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One of the main areas of research in positive psychology is the search for positive traits of character, aka ‘strengths’. There are a few models of strengths out there now, such as Gallup’s workplace-oriented StrengthsFinder model (if you’ve seen the book ‘Now, discover your strengths’, that what that is all about), and the more recent Realise2 model from the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology. I’ll look at a different one here, the “Values in Action” model, or VIA, which was sort of the flagship project of pos psych. I might write something about the others another time, but it’ll be hard since Gallup are stingy about releasing their data (it’s a commercial product) and I know little about Realise2.

Can character be studied?

I think the actual question here is, does character exist? Some people, like the social constructionists, say no; essentially there is no character, it’s just a social construction, and the language a society has influences our perception of it. From this view, whatever the biases of the researchers are (conscious or not) will end up being what they find. More on this later. But, if character is real, and if there is consistency to it over time and across situations, then surely you can study it (assuming you can measure it too).

What is a strength?

The VIA model looks at character as a family of traits, which exist in different degrees in each individual. These different traits are strengths. Here’s how they were determined.

A number of researchers including Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman carried out a huge literature review of religious, philosophical, scientific and other texts from multiple cultures. Everything from the Bible to the Tao Te Ching was included, and they pulled out every mention they could find of any positive or virtuous characteristic, and made a big list. So they are not starting from existing scientific models and building upon them (although scientific papers were included in the lit search). This may be because there was little or no scientific framework to build on in the first place.

To narrow down the big list of candidate strengths, they applied a set of criteria. The aim here seemed, to me at least, not so concerned with finding out what character is, in a pure ‘what we find, we find’ mentality, but rather to find a specific model of character with applied ends in mind. I could be wrong but that’s what it seems like. Or maybe they thought this model would just be the starting point either way.

The criteria they used to select or reject strengths were not empirically determined, as far as I am aware. Here they are:

• Ubiquity— is widely recognized across cultures
• Fulfilling— contributes to individual fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness broadly construed
• Morally valued— is valued in its own right and not as a means to an end
• Does not diminish others— elevates others who witness it, producing admiration, not jealousy
• Nonfelicitous opposite— has obvious antonyms that are “negative”
• Traitlike— is an individual difference with demonstrable generality and stability
• Measurable— has been successfully measured by researchers as an individual difference
• Distinctiveness— is not redundant (conceptually or empirically) with other character strengths
• Paragons— is strikingly embodied in some individuals
• Prodigies— is precociously shown by some children or youths
• Selective absence—is missing altogether in some individuals
• Institutions—is the deliberate target of societal practices and rituals that try to cultivate it

They ended up with a list of 24 strengths after applying these criteria.

As you can see, these criteria make perfect sense – intuitively. You would expect character strengths to be fulfilling, measurable, have paragons, etc. You wouldn’t expect good character to be something that diminishes others, or is not morally valued.

But it’s still not empirical, no matter how much sense it makes. If you have a list of, say, 500 potential traits, you could end up with vastly different end results by using slightly different criteria. Remember our hypothetical social constructionist’s argument that researcher bias will influence what you come up with when you study character? Here’s their cue to hypothetically pipe up! But there’s more.

Some of the strengths in the model don’t actually meet all of these criteria. In the 800-page tome that describes this model (1), a chapter is given to each strength, along with a checklist of which ones it met. I don’t have the book here to look at, but there might have been a minimum number that they had to meet, or something like this.

What is more, the 24 strengths are organised into six virtues, and the strengths are seen as the route to that virtue. Again, there is no empirical basis for these larger categories, although arguments are presented as to why they are distributed as such. Here’s the list of strengths in their respective categories:

Wisdom and Knowledge

Creativity
Curiosity
Judgment, Open-Mindedness, critical thinking
Love of Learning
Perspective, wisdom

Courage

Bravery
Perseverance, industriousness
Honesty, authenticity, integrity
Zest

Humanity

Capacity to Love and Be Loved
Kindness, generosity and nurturance
Social Intelligence

Justice

Teamwork
Fairness
Leadership

Temperance

Forgiveness&Mercy
Modesty&Humility
Prudence
Self-Regulation, self-control

Transcendence

Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
Gratitude
Hope, optimism, future-mindedness
Humor
Religiousness & Spirituality

These six categories do not stand up to factor analysis. For example, Singh and Choubisa (2) report a five-factor solution, not six. I’m not entirely sure why the strengths were distributed in this way. I’d have to check up on that.

