Making Happy People: The nature of happiness and its origins in childhood

ONE First things

What is more enviable than happiness?

BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

The biggest issue

This is the story of something we all want for ourselves and for our children, but which few of us are sure how to get. It is about the conditions that give rise to happy children who will grow up to become happy adults. Along the way, we will consider how happiness develops during the lifetime of each individual, and hence how parents and schools can help to make happy people.

Happiness is a notoriously elusive aspect of human existence, whose nature and origins have been debated throughout history. But one point on which almost everyone agrees is that happiness is a uniquely desirable commodity. In every culture where researchers have posed the question, the majority of people say they regard happiness as their ultimate goal in life. Most people rate happiness above money (even if privately many of them behave as though money really were their primary goal). According to research, many Americans believe that happy people are morally superior to unhappy people and more likely to go to heaven. America even enshrines the inalienable right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ in its constitution.

The idea that happiness is the ultimate goal in life is reinforced by a simple argument which was set out more than two thousand years ago by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He pointed out that no one ever seeks happiness as a means to something else. With the sole exception of happiness, everything we humans desire can be regarded as a means to some higher end – and that higher end is usually happiness. People chase after money, power, material possessions, beauty or fame because they believe – often mistakenly – that these will bring them happiness. But no one ever seeks happiness in the belief that it will bring them some even higher benefit. Therefore, Aristotle concluded, happiness must be the ultimate goal.1

But what exactly is happiness, and how do you achieve it – if not for yourself, then at least for your children? Why are some people consistently much happier than others? Is it genetically encoded, or can you buy it? Why is happiness virtually ignored by the education system, economists and governments, as though it were irrelevant or faintly embarrassing? We all say we want children to be happy, but why is so little actually done to pursue this aim? How can parents and teachers help children to maximise their chances of being happy people, both in childhood and throughout adult life?

These are big questions that do not invite simple answers. The novelist Michael Frayn wrote that happiness is the sun at the centre of our conceptual planetary system, and is just as hard to look at directly. Fortunately, we now have science to help us. Within the fairly recent past, scientists have begun to gaze at happiness and they are formulating tentative answers to questions about its nature and causes. As we shall see, a fair amount can now be said about happiness that is based on verifiable evidence rather than folklore or opinion. Even so, plenty of popular myths persist, and we should knock these on the head before going any further.

One of the silliest myths is that actively pursuing happiness is the best way to lose it. According to fortune-cookie philosophy, happiness is like a cat: it will never come if you summon it, whereas if you ignore it you will soon find it jumping into your lap. So, if only we would stop thinking about it, happiness would spontaneously blossom within us. This notion seems to be widely believed, in that many people behave in their daily lives as though happiness cannot be actively cultivated. But it is wrong. There are plenty of things we can all do to make ourselves and our children happier – and the starting point is knowledge. Someone who has a basic understanding of the nature and causes of happiness is much better equipped to become happier and to help others become happier. Knowledge is power.

A related myth is that happiness is essentially a matter of blind chance, and we must wait for it to creep up on us. Indeed, the word itself reflects this notion: ‘happy’ is derived from the Old Norse word happ, meaning luck or good fortune. The scientific evidence points to a very different conclusion, however. Happiness does not just fall randomly out of the blue: we can discover where happiness comes from and we can encourage it.

A more up-to-date piece of folklore, which has a seductive whiff of pseudoscience about it, asserts that happiness is all in the genes. According to this version of reality, the setting of your personal ‘happiness thermostat’ was fixed at the moment you were conceived. Thus, if you were unlucky enough to draw the short genetic straw, then trying to make yourself happier would be as futile as trying to make yourself taller.

