Science Reveals 10 Secrets to Being Happy
Even as a psychological scientist, it’s rare that I get to write about some thing — without hyperbole, that is REAL and TRUE for Every. Human. Being.
What I get to write about in this paper is HAPPINESS.
Happiness may be the greatest of the things that are REAL and TRUE and MEANINGFUL for EVERY. Human. Being.
Historically, we see how important and meaningful happiness is to humans. Ever since humans have been writing and drawing, we have been writing and drawing and THINKING about happiness.
The “Wide Heart” hieroglyph means happiness and joy, it is about 5,000 years old (https://www.ancientegyptblog.com/?p=2479)
Since us humans have been around, we’ve been thinking about Defining Happiness, Gaining Happiness, Maintaining Happiness, and how to Get Happiness back when it’s gone!
Maybe Aristotle said it best when he said:
Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.
— Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, ~ 335 BCE.
Even today, when we ask people, the World around, what they want out of life, consistently the most popular response people give is to be happy.
This brings us to our first BIG point to be made clear in this paper. Happiness is OBJECTIVE in that we all want it!
But as important as happiness is to every human being the World around, defining happiness, gaining happiness, maintaining happiness is a bit harder of a nut to crack because when you ask people the World around, to define happiness and ask them what they are doing to gain and maintain happiness, they will give almost as many definitions and ways as the number of people you are asking.
People believe lots of things bring them happiness, but are any of these things true?
So, as quickly as we established our first BIG point to be made clear in this paper — Happiness is OBJECTIVE in that we all want it; we have our second BIG point to be made clear in this paper: Happiness is SUBJECTIVE in that we think we have a near infinite number of ways of defining, achieving, and maintaining happiness…
People spend lifetimes trying to figure which of these definitions of happiness are true? Which of these definitions of happiness are false? Which of these ways of gaining happiness are true? Which of these ways of gaining happiness are false? Which of these ways of maintaining happiness are true? Which of these ways of maintaining happiness are false?
Thousands of years of philosophical inquiry, logic, and beliefs have not been able — and will not be able, to decipher the answers to these happiness questions.
But, about 150 years of the science of psychology in general and positive psychology in particular has deciphered the answers to these questions.
HAPPINESS SCIENTIFICALLY DEFINED AND MEASURED
Let’s start off with scientific definitions of happiness. And how science goes about measuring happiness.
There are basically five different scientifically objective measures of happiness: Cognitive, Social, Historical, Biological, and Behavioral.
Cognitive measures of happiness assume you know whether you are happy, and it involves developing instruments, like surveys, to ask you about your happiness.
Social measures of happiness assume the people you are in relationships with — friends, family, work colleagues — know whether you are happy, and it involves developing instruments, like surveys, to ask people who know you about your happiness.
Historical measures of happiness assume you or others who know you, may lie about your happiness, so instead of explicitly asking about your happiness, these measures implicitly ask about your happiness. For example, an implicit historical measure of happiness may ask you to list the first ten memories that come to your mind — think about anything from your past and write that memory down. Now think about something else and write it down. Do this again until you have ten separate memories written down. Now judge each item on your ten-memory list as being a happy memory or a not happy memory. Happy people have more happy memories on their implicitly developed lists whereas unhappy people have more unhappy memories on their lists.
Biological measures of happiness include areas of the brain that are active when people are happy, hormones associated with happiness, neurotransmitters associated with happiness, and genes associated with happiness. The latest gene research associated with happiness shows genetics are about 30 to 40 percent involved in our happiness while our environments and what we do on a-day-to-day basis is involved with about 60 to 70 percent of our happiness. Thus, we have the potential to be in control of most of our happiness.
Behavioral measures of happiness focus on things we do that are associated with happiness. For example, smiling — a behavior — is associated with happiness. Happy people smile more than unhappy people. Interesting though, not only is smiling associated with happiness — smiling can actually cause happiness. More on this in just a bit.
With all these measures of happiness in mind, the best measure of happiness is a combination of these measures.
A SMILE IS NOT JUST A SMILE
Let’s say this is a picture of you — potentially smiling.
Here’s a picture of you — potentially smiling!
I know, I know, you’re saying what happened to my skin — Let’s not focus on that right now.
Focus on knowing there are basically two types of smiles you can be making: A Pan Am Smile or a Duchenne Smile.
A Pan Am smile involves you activating the Zygomatic major muscles (36) on your face — these muscles make the corner of your lips curve up and form the smile itself. A Pan Am smile is not necessarily associated with happiness. It is more a demand-characteristic smile. It is a smile that you make because you have to — you’re meeting someone new for the first time or you’re taking a photograph or you’re nervous and giving a speech, or you’re on a job interview.
