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Happiness on the Political Agenda? PROS and CONS

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Abstract

This paper provides a critical analysis of the application of happiness research into policy domains. An overview of the current debate on the politics of happiness is elaborated by focusing on its promising perspectives as well as the potential problems it raises. Arguments of proponents and opponents are confronted with each other in discussing the following central issues in the debate: (1) the state of progress of the happiness research; (2) the value of happiness and its promotion by political means; (3) the possibility of promoting happiness; (4) paternalism versus autonomy and (5) a fair distribution of happiness. It is concluded from this that pragmatic issues do not pose insurmountable obstacles for the realization of a politics of happiness, although further research is definitely recommendable. The ideological or ethical issues however require further debate and research before the actual realization of a politics of happiness is possible. More specifically, the science of happiness needs to give more attention to analyzing the value of happiness and the desirability of increasing happiness by political means. Also the weighing of the value of happiness against other values and goals is an important issue to be put on the agenda. This paper thus explicates the moral choices and challenges that politicians would be confronted with if they want to put the increase of happiness on the political agenda.

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Notes

  1. These indicators have been constructed by the New Economics Foundation, using data from the 2006 to 2007 European Social Survey. The two crucial aspects of how people experience their lives were used as headline measures, being personal well-being and social well-being. Each headline indicator was broken down into component indicators (and in places also subcomponent indicators) which reflect the different aspects which together comprise experienced well-being. The indicator of social well-being was constructed as having two component indicators: (1) supportive relationships and (2) trust and belonging. Personal well-being has five component indicators: (1) emotional well-being with subcomponents positive feelings and absence of negative feelings; (2) life satisfaction; (3) vitality; (4) resilience, optimism, self-esteem; and (5) positive functioning which consists of the subcomponents autonomy, competence, engagement, meaning and purpose. In addition, a summary measure or “combined well-being indicator” was created by bringing together the personal well-being and social well-being indicators. More information on http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/ and http://www.nationalaccountsofwellbeing.org/.

  2. A more elaborate discussion on these two traditions can be found in Sect. 3.1.2.

  3. An additional reason is the fact that in colloquial terms happiness is the most frequently used notion.

  4. The enormous interest in subjective well-being in the 1960s and 1970s originated from the so called ‘social indicators movement’. This movement emerged in the late 1960s as a reaction against the widespread use of economical indicators—such as gross national product—to measure quality of life (Campbell 1976). The members of the ‘social indicators movement’ countered this by suggesting to gather objective data about quality of life such as levels of education, housing, et cetera. But some even considered these objective indicators to be limited as measures for quality of life. Campbell et al. (1976: 3) state that they “are taken as surrogates for the subjective experience of life”. Due to this, the idea developed that, apart from economical and other objective indicators, subjective well-being could also be used as an indicator for quality of life on a large scale.

  5. The term ‘sustainable development’ was introduced in the United Nations report ‘Our Common Future’ or so called ‘Brundlandt Report’ (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). In this report sustainable development is defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (http://www.ourcommonfuture.org/).

  6. The ecological footprint of an individual is a measure of the amount of land required to provide for all their resource requirements plus the amount of vegetated land required to sequester (absorb) all their CO2 emissions and the CO2 emissions embodied in the products they consume. This definition was retrieved from http://www.happyplanetindex.org/learn/calculating/global.html#footprint.

  7. By the promotion of happiness I mean the increase or maximization of happiness to the highest level possible. I do not mean that policy makers should strive for perfect happiness, but only that we try to attain the highest level possible.

  8. Most frequently happiness is measured with single direct questions such as “Taking all together, how satisfied or dissatisfied are you currently with your life as a whole?”. Answers can be formulated on a scale from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied).

  9. The ‘Experience Sampling Method’ registers behavior, thoughts and emotions as they occur in real time, which does not require a post hoc evaluation about how one feels (Larson and Csikszentmihalyi 1983).

  10. The ‘Day Reconstruction Method’ assesses how people spend their time and how they experience the various activities and settings of their lives, combining features of time-budget measurement and experience sampling. Participants reconstruct their activities and experiences of the preceding day with procedures designed to reduce recall biases (Kahneman et al. 2004).

  11. The ‘Anamnestic Comparitive Self-Assessment’ method is based on the question to evaluate one’s life in accordance to the best and worst periods of one’s life. This extremely personal scale avoids trivial answers (comparable with the answer “Fine.” to the question “How are you doing?”) and is less sensitive to bias due to cultural relativity (Bernheim et al. 2006).

  12. Research has shown that they are more tolerant, more benevolent, more altruistic, less suspicious, more long term oriented, more productive, more creative and more inquisitive (Lyubomirsky 2007; Diener and Biswas-Diener 2008;Veenhoven 1997; Zeleski et al. 2008; Estrada et al. 1994).

  13. Above the limiting value of 15,000 US dollars per capita per year, the added material growth has no effect on the national happiness levels (Easterlin 1974).

  14. Different arguments for this might be brought up. Firstly, there is the hedonistic paradox which refers to the idea that happiness is not directly attainable since striving for happiness tends to make it harder to attain. Happiness is not attainable by putting it up front as a main goal but it rather is a by-product of other activities. This idea was very alive with the likes of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill. Secondly, one can refer to the limitations due to adaptation. People very quickly adapt to—both negative and positive—new circumstances which makes them adjust to their aspirations. This limits the possibility of increasing individual happiness. This is often referred to this as the hedonic tredmill. And thirdly, our genes play a significant role in putting a natural limit to the increase of individual happiness (Lykken 1999). In spite of these limitations, it has been shown there are many strategies to increase happiness on the individual level that actually work (Lyubomirsky 2007; Lyubomirsky et al. 2005).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Bengt Brülde, Johan Braeckman, Charlotte De Backer and Aäron Willem for reading earlier versions of this article and for their useful comments. And I would also like to thank the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders for funding this research.

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    Valérie De Prycker

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De Prycker, V. Happiness on the Political Agenda? PROS and CONS. J Happiness Stud 11, 585–603 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-010-9205-y

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