Again the science tells a different story. Genes do of course play crucial roles in the development of any human characteristic, and happiness is no exception. It is also true that a person’s overall level of happiness will tend to remain fairly stable over quite long periods of time. But there is no such thing as a ‘gene for happiness’, and no meaningful sense in which anyone’s happiness is fixed for life by their inherited DNA. Happiness resides in the mind, and we all have the capacity to make ourselves and our children happier (or unhappier) than we are now. As we shall see later, the basic building blocks of happiness are shaped by our experiences, attitudes and ways of thinking. Parents and schools therefore have a big impact on children’s chances of being happy people, and for reasons that have nothing directly to do with genes. The single biggest influence on happiness is something we all have the scope to influence for better or for worse – namely, our relationships with other people.

Far from supporting the idea that happiness is hard-wired in our genes, scientific research increasingly suggests that happiness is more akin to a skill that can be learned. Graphic evidence for this has come from recent investigations by neuroscientists into the effects of meditation on brain function. Carefully controlled experiments have revealed that certain forms of meditation consistently produce changes in brain activity which are separately known to be associated with feelings of happiness and freedom from anxiety.2 People can learn to change the way their brains work and hence how happy they feel. When it comes to fortune-cookie philosophy, Abraham Lincoln was closer to the truth when he remarked that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

One of the most pernicious of all the common myths is that happiness is provided by wealth or celebrity. Although most people claim that happiness is their ultimate goal, they often behave very differently in their everyday lives. In practice, many of us expend much of our time and effort on acquiring wealth, social recognition, or both, in the belief that these will bring us enduring happiness. The reality, as revealed by a mass of research, is that they will not.

Money, fame and new possessions can make us feel better for a while – but not much better, and not for long. The gloss soon wears off. Winning the lottery, appearing on reality TV or buying a new car is not a reliable route to lasting happiness. Meanwhile, the quest for wealth, success and social recognition often distorts people’s lives and makes them unhappy, especially if it gets in the way of things that really do matter, such as close personal relationships. As we shall see later, excessive materialism is a pervasive cause of unhappiness.

When it comes to children, parents sometimes pay lip service to happiness. If asked, most would agree that what they want above all else for their children is happiness. But, just as with their own happiness, parents do not always behave as if they really mean what they say. Their everyday concerns typically focus on tangible issues like their children’s performance at school and prospects of getting a good job. Few parents make their children’s happiness an explicit objective, and the education system certainly does not: there are as yet no national league tables for happiness. In real life, the quest for demonstrable success generally overshadows the quest for happiness.

Fortunately, parents do not need to choose between wanting their children to be happy and wanting them to succeed at school or get good jobs, because there is no real conflict between these goals – quite the reverse, in fact. Happiness and success go hand in hand. Research has demonstrated that happy people are on average mentally and physically healthier, more successful in the classroom and at work, more creative, more popular, more sociable, longer lived, and less likely to become criminals or drug addicts. In short, happy children make better students and better employees. We shall look at some of the evidence for this later.

So, even the pushiest of parents – those who care only about their children’s tangible achievements and regard the quest for happiness as woolly-minded self-indulgence – should nonetheless make happiness their top priority. In this case, you really can have your cake and eat it. The added bonus is that raising happy children who develop into happy adults will also benefit society as a whole, for all the reasons listed above. Wanting your child to be happy is not even selfish. Helping children to become happy people should be an explicit and praiseworthy goal of parenting and education.

About this book

The story comes in three parts. First, we will consider what happiness is and why it really matters. Defining happiness at the outset is obviously crucial, because although the word is bandied about in everyday conversation, its meaning is rarely clear. ‘Happiness’ signifies different things to different people.

To preview the next chapter, I will argue that happiness consists of a combination of three distinct elements: pleasure (the emotional sensation of feeling good in the here and now), the absence of displeasure (freedom from unpleasant sensations such as anxiety or pain) and satisfaction (judging, on reflection, that your life is good). Thus happiness depends both on feeling (pleasure) and thinking (satisfaction). We will then look at the many different ways in which happiness is good for us, such as making us physically healthier and more likely to succeed in our chosen aims.

