Maybe to pursue happiness, we shouldn’t be in pursuit of our own happiness…
I was ice-skating in Korea and happened to be in the presence of this wonderful 6-year-old child who struck a conversation with me while skating. Our exchange was brief, but I definitely was a lot happier. Every time I passed her, I would stop, smile and have another one of our brief exchanges — with both her and her mum. As I concluded my skating session, returned my skates and got ready to go, she came to get a quick snack, after her own session too. I waved her goodbye, and her being as ever bubbly and as ever excited, waved me goodbye from a distance. What happened next warmed my heart. She ran over to me holding her churro, presumably one that her mum got for her, and offered it to me. Naturally, I declined, but she insisted I took it. She was a gem of a child. The photo below never fails to put a smile on my face every time I view it. And fortunately for me, this was not an isolated experience in all my travels.
Why is it that acts of kindness can bring a smile on my face? Why is it that when someone puts away their phone and has a conversation with me, I feel happy? Why is that one of the most striking takeaways from all my travels? Why is it I always seem to recall such instances of human connection and why is it that these incidents make me happy? There surely has to be an objective relation as to why social interactions make me and possibly a lot of other people much happier.
I recalled some of my other interactions from all my travels— conversations with strangers, the time when someone showed me the directions or when fellow solo-travelers decided to be my companion for the day. I so vividly remember an incident like it was yesterday, I remember watching a glorious sunset by the ocean in awe, in Portrush, and one of the local who was on a run, actually halted his run to hold a conversation with me — someone who was in the midst of something that requires focus and determination even if it is a casual and simple run. He stopped what he was doing just to hold a conversation with me. All of these instances had one thing in common — they made me happier than I was before. I felt a sense of satisfaction. That was what made me write this article as I got curious about the pursuit of happiness — about MY pursuit of happiness. My happiness is subjective, only I feel it, and I can measure it subjectively. I have seen how happiness was measured from a very subjective perspective, but I wanted more. I wanted concrete evidence. I wanted to know objectively, not subjectively. I didn’t want people saying they were happy. I wanted the science to prove it. It’s not that I don’t trust people’s subjective measurements of their own emotions, but because of the subjective nature and the differences in expectations, I didn’t feel comfortable nor was I convinced I could generalize the information of a study to everyone. Don’t get me wrong, I could for sure use it to make deductions about that particular individual, but I wouldn’t be able to use their response on someone else. I started to think, started to question.
Before I carry on, I would also like to mention that my experiences were not only isolated in my solo travels. One might feel that in solo travels, we may actively seek companionship, recall instances more vividly, or have more to recall as we have more interactions with locals in a different environment from what one is used to. But, these instances were not merely on my solo trips, some of these occurred while I was traveling with friends — though it would be interesting to do further research if there is any “loneliness” felt during solo travels and how it may affect how we travel, our mood, emotions, happiness, or even how we interact and remember instances. But this would probably make for a whole other article on its own.
In my research, I came across this article. Basically, researchers conducted a meta-analysis on experimental studies to find out if there is any effect on the well-being of an individual who displays an act of kindness, and concluded that there is a small correlation between being kind and boosting one’s happiness. But I still was not convinced with the findings of the research. Most of the studies included for the meta-analysis still used subjective metrics such as the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS), Steen Happiness Index (SHI), Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) and Psychological Flourishing. So, I wasn’t entirely convinced. The studies did conclude a small-to-medium effect that kindness had on happiness, which was similar to other mood-boosting interventions. So even though it was a small boost, it was a significant boost when putting in context. There were other limitations too. The analysis does not distinguish the different acts of kindness, the depth/degree of interaction with people, or the recipient of kindness (family members, friends, strangers, etc.), nor the effect they have on happiness. It just studies the impact kindness, in general, had on happiness. Say opening a door for someone might have a different impact as opposed to giving loose change to someone in need, on our levels of happiness. It also didn’t differentiate the motives behind helping someone. Another point to note is that the relationship is not a causal one. I mean sure, in another study conducted in 2010, 96% of people who volunteered claimed that volunteering made them happier. Of course, I can’t say that these 96% of people are not happy. They are, and they know what they feel. But can I say that the rest of us will feel happier? There might be a correlation, but there is no clear causation. I cannot generalize the findings to the rest of the population since it is so subjective. Video games might make one person happy, but not another person. I mean I love football, and I play FIFA but if you ask me to play some other games like League of Legends or Mortal Combat, I may not gain as much joy as someone else. I probably won’t be as happy, in fact probably not any much happier than I already was since I don’t enjoy those games at all. So the games matter too, don’t they? I needed something that was more concrete. I still haven’t gotten an answer to my query from an objective standpoint.