A Duchenne smile involves you activating the Zygomatic major muscles (36) on your face AND the orbicularis oculi (29) muscles — while the Zygomatic muscles make the corner of your lips curve up and form the smile itself, the orbicularis oculi muscles — the sphincter muscles surrounding your eyes, form smile lines or crow’s feet above your cheeks and beside your eyes. A Duchenne smile is associated with happiness. The research literature refers to the Duchenne smile as the authentic or real smile as happy people make more Duchenne smiles than unhappy people.
Duchenne smiles are so important for human beings, they happen to be one of the first behaviors we are in control of — by two months of age babies can make and distinguish between Duchenne and Pan Am smiles.
And guess what type of smile babies are most likely to make?
Now guess what types of smiles adults are most likely to make?
Lastly, guess who is happier with their lives: babies or adults?
THE FACIAL FEEDBACK HYPOTHESIS
As I mentioned earlier, smiles are not only associated with happiness they can also cause happiness. We know this through the empirically-based facial feedback hypothesis which states emotions lead to behaviors AND behaviors lead to emotions.
What does this mean? It means the obvious: When we are happy, we tend to smile, and when we are sad, we tend to frown.
It also means the not-so obvious: Smiling makes us happy and frowning makes us sad.
Yes, it is empirically true that you can make yourself happy by smiling and make yourself sad by frowning.
Sorry — not sorry to say, you’re in charge of your emotions — if you want to be sad — or keep on being sad, frown. If you want to be happy — or keep on being happy, smile.
And if you want to change your sadness to happiness, this change can start by you, smiling.
Side note: what does this all have to say about Botox — a neurotoxin that does not allow us to control the muscles in or faces? Hmm…
THE TOP TEN GREATEST CAUSES OF HAPPINESS IN HUMANS
Finally, what you have been waiting for, the top ten most likely ways to CAUSE happiness.
How was this top ten list established? Simple: People who score high on MULTIPLE measures of happiness tend to have the items on this list — and the happier the person is, the more items on the list they are likely to possess.
I debated about whether to start at number 10 or number one but decided to give you the greatest cause of happiness first and then we’ll work our way to the 10th greatest cause of happiness.
1. The greatest cause of happiness is having communal friendships.
Individuals in communal friendships have no expectations about the giving and taking that goes on within these friendships.
Most friendships are not communal, but instead are reciprocal with individuals expecting equal amounts of giving and taking in their friendships.
Communal friendships are driven by empathy, which allows a person to experience another person’s emotions. When I am empathizing with you, not only am I aware of what you are feeling, it also emotionally affects me: If you are happy, then I am smiling; if you are sad, then I am frowning.
Empathy is the most powerful human emotion because it allows emotions to be multiplicatively experienced. For example, if you are having a good day and feeling happy about it and you talk with a friend who is also having a good day and feeling happy about it; with empathy, you will feel twice as happy as you did when you were by yourself.
2. The second greatest cause of happiness is social relationships.
Social relationships can be communal but are best defined as the reciprocal relationships in our lives: family, business partners, work colleagues, Facebook friends, acquaintances, neighbors, fellow church/synagogue/mosque worshipers, classmates, fellow sports fans…
None of these reciprocal relationships is necessarily more important for happiness than any other. The importance of these relationships is its diversity and total number.
Simply put, happy people have more opportunities for social interactions than unhappy people do.
3. The third greatest cause of happiness is extraversion, your ability and, in some ways, your energy to put yourself into a social setting.
Happy people have higher levels of extraversion than unhappy people have.
4. The fourth greatest cause of happiness is optimism, your ability to put a positive light onto ambiguous and negative life situations.
Happy people have higher levels of optimism than unhappy people have.
The prototypical example of optimism — the optimist answering, “half full” to the question, “Is the glass half empty or half full?” — tells only a part of the story on how optimism is associated with happiness. The true measure of optimism and its association with happiness comes when situations are in-fact, negative. This is when the optimist’s attitude serves as a motivator to keep moving forward.
5. Beyond communal friendships and social relationships, the fifth greatest cause of happiness is a unique relationship called marriage.
Based on trust and faith in a life-long confidant, marriage makes people physically healthier. When compared to unmarried people, married people are less likely to get sick; and when they do get sick, they are more likely to recover and recover at a faster rate. In fact, married people have stronger immune systems and on average live 10 years longer than unmarried people do.
6. The sixth greatest cause of happiness is employment.
Employment is about friendships, social relationships, goal setting, personal achievement, and money.
Employment as an adult is equal to play as a child.
7. The seventh greatest cause of happiness is spirituality.
Like marriage, spirituality is about trust and faith. The difference between marriage and spirituality is spirituality’s faith is ethereal.
Meaning is significant when it comes to happiness. The greatest sources of distress and anxiety is ambiguity. When ambiguity is at the highest level — within the meaning of life — depression and apathy are likely to occur.