Having looked at the nature and benefits of happiness, we will examine the main factors that influence its development during each individual’s lifetime. We will consider, for example, how happiness is affected by personal relationships, work, genes, health, intelligence, marriage, money, education, religion and physical attractiveness. Some of these influences, notably personal relationships, turn out to be very important whereas others, notably wealth, have surprisingly little enduring impact.

The final part of the book discusses how parenting and education can help or hinder the development of happiness in children. We will see how different styles of parenting behaviour affect children’s long-term prospects for happiness and well-being. We will also imagine what an education system might look like if it paid more attention to happiness. One conclusion here is that a preoccupation with short-term, measurable attainment can do more harm than good. Education must obviously provide children with far more than just qualifications if they are going to be happy, successful people for the rest of their lives.

This is not a self-help book in the conventional sense, although I hope you will find it helpful. Vast numbers of books have been written on the subject of happiness, but I would like to think this one is different for a number of reasons. For a start, it approaches happiness in terms of development – that is, how happiness emerges and changes during the lifetime of the individual, from conception to death. Often the best way to understand a complex aspect of human nature is to see how it is assembled during the early years of life, and how it changes over time in response to experience. Most self-help books on happiness are only about adults, or only about children, and they focus on one slice of a person’s life, usually the here and now. But a fuller understanding can only come from thinking about the whole lifespan. Happiness is not an afterthought to be grafted on when we have grown up: its foundations are laid in childhood.

Childhood, however, is not merely a preparation for adulthood, and there would be no excuse for subjecting children to prolonged unhappiness on the grounds that it might make them happier or more successful as adults. Forcing children to neglect their friends and hobbies in order to study hard at subjects they dislike might pave the way to well-paid careers, but at what cost? Such strategies often backfire before the hallowed goal is ever reached. Conversely, keeping young children ‘happy’ (or, at least, docile) by indulging their every whim is not difficult, but children who are spoiled in this way sometimes turn into unpleasant adolescents and unhappy adults. Happiness is for life: it should start at the beginning and continue through to the end. The aim should be to raise happy children who develop into happy adults.

Old age matters as well. Thanks to improvements in living conditions and healthcare, the populations of wealthy nations are living longer and spending a larger proportion of their lives as elderly people. Laying solid foundations for lifelong happiness will therefore be even more important for future generations than it is for ours. Fortunately, the ingredients that contribute to successful aging are, by and large, the same ones that promote happiness earlier in life.

Some self-help books on happiness or parenting appear to be based on remarkably little evidence, relying on anecdotes and appeals to ‘common sense’ rather than verifiable data. The novelist Ian McEwan was barely exaggerating when he wrote that there is ‘no richer field of speculation assertively dressed as fact than childcare’. In my opinion, it is a good idea to be sceptical of any argument that relies mainly on appeals to ‘common sense’, because ‘common sense’ often turns out to be wrong. (Albert Einstein famously defined common sense as the collection of prejudices we acquire by the age of eighteen.) I have tried as far as possible to base my arguments on published scientific evidence rather than ‘common sense’ or personal opinion – although I have not shied away from expressing my opinions as well. Many of the scientific papers and books from which I have drawn this evidence are listed in the References section at the back.

A substantial body of objective research evidence is now available to cast light on a subject that was once the preserve of philosophers, theologians and gurus. Over the past decade or so, many scientific investigations have been conducted into the nature, causes, consequences and origins of happiness.

Within psychology, in particular, there has been a revolution in thinking. During the second half of the twentieth century, psychology focused almost exclusively on what goes wrong with people’s minds, largely ignoring all the things that usually go right. For instance, between 1967 and 1994 the main academic psychology journals published nearly 90,000 papers about depression, anxiety or anger, but barely 5,000 that even mentioned happiness, satisfaction or joy.3 The negative outnumbered the positive by 18 to 1. Since then, however, there has been an explosion of interest among psychologists in positive states of mind such as happiness, optimal experience and satisfaction with life. A whole new field of study has emerged, which its practitioners refer to as positive psychology.