So, I continued digging…
There are some interesting theories that I came across in my research as to why we require social interactions — one of them being that social interactions reduce our uncertainties. Uncertainty makes us, humans, very uncomfortable. To a certain extent, we are fearful of the unknown. As we get closer to someone and know more about the person, we reduce the uncertainties we have of them. We find solace in the reduction in anxiety experienced. Apart from the odd, yet interesting theory, we can pretty much classify our necessity for social interactions into three broad categories — specifically, physiological, neurological and evolutionary reasons, which I will elaborate on.
Physiological Changes
So it seems that when we feel compassion for others, heart rates go down from their individual baselines, which may allow us to feel calmer. In our current, fast-paced, modern lifestyle, who wouldn’t want to just take a breather and feel calmer?
In healthy individuals, lower heart rates can also correspond with better cardiovascular condition and more efficient heart functions. Being happier is also linked with lower cortisol levels. Having lower cortisol levels can help in boosting one’s immune system and lowering overall stress levels. Lower cortisol levels can also help lower blood pressure. All of which puts us in a much better state to carry on with our day to day activities. It really does seem that being kind pays us. Taking care of our body is something that you cannot put a price tag on, yet one that many people take for granted and neglect. You don’t need to be rich to take care of your health. Just by being compassionate, one can reap many benefits.
Not just that, our bodies also tend to produce more oxytocin which flows in our bloodstream. Even small gestures relating to acts of kindness, like smiling allows for more oxytocin to be produced in the individual’s body. There is a feel-good factor just by being compassionate to someone. And maybe this is why I chase after social interactions with people, smile at people, strike a conversation with people — simply because there could be a positive feedback loop. By showing an act of kindness, one would end up producing more oxytocin, causing him or her to feel good about themselves and in turn, would want to be kinder and more compassionate to others.
But if being nice, makes you happy, why isn’t everyone being nice? Why isn’t everyone happy when they are nice? Do you really get the ‘happy kick’ from just being nice? I guess the degree to which people experience these changes vary. Not just that but there are also neurological changes, and in which studies have shown and probably corroborated by everyone’s personal experience — not everyone is the same and different elements make different people happy.
Neurological Changes
According to Stephen Post, director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics at Stony Brook University, we feel good about ourselves when we contribute to society. This is due to changes in the mesolimbic pathway. For context, it is the part of the brain that is hardwired to react to natural stimulants such as food and sex. So, essentially giving and helping others, and our social interactions light up the same part of our brain as do some of our most primitive activities such as consumption and consummation. Sometimes this change in our brain is referred to as the giver’s glow or the helper’s high. Essentially, being philanthropic helps in secreting endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin which help in boosting our feel-good factor.
There are some suggestions that social interactions may create a feedback loop with our preliminary emotional state. As we socialize, it results in the emotions we feel being magnified. So the lack of social interaction probably makes us feel worse off since the feedback loop is cut.
Social activities do seem to have a positive effect on us. There were a couple of studies led by Grafman which suggested that helping others does indeed make us feel good! The results from these studies largely corroborated the findings of earlier studies. The researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to study and similar to what was previously mentioned, there was activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex. Something that struck me was that in a separate study when participants contemplated doing harm to others, a similar region in their brains lit up. This suggests that from a social perspective when we contemplate doing good or bad, we use the same region of our brains to process our thoughts and emotions. Hence, it seems like compassion is something that was hardwired in us. Still, can this be generalized to the whole population? Will we have the same changes in levels of these chemicals? Obviously not. Even while doing the same activities, the extent to which the brain lights up varies for people. Even then, for most parts, as long as the person does an activity which makes them happy, we can notice the changes in the brain. So while we may not be able to generalize a finding and say that playing sports makes everyone happy, we can deduce which activities make an individual happier, and to which extent.
