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The Nonobvious Social Psychology of Happiness

Article in Psychological Inquiry · October 2005

DOI: 10.1207/s15327965pli1604_04

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The Nonobvious Social Psychology of Happiness

Ed Diener

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and The Gallup Organization

Shigehiro Oishi

University of Virginia

There are several classic findings in social psychology that behavioral scientists recognize as having ex- erted a profound influence on people’s understanding of the world. The stars of our field, such as Milgram, Zimbardo, Darley, and Latane, have demonstrated the power of social situations to influence behavior, for example in obedience, bystander intervention, confor- mity, and altruism. Another classic set of findings of social psychology describes in-group biases, and how group membership profoundly influences people’s perceptions of events. The “They Saw a Game” study by Hastorf and Cantril (1954)—which showed how Dartmouth and Princeton fans recalled two very different football games, although they viewed the same game—is a wonderful example in this area. John Bargh and others have begun a research tradition on nonconscious influences that has had a startling impact on our understanding of motivation. Yet another area where social psychology has made true progress is in our conception of stereotyping and prejudice. Al- though all of these areas deserve mention as major advances in social psychology, we wanted to avoid re- peating the studies mentioned by others in this issue.

Thus, we have chosen to describe the social psychological findings that have had a large influence on our own field, the understanding of well-being, because we suspect that the ties of social psychology to well-being research might be less self-evident to most readers, ex- cept for the important program of research on well-being judgments of Norbert Schwarz and Fritz Strack (1999). Because the link between their research and well-being research is well known to social psychologists, we do not review it here (see Schwarz &

Strack, 1999, for review). One motive behind our building the bridge from social psychology to well-being research is to extend the field of social psychology beyond the traditional bounds.

We will briefly touch on five sets of findings in social psychology, discuss the implications of these findings to well-being, and describe studies conducted by well-being researchers that follow directly from the social psychological studies. Although lay people might guess some aspects of these findings correctly, we believe the conclusions are nonobvious to most nonpsychologists. First, we discuss the fa-

mous article of Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman (1978) in which they maintain that people adapt hedonically to both positive and negative conditions.

The idea of adaptation has arguably been the most in- fluential concept guiding conceptions of well-being.

We discuss the current state of our knowledge about whether the hedonic treadmill (Brickman & Camp- bell, 1971) of adaptation is adequate. The second area we review is the importance of social relationships to adequate human functioning. Social psychologists such as Baumeister and Leary (1995) reviewed the negative impact of ostracism and a lack of social support on people’s functioning. Evidence has shown that close social relationships might also be necessary to the subjective experience of well-being, not simply beneficial to it.

The third topic we cover relates to the second, and it concerns the fact that negative stimuli are more power- ful than positive stimuli (e.g., Rozin & Royzman, 2001). In social relationships, as with other stimuli, negative episodes seem to be weighted more heavily than positive ones. This helps explain why good social relationships are essential to well-being. Our fourth topic is concerned with the power of culture. Social psychologists have demonstrated the dramatic influence of culture on thinking and behavior (e.g., Markus

& Kitayama, 1991; Nisbett, 2003; Triandis, 1989). We describe how culture can also influence the definition, experience, and causes of happiness. Finally, we describe evidence showing that memory is reconstructive rather than an exact replica of the original experience (e.g., Ross, 1989). In the domain of well-being this has implications not only for how people recall their moods and emotions, but also for how memory influences people’s future choices. The findings from each of these five lines of social psychological research have strongly influenced our understanding of well-being and ill-being, extending our scientific conceptions far beyond self-evident popular notions of happiness.

The Hedonic Treadmill Revisited:

Adaptation to Circumstances

Brickman and Campbell (1971) advanced the idea that we all live on a hedonic treadmill because good

2005, Vol. 16, No. 4, 162–167 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

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things make us only temporarily happy and bad things make us only temporarily unhappy. In the long run, we are fixed at hedonic neutrality, and our efforts to make ourselves happier by gaining good life circumstances are only short-term solutions. Brickman and Campbell asserted that efforts to be happier than neutral in the long run are doomed to failure. A slave with chronic emphysema living alone in a hovel next to his master’s mansion ought to be no less happy than the healthy and wealthy master. Although this conclusion is shocking, it has informed our thinking about what causes happiness.

