Will reaching our goals make us happy?

Hi, I’m Dr. Laurie Santos, professor of psychology at Yale University, and in this video I’ll discuss research that challenges the common belief that making more money, getting a better job, or finding true love will make you happy. They won’t. Meet Maya. Maya wants to live a happy life, but unfortunately she isn’t very happy. Wherever we stand along the happiness spectrum, most of us are looking for more. We assume that we have some control over our happiness that if we just do the right things, we can become happier. But what are the “right” things to do to make ourselves happier? Most of us pursue happiness more or less like Maya does. She thinks the key to her happiness is getting an important job that earns her lots of money and finding the perfect romantic partner to share her life with. She worked hard to get good grades, build her resume, and make valuable contacts, all so she could land a high-paying job. And now that she has a great job, Maya has been striving for a more senior role. Although Maya hasn’t found the perfect partner, she has friends at work and has been doing some online dating. At this point, Maya is thinking, “When I get that job title and raise, when I meet Mr. Right, when we buy that house and have those kids together, that’s when I’ll finally be happy.” So the question is: Does Maya have the right idea? If she manages to get all those things, will she finally be happy? Well, Maya’s been getting much of what she’s wanted for a while now. In college, she got great grades and had a great boyfriend. But, though she had moments of joy, she wasn’t really all that happy. Even now with her lucrative job that affords her a great apartment, designer clothes, and the ability to frequent trendy bars and restaurants, she’s still not much happier. As it turns out, Maya’s experience is actually quite common. Most of us would love to make more money, believing that this would make us happier. But research shows that, while greater wealth and material comfort can increase happiness to some extent, it’s often much less than we expect. For example, research by Kahneman and Deaton found that, while more money meant more happiness for Americans making below $75,000 in 2009, money had a minimal impact on happiness for Americans earning over that amount. And if you look at happiness levels in the United States during the 1940’s, compared to the 2000’s, you see that despite all of the material gains, including the doubling of real income, over those sixty years the average happiness of U.S. citizens actually went down slightly, while the risks of depression went way up. In fact, if you’re someone who prioritizes materialistic aspirations, you’re significantly more likely to experience life dissatisfaction and even certain mental disorders than do people with non-materialistic priorities. What about finding love? Like Maya, most of us believe that the perfect relationship will make us happy. Is this true? Research shows that married people are generally happier than single people but only by a bit. When asked how happy they are, 25% of married people describe themselves as “very happy” but so do 21% of singles. Marriage seems to boost people’s happiness at the start, during the so-called “honeymoon” period, but after around two years of marriage, people return to about the same level of happiness they had before meeting their partner and that’s in good marriages. So it’s not just Maya who doesn’t seem to gain much happiness as the circumstances of her life improve. For most of us, changing the circumstances of our lives won't boost our happiness as much as we expect. It is important to emphasize that not everyone is lucky enough to be in this position. For people whose basic needs are not being met, or are under threat, improvements in circumstances can produce big boosts in well-being. But for most of us, that’s not really the case. Many people won’t get all that much happier simply through circumstantial improvements in their lives, even if they think they will. Maya is startled to hear that circumstances aren’t the key to happiness. Reflecting on how she’s always had a pretty pessimistic temperament, Maya remembers hearing that temperament and personality are largely genetically determined, and she starts to worry. Is her happiness actually controlled by her genes? Is she doomed to be unhappy? Research comparing identical and fraternal twins has shown that our genes can play a notable role in our happiness. The studies tell us that Maya’s genetics do partially explain her level of happiness. Luckily for her, though, the key word there is “partially” genetics only has a limited impact on how happy we are. The studies of happiness confirm what most of us take for granted: that we can do things to make ourselves happier. It’s just that the usual materialistic things we do to become happier often have a limited effect on our happiness. Luckily, there are more effective things we can do to increase our happiness. Maya is curious to hear about these other things that she could be doing to make herself happier. But as a critical thinker, Maya recognizes the dangers of taking research results at face value and using them to change her life before she really understands what they’re saying. And Maya recognizes that she can’t claim to really understand the results of all these happiness studies as long as she’s still missing a crucial piece of information: How is happiness even defined in these studies? What if the researchers’ definition of happiness is very different from the happiness that matters to Maya? If that's the case, then it might be a mistake for her to significantly change the way she pursues happiness based on their results. Before anything else then, Maya needs to determine how happiness researchers define happiness, and how well this definition lines up with her own understanding of happiness. How about you? How would you define happiness?