Still, there isn’t a huge problem at this stage. If categories were going to be used at all (other models such as Gallup do not bother), I’d have preferred they were empirical. But the main issue in my book are the 24 strengths that were eventually included, and how that list was arrived at. However a lot of work done afterwards to try to validate this model, so that may be a moot point.

Measuring the strengths

Strengths are measured using the VIA-IS (Values In Action Inventory of Strengths), which is a huuuuuge questionnaire. It has 240 questions, and takes about 45 minutes to complete. If you want to have a go at it, you can pop over to http://authentichappiness.org and take it for free; you do have to register though.

Anyway, the psychometric properties of the questionnaire are alright. There are some figures that psychologists test for when they come up with a new self-report measure. You want to make sure that people aren’t answering randomly, and that the construct is stable enough to be measured in this way. This figure comes out well for the VIA-IS – the correlations between two tests by the same people, 4 months apart was .7. That’s not bad at all. It shows there’s some stability there, but also some variation too, which what you’d expect since psychological traits tend to vary depending on all kinds of situational things.

You also test to see if it measures the thing you think it measures. This is where validity testing comes in. For me, the VIA-IS falls down a bit here. Because it’s measuring character, socially desirable responding is a real possibility. Gallup’s strengths questionnaire has an interesting way of minimising this – they put two strengths on opposite ends of a scale, and ask which one most represents you as a person. The VIA-IS has your usual scales, they might say “I find it easy to stick to an exercise program,” and ask how much is this like you on a scale of 1 to 5. Because they measure absolute scores, it’s easier to present yourself in a good light.

One way of checking for this is to give the questionnaire to a friend or family member, and say “How much do these represent X”. This brings its own problems and sources of bias, but you’d expect some correlation. The VIA-IS has observer report correlations of .3. Although that’s statistically significant, it’s not a strong correlation. It means 91% of the variance in your scores cannot be accounted for by what your close friend thinks of you. There are always sources of error in self-report measures, but still, I like to think we know our friends and family better than that.

If we do know them well, what is it that the VIA-IS is measuring? I don’t see this as a huge blow, more just a curious finding, as validation studies have approached this from other angles too.

For example, there’s been a twin study. You either love them or hate them, but twin studies reportedly help to tell you the genetic component to a particular characteristic. One way to do this, for example, is to compare the results of a group of identical twins who were raised together (same genes, same environment) with a group who were raised apart (same genes, different environment). Since monozygotic twins have the same genes, this gives you a clue about the influence of the environment.

According to Steger et al (3), there is a genetic component to the strengths over and above personality (as measured by the MPQ, not the five factor model, which would have been preferable). This is quite interesting, as some people think character simply represents the ‘good’ aspects of personality dimensions we already know about – this may show there’s more to it than that.

On top of that, there have been some interesting cross-cultural studies looking at the VIA strengths model. 117,676 adults were given the VIA-IS, covering 54 different countries (4). They tested correlations of the rank order of the strengths, not their absolute scores. They wanted to know whether different countries and cultures endorse different strengths to different degrees, for example, do Americans endorse persistence and industriousness more highly than Chinese, and do they in turn endorse teamwork more than Americans? This is as opposed to absolute scores, which would be like asking which country has the ‘most’ good character.

Based on what I’ve said so far about this model of strengths, and your own thoughts on human nature and cultural differences, what do you think the correlations were between countries?