Back to the studies done by Grafman, what was more interesting to me though, was the fact that when the participants were asked to evaluate their charitable contributions, those who rated highly, also had the highest level of activity noted in the prefrontal cortex. And this is just brilliant for me. This statement alone falsified my impression of subjective metrics. Does this mean our subjective measures are reliable? I will answer this question towards the end of the article.
My next question is why are our brains hardwired the way it is?
Evolutionary Perspective
There is an old adage that goes a little like this:
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”
Quite clearly it has remained prominent to date and has withstood the test of time. We have evolved to adapt and survive, and social interaction was just one small part that ensured our survival. For example, nocturnal antecedents of primates who eventually started moving around in the day needed the social support from moving in groups for safety. In fact, for some of our primate ancestors, being amiable would have meant it would have been much easier to find mates and ensure the survivability of their species. It is because of the cooperation and dependency on others that has ensured our survival. And maybe reasons like this are why we are born with the urge to seek relationships wherever in life we may be — at work, at school, or even in a community. There have been studies that suggest perceived social isolation can lead to illness or even early death. The feeling of loneliness (not by choice, but due to exclusion) can fire up danger signals in the brain, affecting the production of white blood cells. This may cause further loneliness. According to Matthew Lieberman, Professor, and Director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at UCLA Department of Psychology, Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, we feel pain because of how we have evolved over time.
“The things that cause us to feel pain are things that are evolutionary recognized as threats to our survival and the existence of social pain is a sign that evolution has treated social connection like a necessity, not a luxury.”
Essentially, we don’t want social interactions, we need them.
Experiments have also shown that we are capable of reliably identifying compassion and love even through non-verbal/visual modes of communication, suggesting that it is an evolved human trait as we are more than able of understanding and expressing these emotions. Social interactions are a key factor in our pursuit of happiness, and even more so than money itself! Most people might attribute income and happiness, especially since with greater income, there are other factors that follow suit, such as level of comfort, material well-being and so on. But it does seem like social interactions can play a strong part in affecting our moods.
So what of introverts? Do they tend to be less happy than their extroverted counterparts? Actually, no. It seems that even when introverts are put out of their comfort zone, and when requested to behave in an extroverted manner and communicate with people, they too, experience a boost in their mood! And maybe this is exactly why, we feel connected, warmth and comfort in any relationship — friendships, families, or even with our partners, regardless of our personalities. Putting this in perspective, superficial relationships are just not enough. We would need, and depend on something more personal, something more intimate, something more real. Something that is beneficial for us.
Would face-to-face interactions, make us happier than interactions over the screen (remote/online interactions and exchanges)? There are numerous studies conducted on the effect phones have on our social connections, and subsequently, our happiness. Essentially, for quite a large proportion of the population, mobiles can be unwanted interference especially if it is unnecessarily and excessively used while in the presence of someone whom we should be giving our undivided attention to. The usage of phones in a social setting seems to correlate with greater levels of boredom and a poorer mood. Other articles would be quick to point out other negative impacts that follow mobile usage such as not knowing how to handle face to face conflicts or losing patience much quicker, or even simply being unable to pick up signals and expressions among many other consequences phones may bring about.
So does technology make us less happy? Theoretically, technology simplifies life, makes jobs easier, and supposedly, makes us more connected. However, social interactions seem to be reduced. But it also feels like everyone is just almost always browsing on their devices, glued to their screens, ignoring possible opportunities for social interactions, which can be in part due to our underestimation of the benefits social interaction reaps. Phones, in general, provide us a platform to stay in “close proximity” with one another regardless of the actual physical distance. They allow individuals to easily share about themselves to others, and to be heard. These communication networks reach out to a far greater audience than we ever managed to in the past. Technology doesn’t necessarily need to have a negative impact on social interactions or our emotions, but we need to figure out how to strike a balance.
