Earlier this year, we convened a meeting of some of the most influential figures in modern happiness research to discuss what they had learned in their 600 combined years of research and professional experience.
The group included pioneers like Richard Layard, Sonja Lyubomirsky and Martin Seligman, who turned happiness into a serious science. As a result of their work, 90 per cent of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries are now measuring life satisfaction.
Many of these pioneers have remained active into their 80s and 90s, still writing, teaching and mentoring. If any group could identify the ingredients of a good life, this was it.
We recently published the outcome of this discussion in the Journal of Happiness Studies. The group identified many central themes to happiness: having basic needs met, relationships, meaningful work and living in ways that align with one’s values and circumstances. Looking ahead, they were concerned about inequalities and declining youth well-being.
The single most recurring theme in the discussion, however, was the importance and joy that comes from social relationships.
Relationships are the linchpin
As an interdisciplinary team of well-being researchers, we expected relationships to be part of the answer. They affect every aspect of life, amplify positive events, mitigate negative events and are considered to be a basic psychological need.
This is not only observed in western countries; “having someone to count on” predicts life satisfaction around the world. In short, happy people have strong and satisfying relationships.
What we did not expect was how frequently relationships would come up. In nearly every part of the discussion spanning meaning, work, competition, culture, morality, technology and longevity, relationships were the linchpin of happiness.
From science labs to happiness labs, collaboration is key to happiness at work.
(Getty/Unsplash+)
Social engagement is a skill
In their personal lives, several of these pioneers deliberately protected time for spouses, relatives, friends or grandchildren. One reorganized a schedule to give their close friendships more room. Another, persuaded by intervention studies, began writing more messages of gratitude, behaving more sociably and trading superficial exchanges for deeper conversations.
Social engagement, they suggested, is not a luxury reserved for extroverts or the socially advantaged, but a skill anyone can cultivate. Connection may not always happen on its own, but it often begins with simple acts: taking an interest, reaching out and showing up. These are things we all can do.
Their professional lives told the same story. Consistent with the research literature, many pioneers actively built laboratories, departments and collaborations where students and colleagues felt trusted, supported and energized. They saw people do better work when others helped them flourish and they helped others, discovering that others’ success and happiness could add to, rather than subtract from, their own.
Pioneers of happiness research meet online to discuss the outcomes of decades of research.
(Lara Aknin), Author provided (no reuse)
Relationships help healthier aging
Happiness and relationships also offered a plausible link to the unusual longevity represented in the gathering.
The scholars did not explicitly agree that their research might have extended their lives, or that any single practice explained their vitality. Still, their own priorities echoed a large body of research connecting close relationships with healthier, happier aging — a finding undeniably witnessed by the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
The possibility lingered: Perhaps studying happiness had taught them to invest in the very bonds that helped keep them engaged in life?
When the conversation widened from individuals to societies, the relational theme became more urgent. Several participants worried about declining youth well-being, which they attributed to increasingly competitive cultures. Schools rank students against classmates. Universities and workplaces turn peers into rivals. Material comparison makes another person’s gain feel like one’s own loss.
Under those conditions, even talented young people can experience education not as discovery or fellowship, but as an effort to survive.
Invest in the people around you
The group did not deny that competition is part of human life or that it can sometimes spur innovation. But they challenged the assumption that self-interested rivalry is the key to progress. Human beings also survive and thrive through co-operation, social learning and mutual care.
Communities organized ‘we’ are better positioned to flourish than those trapped in ‘us versus them.’
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They argued that communities organized around a stronger sense of “we” are better positioned to flourish than those trapped in “us versus them.” This is consistent with research on the topic.
The moral insight was simple: Your happiness is not my unhappiness. Your well-being can strengthen mine, just as mine can strengthen yours. We flourish by building one another up.
The central conclusion was ancient enough to sound obvious but still not always easy to follow in our fast-paced society. A good and happy life is not constructed alone. It is made in the small connections with others in our daily lives, the workplaces we humanize, the rivalries we refuse, the communities we build and the society we all shape.
After hundreds of years of combined research, the pioneers’ most compelling insight was simple: Invest in the people around you.