Here are a few results I’ve picked out from the paper. Keep in mind that the correlations (p) are based on a comparison with the US score:

United States: –

United Kingdom: .84

Canada: .91

Australia: .86

Denmark: .69

Singapore: .68

India: .76

Argentina: .81

Japan: .79

Malaysia: .73

Brazil: .66

United Arab Emirates: .71

Nigeria: .80

Zimbabwe: .78

Bahrain: .68

Pretty high eh? These are fairly impressive correlations. You should know though, that this was a web survey, so these samples may not necessarily be representative of the whole country that they are from – only English-speaking people with web access could be studied. You’d expect people who live in Zimbabwe but speak English and have access to the web to be closer than people in Zimbabwe who don’t – there’s simply more exposure to Western culture.

So these results might be a little positively biased – however, there is evidence of similar results to these in the countries where the VIA-IS has been translated into the native tongue, and also where it has been given as a paper-and-pencil test rather than over the web.

Going even further, some tests have been done on people in cultures even further removed from the golden bubble of the West.

Biswas-Diener (5) compared three cultural groups – the Inughuit, an Inuit society in Greenland, the Maasai, tribal pastoralists in Kenya (the people whose women put the ceramic face plates in their lips), and students of the University of Illinois. They went through the list of strengths, asking whether the participant recognised it, how important it was, and whether they would want it in their kids. Results were slightly different between these groups, but they all reported a high level of recognition, importance, and desirability. Only 48% of the Masaai recognised, forgiveness, the next lowest was perspective and wisdom, recognised by 69% of the Inughuits. All the other strengths were recognised by 80% in each group.

I find that quite interesting, given the difference in way of life between these groups. The Inghuit live in houses and use cash, but hunting is a large part of their culture and brings in much of their food. The Maasai have little contact with western culture – very few speak a language other than their native Maa, and they have no TVs, houses, or magazines. Yet the recognition of the strengths was very high, overall.

So what does this all mean? Potentially, there is evidence of heritability, ubiquity across cultures that is pretty strong, and recognition in cultures where the people don’t even know what a TV is (presumably). Are we looking at an aspect of human nature here? Peterson and Seligman think so. They say (and I’ve seen this statement almost word for word in several papers):

“We speculate that these are grounded in biology through an evolutionary process that selected for these dispositions toward moral excellence as means of solving the important tasks necessary for the survival of the species” (6; p603-604)

A controversial group selectionist argument, as you can see. I really don’t know whether natural selection happens at the level of the gene, the group, or somewhere else, but given the on-going debate, I’d prefer to see this statement justified or explained in more depth. At least they make clear it’s a speculation though, no harm in throwing it out there to see if someone decides to test the hypothesis.

If character were purely a social construction, or if this model was insufficient to measure something real and stable, would we not expect lower correlations between countries? And we wouldn’t expect heritability either.

Whether the VIA model is ‘the’ character – assuming there is such a thing – I don’t know. Just as there might not be a ‘real’ thing called personality, only neurological differences that produce different behaviours for different people in different situations, but are similar enough that we can say “he’s neurotic”, “she’s extroverted”, maybe the situation is the same with character. That is, there might not be an ‘official’ thing called character, like there is an official thing called your arm, but there might be ‘something’ that is stable and measureable and useful to label ‘character’, and the VIA model might be one way of constructing that.

There have been some pretty interesting studies using this model, and it’s predictive of a host of beneficial outcomes. I have some criticisms and thoughts on this model, some I’ve mentioned here, the rest I’ll split the rest into a separate post as this is getting long. But what do you think? Are you sold on the model, or do you think character is something science should stay away from?

References:

(1) Peterson, C.,&Seligman, M. (2004) Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. NY: Oxford.

(2) Singh, K.&Choubisa, R. (2010). Empirical validation of values in action-inventory of strengths (VIA-IS) in Indian context. Psychological Studies, 55(2), 151-158.

(3) Steger, M. F., Hicks, B. M., Kashdan, T. B., Krueger, R. F.,&Bouchard, T. J., Jr. (2007). Genetic and environmental influences on the positive traits of the Values in Action classification, and biometric covariance with normal personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 524-539.