The key is not to eradicate phone usage, because they do have their obvious benefits, but to be more wary of how we use them. They should be complementary to our daily face to face interactions, not a substitute. Social media could be a steppingstone. While even introverts gain pleasure from social interactions as mentioned earlier, it might seem like a gargantuan leap and they might feel overwhelmed, resulting in hesitation to engage in social interactions. As such social media is a good platform to make small steps before taking the first leap.
So what I am trying to say is, if you are in a conversation be it with an individual or a group, make the conscious effort to not take your phone out, give yourself the time to experience the emotions. It’s okay to have downtimes during the conversation. It takes time to truly know if the conversation is going to be meaningful, or interesting. Sometimes, it is in these moments where people truly know and learn about the other person. People are likely to not have deep and meaningful conversations when they have mobiles with them as they would tend to speak about topics that they don’t mind being distracted by, and as such the quality of conversations deteriorates. It is of utmost salience that we understand how beneficial conversations and human interactions are to our well-being and growth. As Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor and the author of the book “Reclaiming Conversation” puts it:
“When we move in and out of conversations with our friends in the room and all the people we can reach on our phones, we miss out on the kinds of conversations where empathy is born and intimacy thrives.”
So I urge all of you who have read this far to make the subtle change, to note how your experiences change with a greater quality of social interactions and maybe even you might be surprised with how much joy it would bring you, and how much you have underestimated social interactions.
I decided to do a study, more importantly, a face to face interview on individuals’ happiness, and you can read more about it here.
So, just how reliable is our assessment of subjective metrics?
It seems like our subjective assessment of our own well-being is fairly reliable. Research shows that we can collect meaningful and reliable data on subjective well-being through an individual’s evaluations of his/her life, happiness, satisfaction, emotions such as joy, pain, worry, and pride. Apart from drastic, life-altering events, our overall state of mind, and happiness should not change too dramatically. This means individuals with similar routines, should experience more or less similar emotions. While the reliability ratios of our own individual assessments fall just below those of income and education, for example, it is still rather high enough to detect changes in what we feel, especially if the dataset is large and aggregated across the respondents and make informative deductions. And that makes sense. If one claims he or she is happy, then surely they are happy. Who are we to say that “oh, but you aren’t earning sufficient” or “you aren’t highly educated, how can you be satisfied?”. We can’t. Those are merely correlations, not causal effects. It does seem that I was proven wrong, and probably had a biased view of subjective assessment as they do seem to have a high internal consistency. It seems like I could make use and make sense of subjective assessments to make reasonable conclusions.
Throughout this short journey, of research and data collection, I have come to the conclusion that we cannot isolate qualitative and quantitative; objective and subjective. They go hand in hand, it’s a marriage. They are both important for us to reason out to understand, to conclude, to predict. Happiness is such a hard thing to quantify, but do we really have to do it. Happiness is unique for every individual. Just as are your other emotions like anger, guilt, and even you're conscious. It is what makes you, uniquely you. We might not be able to understand the happiness of a country or a group and what affects it to a great extent, but you, as an individual probably can figure out what makes YOU happy. Have I falsified my beliefs? Definitely. Do I urge that you do the same? Yes, in whatever bias you face whatever your instinct suggests, go out and falsify them. Prove your theories wrong. Do it. It is through this experience where you learn and understand the most.
I will continue doing what I like and what gives me joy — to be around people, to display small acts of affection, to make their day, to hold conversations with people, to learn and understand from them. And maybe you should too? Maybe give it a try — when you are in an enclosed space like a lift, maybe start a small conversation with the other party. Hold the door for someone, buy a meal or pay it forward for someone in need. Do more volunteering. Something, anything at all, and it might even be worthwhile to note down your happiness levels and how it might have changed or been affected by your exchange, no matter how brief or how deep.
At least for me, I have understood that in my pursuit of happiness, I should not pursue my own happiness, but in fact the happiness of others.
