Sonja Lyubomirsky and Martin Seligman. She’s obviously quite taken by the scientific study of happiness, and even claims, “Though many people think happiness is elusive, scientists have actually pinned it down and know how to get it.”
Izzat so? What great new things have her sources come up with to pretty much guarantee our lasting felicity? Practice gratitude. Forgive others. Engage in challenging activities. Find a meaning for your life. Hadn’t we heard of these things back in the dark ages before psychologists started studying happiness?
Actually, the article is a fairly good one, and I am glad that so many psychologists have devoted themselves to researching happiness. I just wonder whether they’ve generated all that many new approaches to becoming happy.
Life Assays 
September 8, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I agree that what we researchers have found is consistent with (and often identical to) the wisdom from the ages. However, it is still critical to test such folk wisdom scientifically — systematically and experimentally. After all, there are a lot of sayings and grandmotherly advice and “old wives’ tales,” and some of these are actually wrong or opposite to one another (think: “Out of sight, out of mind” vs. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder”; which is it? Only science can give the answer).
-Sonja Lyubomirsky
Professor of Psychology, UC Riverside
http://www.thehowofhappiness.com
September 9, 2008 at 12:36 am
Sonja,
Thanks for stopping by. There is no question that the scientific method is useful in testing theories about happiness (or at least about subjective well-being, which may or may not be the same thing as happiness, depending on your definition). Some useful conclusions have come out of the research done so far, including at least a few findings that philosophical and theological writings about happiness wouldn’t have predicted. That, it seems, is your point. There have been many acute observers of human nature through the years, though, and much of what has come out of the psychological research so far has done nothing more than add increased confidence to what such many such observers have claimed. The recommendations in the article were certainly not innovative or counterintuitive. I think we’re far too early in the scientific study of happiness to claim, as the article did, that we’ve “pinned down” happiness and “know how to get it.” Such a claim implies a lot more than stating that, for some sort of happiness intervention, there was a significant difference between experimental and control groups.