In 1978 Brickman et al. presented evidence from paraplegics and lottery winners to offer empirical support for the idea that adaptation brings us all back down to hedonic neutrality, irrespective of how good or bad the event was originally experienced. It should be noted, however, that in a closer inspection, the evidence of Brickman et al. for adaptation was mixed (i.e., paraplegics were not as happy as others). Our recent studies offer stronger support for adaptation, as well as the modifications that must be made to the original theory. First, it appears that people adapt over time, but not always completely back to the point where they started. For instance, we found that both widowhood (Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, & Diener, 2003) and unemployment (Lucas, Clark, Georgellis,

& Diener, 2004) led to lower levels of life satisfaction even many years after the event. Although people showed adaptation over time after the event occurred, they had not adapted completely back to their former levels of life satisfaction even after 5 years. Despite the fact that people may not adapt to all conditions, we have found that they adapt to the smaller rewards and setbacks of everyday life (Suh, Diener, & Fujita, 1996).

Given that adaptation occurs but seems incom- plete, are people living in harsher conditions less happy than others? The answer seems to be that sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not. For example, we found that the African Maasai are relatively happy, although they live in dung huts without indoor plumbing or electricity, and the Inuit of Northern Greenland are relatively satisfied with their lives despite living in a very harsh climate (Biswas-Diener, Vittersø, & Diener, 2004). How- ever, we have found that street prostitutes, the home- less, and people in mental hospitals are unhappy, far below neutral, even when their conditions have per- sisted over some period of time (e.g., Biswas-Diener

& Diener, 2001). Perhaps such social variables as lack of respect and lack of trusted friends make these conditions more persistently difficult than pov- erty. This idea can be substantiated by the fact that impoverished individuals in the slums of Calcutta, who live in shacks with their families, score in the positive zone on life satisfaction.

Implications

Although the idea of the hedonic treadmill has not been supported in all of its particulars (see Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2005), it still provides a fundamental insight—over time good things and bad things usually lose their power to strongly affect us. Although there are some extreme conditions that can lower our well-being, many of the good and bad events provide only short boosts and downdrafts. Receiving a raise at work, buying a new car, or winning an award are not usually the road to long-term happiness. Instead, fresh involvement in activities, relationships, and goals can be a continuous source of happiness. In this sense, the aphorism, “Happiness is a process, not a place,” seems to be accurate. This does not mean that our circumstances have no influence whatsoever on our happiness; they do. Rather it means that we should not rely on circumstances alone to give us long-term feelings of well-being. Continued involvement in new goals, meaningful social interactions, and interesting activities is required to maintain a flourishing sense of happiness (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, in press).

Another important implication of the findings on adaptation is that we often mispredict what will make us happy and unhappy (Gilbert, Pinel, Wilson, Blumberg, & Wheatley, 1998). We believe that if we become wealthy we will be happier than we will in fact be, and we believe that if we do not obtain tenure we will be more miserable than we will in fact be. These mispredictions demonstrate that we probably count too much on conditions to make us happy. It follows, for example, that it would be a mistake to sacrifice close relationships or interesting work to pursue a job that was uninteresting but lucrative. The mispredictions people make reveal that the full effects of adaptation are not understood by laypeople.

Close Social Relationships Are Essential to Well-Being

Bradburn (1969), in his classic seminal work on well-being, found that social relationships were one of the strongest correlates of positive emotions. In the past decades evidence has accumulated showing that lack of social support and close social relationships can have far-reaching effects. Baumeister and Leary (1995) reviewed the evidence showing that people seem to have a fundamental need for close social relationships. Social connectedness and support are asso- ciated with better levels of autonomic activity, better immunosurveillance, and lower basal levels of stress hormones (Uchino, Cacioppo, & Kiecolt-Glazer, 1996). Other recent work by Williams (2001) reveals impaired cognitive functioning in people who have been ostracized from a group.

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Newer evidence now suggests that close social relationships are not simply correlates of well-being, but may have causal force. For example, research on widows (Lucas et al., 2003; Stroebe, Stroebe, Abakoumkin, & Schut, 1996) and divorced people (Clark, Diener, Georgellis, & Lucas, 2004) shows substantial declines in well-being right before and after the loss of a significant other. When we examined the characteristics of the happiest individuals, we found without exception that they reported strongly positive social relationships (Diener & Seligman, 2002). Thus, Bradburn’s (1969) early findings on the importance of social relationships to well-being have now been extensively supported. Although laypeople probably understand that close friends and family are correlated with happiness, they may not realize that they are necessary for happiness, as well as for health and optimal cognitive functioning.