Spirituality provides meaning at this highest level.
8. The eighth greatest cause of happiness is subjective physical health.
Subjective physical health is a person’s interpretation of their physical health, and it is rooted in social comparison.
For example, Maria, diagnosed with skin cancer following her annual physical, is happier than Susana, who received a clean bill of health following her physical. Maria’s first response after the diagnosis, “Thank goodness I have a treatable form of cancer!” (Her thoughts are focused on someone who has less than her; someone diagnosed with an untreatable form of cancer.) Susana’s first response after her physical, “But I am not as healthy as my sister.” (Her thoughts are focused on someone who has more than her; a sister who is an Olympic-caliber marathon runner.)
As a rule, happy people socially compare their lives to those with less, whereas unhappy people socially compare their lives to those with more.
9. The ninth greatest cause of happiness is democratic freedom.
Two conclusions have emerged from extensive studies comparing levels of happiness among countries, cultures, and societies:
(1) No matter where you are on Earth, the number-one thing people want in their lives is happiness; and
(2) The more democratic a government is in ruling its people, the happier the people will be.
10. The tenth greatest cause of happiness is money. Money causes happiness only in certain ways. If a person’s level of income threatens their basic human necessities (e.g., water, food, or shelter), then having money to overcome this threat is predictive of happiness.
However, once above this necessity line, the relationship between money and happiness is negligible. Beyond human necessities, happy people spend more money on others than they do on themselves, whereas unhappy people spend more money on themselves than they do on others.
What science has NOT found to cause happiness in humans
You officially know what science has to say about the causes of happiness, but I should also mention items people often think cause happiness but do not. There is no consistent scientific evidence for biological sex, ethnicity, intelligence, physical attractiveness, leisure, having children, or biological family causing happiness.
Thus, men and women are no different from one another when it comes to being happy. No ethnic group is happier than any other is. The very intelligent are no happier than those with average or below average intelligence are. Physically attractive people are no happier than physically average and unattractive people are. People at leisure and on vacation are not necessarily happier when comparing them at work. Being a parent makes you no happier than being a non-parent. And, people with biological family are not necessarily happier than people without biological families.
HOW ABOUT SOME CONTENTMENT TO GO ALONG WITH YOUR HAPPINESS?
Despite knowing and applying these ten scientific causes of happiness, happiness still can be fickle. We eventually grow accustomed to the things that bring us happiness and most of the things bringing us happiness are rooted in our environments. Thus, as time passes and environments change, so too does our happiness.
But, imagine for a moment, an emotion beyond happiness; that is, unaffected by time and changing environments.
Okay, stop imagining because this “beyond happiness” emotion is real, and it is called contentment. Contentment produces perpetual positive emotions from doing an activity — for the sake of doing it; contentment does not produce positive emotions from the activity’s causes or effects.
Anything can be a contentment activity. For example, walking can be a contentment activity, bringing perpetual positive emotions for us, unless we impose conditions on it, “I only walk when it is sunny outside,” “If I can’t track my steps on my Fitbit, then I don’t walk,” “My sister isn’t walking today, so I’m not walking today either.”
Although abstract to most adults, contentment is nothing new; when we were children it was our primary motivator.
Playing is the definitive example of contentment. The child at play gains positive emotions from playing with anyone or anything.
As every parent that has ever bought an expensive gift that came in a large box knows, it does not matter to the child “what” they are playing with (expensive gift or large box). The only thing that matters is they are playing.
A CHALLENGE OR TWO FOR YOU
I’ll end by challenging you to apply the 10 causes of happiness to your own life, and I challenge you to reflect on, and then practice your contentments.
We all have contentments in our lives, it’s just a matter of becoming RE-aware of them…
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References
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Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Beacon Press.
Myers, D. G. (2000). The funds, friends, and faith of happy people. American Psychologist, 55, 56–67.
Shiota, M. N., Campos, B., Oveis, C., Hertenstein, M. J., Simon-Thomas, E., & Keltner, D. (2017). Beyond happiness: Building a science of discrete positive emotions. American Psychologist, 72, 617–643
Steptoe, A. (2019). Happiness and health. Annual Review of Public Health, 40, 339–359.
Veenhoven, R. (2006). Happiness in hardship, in Bruni, L., & Porta (Eds.) Economics and happiness: Framing the analysis. Oxford University Press, pp. 248–266.
Waite, L. J., & Gallagher, M. (2000). The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially. New York: Doubleday.
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Dr. Don Lucas, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology and head of the Psychology Department at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio Texas. He loves psychology, teaching, and research.
If you like this story, then you may like Don’s videos on his YouTube channel, 5MIweekly or his other stories on this Medium channel.