Positive psychology is concerned with well-being rather than with disease, with how people flourish rather than how they become ill. Its ultimate aim is to make lives happier and healthier, and to help individuals realise the highest possible levels of human potential. In a much more limited way, that is also the aspiration of this book. You do not have to be an unhappy adult, or the parent of an unhappy child, to benefit from knowing more about the nature and causes of happiness.

TWO What is happiness?

What is the highest of all the goods that action can achieve? The great majority of mankind agree that it is happiness … but with regard to what happiness is, they differ.

ARISTOTLE (384–322 BC), The Nicomachean Ethics

Heart and head

During a visit to France many years ago, the former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan asked Madame de Gaulle, wife of the French president, what she was most looking forward to when her hard-working husband retired. To Macmillan’s surprise and embarrassment, Madame de Gaulle replied, ‘A penis.’ Only later did it dawn on him that what she had actually said was ‘Happiness.’ Most of us recognise a penis when we see one, but we might feel less confident if asked to define happiness. Ask two parents what they mean by the word and you will get two different answers; ask two philosophers and you will probably get at least five.

Debating definitions is usually a tedious exercise beloved of pedants, but in this case it really does matter. After all, I have already suggested that happiness is the most important thing in life. On a practical level, implicit but faulty beliefs about the nature of happiness have a pervasive influence on almost every sphere of human activity, ranging from government economic policies to religion, from education to therapy, and from how we raise our children to how we conduct our daily lives. So, before burrowing into the causes of happiness and their practical implications, we should first decide what happiness is.

For a start, happiness is a distinct state in its own right, and not merely the absence of sadness or depression. You can be happy and sad at the same time, if you think about it. Imagine, for example, how you might feel (or felt) on your last day at school, or when your youngest child leaves home for college, or when you leave a job you have enjoyed for an even better one. Your feelings might be a complex mixture of pride, satisfaction, excitement, anxiety, sorrow and anticipation. Happiness is more than just the absence of unhappiness in much the same way that health is more than just the absence of disease.1

Happiness also means more than just feeling good in the here and now. Like any other fundamental aspect of human nature, happiness is too complex to reduce to a single dimension or a simple formula. So, what is it? Rather than dance round the issue, I will set out a definition that is as simple as I can make it, but which should nonetheless be recognisable to most scientists and philosophers who make a professional study of the subject. In short, happiness is a mental state composed of three distinct elements:

• Pleasure: the presence of pleasant, positive moods or emotions such as pleasure, contentment, joy, elation, ecstasy or affection.2

• Absence of displeasure: the absence of unpleasant, negative moods or emotions such as sadness, anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, envy or shame.

• Satisfaction: judging, on reflection, that you are satisfied with your life in general and with at least some specific aspects of your life (for example, your personal relationships, career or physical abilities).

Thus happiness is a combination of experiencing pleasure, not experiencing displeasure and being satisfied with your life. The relative proportions of pleasure, absence of displeasure and satisfaction can vary enormously, although you need at least a little of all three to be truly happy. Happiness therefore comes in many shapes, colours and flavours, comprising different combinations of satisfaction, pleasure and displeasure. Furthermore, any one combination of the three can be attained in many different ways: each person has their own unique blend as a result of their own unique life history and experiences.

Some psychologists and philosophers argue that there is a fourth dimension to happiness, which they variously refer to as ‘meaning’, ‘purpose’ or ‘virtue’. This embodies the sense that for a life to be truly happy it must have some deeper purpose or meaning beyond pleasure or satisfaction. For some people, this fourth dimension means religion (a subject we shall return to in chapter 6). However, the concept that true happiness requires a deeper purpose or meaning goes back at least as far as the philosophers of ancient Greece, for whom it did not necessarily have religious connotations.3 This is complex philosophical territory. Suffice it (I hope) to say that my threefold definition of happiness, and especially the element of satisfaction, is meant to be interpreted in the broadest possible sense, to encompass this fourth dimension. Great satisfaction, and hence great happiness, clearly can be derived from believing that your life has some deeper purpose or meaning, whatever that is.