Lots of philosophers have tackled the question of happiness going back to ancient Greece, and there are two main types of happiness according to ancient Greek philosophers as far as I can tell: hedonic and eudaimonic. Can you explain the difference? Hedonic happiness is what a lot of laypeople mean when they say happiness — just a sense of good feeling. Often when we’re thinking of hedonic pleasure, we’re thinking of the really basic stuff: good food, good sex, a feeling of accomplishment. Eudaimonic happiness is bigger. It’s about living a good life. Happiness that comes not just from your own success, your own pleasure, but from other people and from building character. If you look back at the ancient folks like Aristotle, they knew about both, but when push came to shove they were like, Go for the eudaimonic.
In ancient Greece, the big philosophical debate was also if happiness was nature or nurture. What does science say? Are certain people more predisposed to be happy? The way scientists study this is they do these classic studies with twins, and what they generally find is that happiness is heritable. The important thing to know, though, is that the heritability factor is pretty low. It’s about the same rate as what you’d see for religiosity or risk-taking. If your parents were super religious, maybe you’re more likely to be super religious, but it’s not set in stone. That’s the message of happiness: There’s probably some component that’s a little built in, but so much more of it is under our conscious control.
So we can learn to be happy? That’s the premise of my work, honestly. And interestingly, this was something that the ancient Greeks didn’t totally realize. If you look at Aristotle, he’s like, You can do it, but it’s going to be hard. Aristotle talked about “the happy few.” Scientifically, we think it’s a little bit more malleable today, but we still share with Aristotle this idea that if you want to be happy, you can do it, but like all good things in life, you’ve got to put some time in.
Can I ask you what exactly you mean when you say “happy,” though? Because I was thinking about moments when I felt happy. I lived for two years in Rio de Janeiro, and I would wake up every morning and look out the window, and you couldn’t be unhappy there, because it was so beautiful. I had my young daughter, and she would go to the beach every day, and I had good friends. It’s not even like looking back I was happy — I knew at the time that I was experiencing happiness. Is that different from just general well-being? You were experiencing lots of positive emotions. It’s awesome to live in Rio de Janeiro. It’s awesome to stick your feet in the sand. That just feels good. That’s half of what social scientists mean when they talk about happiness. They’re talking about the feeling, the ratio of your positive to negative emotions. But happiness isn’t about getting rid of your negative emotions. That’s toxic positivity. Happiness, according to social scientists, has a second component, which is this idea of being happy with your life. You have a sense of meaning. You have a sense of purpose. It feels good to be you because of how you think it’s going. This is the cognitive part of happiness.