Implications

Many people focus on wealth when they pursue happiness, but research on social relationships suggests that they can be more important than material prosperity to subjective well-being. The word needs to be spread—it is important to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties, and social support to be happy.

It is a mistake to value money over social relationships.

For instance, we found that students who value money more than love are dissatisfied with their lives (Diener

& Oishi, 2000).

The Power of the Negative

Close personal relationships are essential to well-being, but we are made miserable by tyrannical supervisors, abusive spouses, and vindictive friends.

Without social relationships, it may be very difficult or impossible to reach high levels of happiness. However, because negative events affect our well-being more than positive events, relationships can also be a power- ful force for unhappiness. An important insight of social and experimental psychologists is that we are built to react more strongly to negative events than to positive ones. Thus, social relationships are a necessary cause for happiness, but they must contain a prepon- derance of positive interactions to serve this function.

In “Prospect Theory,” Kahneman and Tversky (1979) hypothesized that losses loom larger than gains.

In later work, losses and gains were reframed in a broader way to include all bad and good events (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001;

Rozin & Royzman, 2001). Summing up this view, Baumeister et al. (2001) wrote that “bad is stronger than good.” In a related vein, Taylor (1991) maintained that we react quickly and strongly to negative events,

although our system is designed to shut down these negative reactions relatively quickly. Thus, we react strongly to negative events, according to Taylor, but we also adapt to them.

Gottman (1994) extended to social relationships the idea that negative is stronger than positive. In his research on marriage, Gottman found that marital part- ners who have an equal number of positive and negative interactions perceive their marriage in negative terms. Indeed, the Gottman ratio suggests a ratio of five or six positive interactions for every negative interac- tion for a marriage to be considered satisfying. Obvi- ously, the specific ratio will change, depending on the nature of the interactions, but the point is the same—

that one usually needs more positive interactions than negative ones to experience a relationship as desirable.

Fredrickson and Losada (2004) recently extended the Gottman ratio to positive and negative emotions as they relate to global well-being, and found that a ratio of 2.9 or above was needed for flourishing.

Implications

Much more research is needed on the Gottman ratio in other types of social relationships. However, for the time being it would be wise in one’s relationships to re- member the dictum that negative is stronger than positive. If one criticizes or corrects a friend or family member, one must work to have many positive interactions to make up for that. The findings in this area suggest that with our friends and family members, giving compliments, helping them at tasks, interacting in interesting conversations with them, and expressing af- fection are necessary to keep the relationships in the positive zone. Occasionally, of course, we need to offer criticisms, advice, and corrections because a behavior of a friend, colleague, or family member should be changed. But we then need to work on our Gottman ratio to keep the relationship in the positive zone.

Culture and Well-Being

Anthropologists such as Mead, Benedict, and Malinowski made famous the dramatic differences that exist between cultures. It was left to social and personality psychologists to measure and quantify the differences in a much more rigorous way than had occurred before. Furthermore, pioneers such as Hofstede, Triandis, Markus, Kitayama, and Nisbett showed that even when people live in similar ways in industrialized nations, there are clear differences in the ways they think, feel, and behave.

Recently cultural differences have been found for the form and shape of happiness, as well as what causes it. Kitayama and Markus (2000) emphasized that what it means “to be well” differs across cultures.

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For instance, in eastern Asia, happiness results from taking a disciplined and critical view of the self, and in so doing, exchanging sympathy for each other.

Kim-Prieto, Fujita, and Diener (2004) have found that certain emotions, such as pride and worry, cluster differently across cultures. Although pride clusters with the positive emotions in the United States, it clusters with the negative emotions in many cultures. Although we found a universal patterning of certain core emotions across all cultures, we found that other, second- ary, emotions changed positions across cultures (see also Eid & Diener, 2001). Tsai, Knutson, and Fung (2004) found that Americans valued high activation positive states, whereas Chinese valued low activation positive states. Thus, certain emotions are considered valuable and appropriate in some cultures, and less so in other cultures. This reinforces the contention of Markus and Kitayama (1991) that what emotions feel good depends to some extent on culture.

Besides the nature and patterning of well-being, we also have found that the causes and correlates of happiness vary across cultures. For example, Diener and Diener (1995) found that self-esteem was a much stronger predictor of the life satisfaction of women in individualistic than in collectivistic societies. On the other hand, financial satisfaction was a stronger predictor of life satisfaction in poor than in wealthy nations.