(4) Park, N, Peterson, C,&Seligman, M.E.P. (2006). Character strengths in fifty- four nations and the fifty US states. The Journal of Positive Psychology, July, 1(3), 118–129

(5) Biswas-Diener, R. (2006). From the equator to the North Pole: A study of character strengths. Journal of Happiness Studies, 7, 293–310.

(6) Park, N., Peterson, C.,&Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Strengths of character and well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 23, 603-619.

There’s an apparent paradox in the research on positive emotions, and how they relate to the immune system, something that doesn’t make sense on first inspection. But like many things in psychology, I think the answer has something to do with sex.

I was quite surprised to find out how much research there is into the effects of positive mood on our physiological state. It’s interesting how many markers there are of positive emotions in our physiology. Some are quite obvious, such as duchenne smiles and other changes in facial expression, but there are also changes in neurochemistry, and activation in the left prefrontal cortex of the brain.

One particularly interesting finding, though, is the result that positive emotions evoke an increased immune response. One example of such a study forced the activation of the left side of the brain using transcranial magnetic stimulation (something which sounds awfully painful but is apparently non-intrusive). This process actually increased the concentration of immunoglobin A in the saliva. This effect does not appear to be specific to the use of magnetic stimulation in general, because although stimulating the right side of the brain also caused an increase in immunoglobin A, the concentration dropped as soon as the stimulation of the brain did, while it remained for some time after left-side activation. (1)

But the interesting question to me is, why would the immune system increase it’s output along with the experience of positive emotions? According to Barbara Fredrickson, positive emotions signal a time when things are going well, when there are no particular threats around. If there was a threat that we should attend to, the brain would narrow our thought-action repertoire towards dealing with that threat in the form of a ‘negative’ emotion. However, when there is no particular threat, when things are going well, we’re better off broadening our perceptions and action repertoires, because, the theory goes, this will allow us to build our personal and social resources in preparation for future challenges. This is broaden-and-build theory, it’s a theory behind the purpose of positive emotions (and probably deserves its own post to be honest).

At first glance broaden-and-build theory seems somewhat at odds with the immune system studies. Surely, a time of broadened perception – a threat-free time – is a time to let the immune system rest a little. With no perceived threat around, why mobilise our defences? Why waste the energy? And also, why reduce our immune response when their is a threat?

These findings suggest that there is something about the behaviours associated with positive and negative emotions that require higher and lower immune responses, respectively. Researchers apparently don’t know what that is yet, but there are some possibilities.

Positive emotions are associated with approach related behaviours. This might include exploring the environment, playing, and, crucially, spending time with other people. Perhaps this latter point is important. Parasites and viruses would themselves be evolved and specialised for transmission between humans, and since times of positive emotions might involve building relationships with other people, including physical closeness, and in particular, more sexual activity, this is the time that the immune system is needed most.

In other words, we might be more likely to catch an infection from another human than we are from the things in the physical environment that trigger a negative emotion in us. When we come across the proverbial sabre toothed tiger, catching a cold is the least of our worries. In these situations, we’re better off diverting our energy away from our immune system, towards our muscles, and getting the hell out of there (or fighting).

Unfortunately I’m just speculating here, I definitely could be wrong and the reasons for this effect are not yet fully understood. But it’s an interesting possibility.

Reference:

Clow, A., Lambert, S., Evans., P., Hucklebridge, F., Higuchi, K. (2003). An investigation into asymmetrical cortical regulation of salivary S-IgA in conscious man using transcranial magnetic stimulation. International Journal of Psychopathology, 47, 57-64.

Every noticed how when something is vaguely Eastern and mystical, it sort of gets a special kind of regard from people? Maybe it’s the way almost every old Asian character in film and TV is incredibly wise and insightful, or something.

Anyway, I’ve noticed it. So I wanted to raise a few critiques of the science/Buddhism collaboration – which I think it’s a good thing overall – but might be a good example of the phenomenon I’ve just described. I’m quite interested in how old philosophies, systematically developed over thousands of years would compare to scientific testing (I found “The Happiness Hypothesis” a good book on basically that). But I think we have to be careful about these old philosophies, and how generalisable they are between cultures.

