Can I make myself happy when I’m miserable? Or vice versa? Without using mood altering drugs, what can or should a person do to change their outlook on life? Why do some people seem always incredibly happy?
In an interview some years ago, Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University and author of “A Blank Slate”, claimed that people were only happy in comparison to someone else or as he put it “our sense of happiness is always calibrated with respect to other people”. For example, if we found a 5% raise in our paycheck we’d be delighted until we found out that others had received 10%.
Another article on the same web site by Richard Nesbitt, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, suggests that we really don’t know why we feel the way we do. He says:
Does it matter that we often don't know what goes on in our heads and yet believe that we do? Well, for starters, it means that we often can't answer accurately crucial questions about what makes us happy and what makes us unhappy. A social psychologist asked Harvard women to keep a daily record for two months of their mood states and also to record a number of potentially relevant factors in their lives including amount of sleep the night before, the weather, general state of health, sexual activity, and day of the week (Monday blues? TGIF?). At the end of the period, subjects were asked to tell the experimenters how much each of these factors tended to influence their mood over the two month period. The results? Women's reports of what influenced their moods were uncorrelated with what they had reported on a daily basis. If a woman thought that her sexual activity had a big effect, a check of her daily reports was just as likely to show that it had no effect as that it did. To really rub it in, the psychologist asked her subjects to report what influenced the moods of someone they didn't know: She found that accuracy was just as great when a woman was rated by a stranger as when rated by the woman herself!
It seems that for the most part instead of consciously or unconsciously analyzing our situation, surroundings, and activities and coming up with emotions that are appropriate, most of us use our minds to rationalize the way we feel.
At the risk of overanalyzing my own thoughts I certainly find that I disagree to some extent with Pinker and agree with Nesbitt. I don’t rejoice in the unhappiness of others especially if I somehow profit from their misfortune. Nor do I feel left out or falling behind if others are more fortunate – at least up to a point. I often don’t know why I’m happy although I can always find several things to justify the feeling. At the same time, I often wake up in the morning with a vague sense of unhappiness for no reason at all and I wonder what could have caused that.
Do you know what makes you happy or sad? Do you really know?
....an increase/decrease in the dopamine level might answer part of your question!!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, and I promise after spending 19 1/4 years in the RC system......once you are OUT OF THERE, the happiness question and vague early morning thoughts will be gone..........I promise.