Similarly, Suh (2002) found that personal consistency was a stronger predictor of both self-rated well-being and peer-rated likability in the United States than in Korea (see Diener, Oishi, & Lucas, 2003; Diener &

Tov, in press; for review).

What we do not yet know is whether the outcomes of happiness differ across cultures. We find that happy people are more successful in many areas of life; but al- most all of the relevant research has been conducted in modern Westernized nations (Lyubomirsky, King &

Diener, in press). We suspect that the relation of happiness to success might differ in other societies.

Implications

An essential insight of social psychology is that what it means to be happy is not identical around the globe. Certain feelings can be valued in one culture and not in another. Furthermore, although there are undoubtedly universals across cultures in what causes happiness, there are also correlates of happiness that are culture specific. This knowledge should help us decenter from our own worldview, and realize that not all peoples are motivated by identical concerns and that specific moods and emotions might serve as differential guides to behavior in various societies.

Thus, people’s judgments about what feelings are desirable can vary, as well as can the causes of pleasant feelings.

Memory for Everyday Life

Pioneering social and experimental psychologists have shown that our memories do not completely map onto the original experience. Instead, they are transfor- mations of the experience that are reconstructed based on current motives and beliefs, as well as other factors (e.g., Bartlett, 1932; Loftus, 1992; Roediger & Gallo, 2002). The practical implications of this work have been far reaching in the legal arena, where eyewitness testimony is now known to be less reliable than for- merly believed (e.g., Wells & Olson, 2003).

Michael Ross (1989) reviewed a diverse array of findings that suggest that people often reconstruct their memory to fit their implicit theories or current views.

For instance, women often reported having experienced more pain during their menstrual periods, although their daily reports proved otherwise. More recent work (e.g., Wilson & Ross, 2001) indicates that people degrade their personality in the past so as to view themselves as having improved over time. Robin- son and Clore (2002) concluded that retrospective judgments of emotions are influenced by beliefs and self-concepts, and are based on different kinds of evidence than are “online” judgments. Levine’s (1997) study on the memories of Ross Perot supporters in the 1992 presidential election is a classic in this field.

When Perot withdrew from the election, respondents reported their emotional reactions to this event. When they later recalled their reactions, their memories were tainted by their current views of Perot.

In the area of well-being, the experience sampling method (ESM) has improved researchers’ ability to ex- amine the accuracy of self-reported experiences of emotions. For instance, the ESM studies revealed that people overestimate the intensity of emotions, whereas they underestimate the absolute frequency of emotions (e.g., Schimmack, 1997; Thomas & Diener, 1990).

Retrospective judgments of emotions are also biased toward peak and end experiences (Fredrickson &

Kahneman, 1993). European Americans’ retrospective judgments of well-being move in a more positive direc- tion than do Asians’ (e.g., Oishi, 2002). Of importance, although retrospective judgments of affective experiences deviate from actual experiences, they seem to predict future choices better than the aggregate of online experiences (Wirtz, Kruger, Scollon, & Diener, 2003).

Implications

Memory for emotional experiences is not static, but dynamic (Kim-Prieto, Diener, Tamir, Scollon, &

Diener, in press). It sometimes goes through a dramatic transformation (e.g., a first kiss to a boyfriend might be recalled as happy rather than fearful now). Online and recalled experiences are both “real” and capture impor- 165

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tant aspects of emotion, and therefore there are two separable aspects of happiness—that which we feel online and that which we recall feeling. Memory research suggests that people can feel happy in several ways: (a) by seeing themselves grow through negative experiences, (b) by positively reappraising past negative experiences, and/or (c) by downplaying the positivity of past positive events relative to current ones.

Concluding Remarks

Social psychology has had an enormous impact on subjective well-being research over the years. Now we know a substantial amount about various aspects of happiness such as the course of adaptation, errone- ous predictions about future happiness, memory accuracy for happiness, different forms of happiness, and cultural differences in what correlates with happiness. One emerging agenda is how subjective well-being, including moods and emotions, influences objective life outcomes (e.g., longevity, health, job performance, income, and marriage), prosocial behaviors (e.g., donating to charity and volunteering), and interpersonal and intergroup behaviors (e.g., inti- macy and cooperation). Social psychology can be proud of the large and rapid advances made in understanding well-being, but there is still much exciting work ahead.

Note

Correspondence should be sent to Ed Diener, De- partment of Psychology, University of Illinois, Cham- paign, IL 61820. E-mail: [email protected]

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