From Jonathan Haidt’s “Happiness Hypothesis.”
Who is Happier, Bob or Mary?
“Try to imagine yourself changing places with either Bob or Mary.”
“Bob is thirty-five years old, single, white, attractive, and athletic. He earns $100,000 a year and lives in sunny Southern California. He is highly intellectual, and he spends his free time reading and going to museums.”
“Mary and her husband live in snowy Buffalo, New York, where they earn a combined income of $40,000. Mary is sixty-five years old, black, overweight, and plain in appearance. She is highly sociable, and she spends her free time mostly in activities related to her church. She is on dialysis for kidney problems.”
“Bob seems to have it all, and few readers of this book would prefer Mary’s life to his. Yet if you had to bet on it, you should bet that Mary is happier than Bob.”
“What Mary has that Bob lacks are strong connections. A good marriage is one of the life-factors most strongly and consistently associated with happiness. Part of this apparent benefit comes from “reverse correlation”: Happiness causes marriage. Happy people marry sooner and stay married longer than people with a lower happiness setpoint, both because they are more appealing as dating partners and because they are easier to live with as spouses. But much of the apparent benefit is a real and lasting benefit of dependable companionship, which is a basic need; we never fully adapt either to it or to its absence. Mary also has religion, and religious people are happier, on average, than nonreligious people.”
“This effect arises from the social ties that come with participation in a religious community, as well as from feeling connected to something beyond the self. What Bob has going for him is a string of objective advantages in power, status, freedom, health, and sunshine—all of which are subject to the adaptation principle.” (p. 87)
Why is This?
- “The second biggest finding in happiness research, after the strong influence of genes upon a person’s average level of happiness, is that most environmental and demographic factors influence happiness very little.” (p. 87)
- “People who live in cold climates expect people who live in California to be happier, but they are wrong.” (p. 88)
- “People believe that attractive people are happier than unattractive people, but they, too, are wrong.” (p. 88)
- “People are often surprised to hear that the old are happier than the young because the old have so many more health problems, yet people adapt to most chronic health problems” (p. 88) ((although ailments that grow progressively worse do reduce well-being, and a recent study finds that adaptation to disability is not, on average, complete).
- “Wealth itself has only a small direct effect on happiness because it so effectively speeds up the hedonic treadmill.” (p. 89)
- “White Americans are freed from many of the hassles and indignities that affect black Americans, yet, on average, they are only very slightly happier.” (p. 88)
- “Men have more freedom and power than women, yet they are not on average any happier.” (p. 88)
More Quotes About Adaptation to External Things.
“as the level of wealth has doubled or tripled in the last fifty years in many industrialized nations, the levels of happiness and satisfaction with life that people report have not changed, and depression has actually become more common.” (p.89)
“Vast increases in gross domestic product led to improvements in the comforts of life—a larger home, more cars, televisions, and restaurant meals, better health and longer life—but these improvements became the normal conditions of life; all were adapted to and taken for granted, so they did not make people feel any happier or more satisfied.” (p.89)