Monks, at the behest of the Dalai Lama, are being sent over for use as lab rats, umm, sorry, participants, in neuroscientific and other studies. Some very interesting stuff has come out of it, but I’ll just pick one – monks, after tens of thousands of hours’ of meditation practice, have far greater activation in the left prefrontal corted (PFC) than the average joe. The amount of activation correlates with the amount of practice, too.

The left-right prefrontal cortex asymmetry, is related to affect and well-being (with the left being associated with the positive emotions). The left side lights up, the right cortex dims down. When the left PFC lights up, certain limbic responses are also dimmed. So far so good. Also, changes seem to occur in the brain which affect it’s baseline state. Basically the results seem to be permanent, or at least, not limited to the time you are in meditation.

Is that what we want? It makes some intuitive sense. If positive emotions are good, good, good, and negative emotions are bad, bad, bad, such baseline alterations in brain function could be seen as a good thing.

But what else does the right PFC do, that we might not want to chronically inhibit through hours of meditation training? And what else does the left PFC do that we might not want to accentuate to a high degree?

On one hand, it seem a bit presumptuous to say that these monks, with their accumulated knowledge of 8,000 years, and all their wisdom and training, might be wrong; but right and wrong is kind of a fluid concept here.

Because really, what do these monks do all day? Some have completed 40,000 hours of meditation, blowing the 10,000 rule right out of the window. But what do you have to do to get to that amount? You have to do pretty much nothing else but meditate! Does the wisdom of someone who has sat in a cave all his life apply to the modern Western lifestyle?

Monks come over here all the time, but they get a pretty specialised experience of the West – as far as I know at least, maybe I’m showing my ignorance here. But they seem to give seminars, get accosted by various neuroscience labs, etc. They don’t get off a plane, try to find a job, settle down, start a family, pay taxes etc., do they?

So maybe inhibition of other brain functions might not be as apparent to them as it would be to someone with a different lifestyle.

Here’s one example. This study indicates that right PFC activation is involved in the monitoring of episodic memory retrieval, in order to make appropriate responses, as well as episodic memory retrieval. Also, I would add that people with injuries to the right PFC are often happy, but also impaired in other ways. Just Google “right prefrontal cortex” and see all the stuff it does/is associated with.

I guess I’m arguing against the extreme Buddhist position of devoting your life to meditation, which doesn’t really come up in practice very often. It’s not possible to meditate for 40k hrs and live a normal life, so the points kind of moot. And certainly less intense meditation practices are looking more and more like they are beneficial to modern folk too.

But, we don’t really know a lot about the more realistic, in-between grey areas (say, 10k hrs). I think it can be easy to give Buddhism a kind of special status, given that it’s the most… systematic, of the religions (apparently its members see it more as training than as a religion). And to my knowledge it is the only religion that has gladly and willingly opened up its ideas and principles to potential falsification – which is worth a lot.

It’s still important to be guided by data and theory, though. I’ve read a number of papers which have either tested monks, meditation, or some other concept related to Buddhism, and I’m sure I can pick up the high regard in which the authors hold Buddhism coming through between the lines. A bit of emotive language here, an unsupported statement there, maybe some Buddhist jargon thrown in… Nothing major, but enough to notice it. I wonder if anyone else has noticed the same.

Maybe we’ll do 30 years of research and find out that the Buddhists were right about everything all along, and why didn’t we just believe them 30 years ago and save the time? Because no matter how passionate one might be about Buddhism, if you’re going to believe one thing without evidence, what reason do you have to not believe someone else without evidence? You don’t have one.

Besides, it was Mr Miyagi who said:

“Daniel-san, never put passion before principle. Even if win, you lose.”

And as everyone knows, you can’t argue with Mr Miyagi.

There are many definitions out there, but they all point towards roughly the same thing:

* A science of well-being
* A science of well-being and optimal functioning
* A scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive
* Positive psychology is the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions
* The scientific study of what makes life most worth living

The rest of this article just expands on the above and adds some detail – if you already get the message, stop reading now!

Martin Seligman founded positive psychology when he became president of the APA in 2000. His premise was that, quite understandably following the World Wars, psychology had placed a lot of focus on what is wrong with people – curing what ails them. Perhaps too much. The purpose of creating a field called “positive psychology” was to attempt to redress this balance.

It’s not a new field. It’s just a label that pulls certain topics under an umbrella to get research going in a particular direction, and bring together lines of research that might previously have been separate. Of course, once you start labelling something, people will identify with it and start to relate to it. So naturally people will call themselves positive psychologists, there will be debate over what topics should fall under its purview, etc. But really, that’s not important. These topics have been discussed within psychology as far back as William James’s “Healthy Mindedness” in 1902. The topic is not new – the labelled umbrella is.

To give a few examples, the following topic areas fall under the positive psychology umbrella, but have been studied for a long time; some for decades:

* Happiness / subjective well-being
* Optimism
* Emotional intelligence
* Intrinsic motivation

But try looking for papers on the following topics before the year 2000, and you’ll find much less to go on (Gable and Haidt, 2005):

* Awe
* Curiosity
* Gratitude
* Character
* Strengths

That’s basically the gist of it.

Isn’t this prescriptive?

Although, naturally, there are applied ends in mind with the discussion of many of these topics, and some people feel positive psychology is a little prescriptive (Seligman even said one aim of pos psych is to increase the total tonnage of happiness in the world).

I’m not sure I completely agree with that. I don’t read papers saying “People should do xyz”, just the usual “We found that x resulted in y.” If the problem is the study of topics which might become prescriptive in applied settings, the same argument applies to clinical psychology, and pretty much every other science too. Having said that, I do roll my eyes when yet another positive psychologist publishes a self-help book (how many books on happiness to we really need???).

Why not get rid of the bad, then work on the good?

There’s an argument that can be made. Why, if there is so much suffering in the world, do we not get rid of that and then all get to work on the positive side of things?

It’s a good question. But maybe the study of removing suffering isn’t enough. You could argue that by studying the negative aspects of life, you are creating a lexicon, adding words to common vernacular… perhaps this alone isn’t beneficial. Perhaps you can’t get rid of the bad solely by studying the bad.

Also, I’d question why ‘removal of suffering’ is zero point in this argument. The common way to describe this (which might not be all that accurate, but makes the point), is the -10 to +10 scale. If you go for psychotherapy, it’s to remove your illness. So you go from, say, -6 to 0. But why zero? Who decided that one? Why isn’t the ‘zero’ point +3; maybe a low level of contentedness? (or, why isn’t removal of suffering -3; however you want to look at it). That’s an inherent principle of positive psychology – ‘good’ is not ‘absence of bad’.

What positive psychology is not

The number of things that positive psychology is not is essentially infinite, so to save space I’ll mention just a couple of things off the top of my head:

* The alternative to ‘negative’ psychology
Calling a movement “positive” psychology and saying there has been too much focus on disorder up to a certain point is not the same as saying that there is “positive” and “negative” psychology. For most things that are studied, you probably couldn’t apply either label and be happy with it. Certainly clinical psychology you could say had gotten skewed, which I think is probably where the reaction of positive psychology largely came from, but no one is claiming that everything that isn’t “positive” psychology is “negative” psychology.

Also, the claim is not being made that ‘positive’ topics are better in some way, or can teach us more about people and the world. Or that ‘negative’ topics are worth less or can teach us less. On the contrary – you could claim that it is precisely because the study of disorder has proceeded at such a magnificent rate that an imbalance between this and ‘positive’ topics has become apparent!! (Gable&Haidt, 2005)

* Positive thinking
Sometimes, I wish positive psychology had been called something else. I’ll be honest, I find the name quite cheesy, and I cringe inside a little every time someone asks what I’m studying. They assume I’m talking about positive thinking, Tony Robbins, or the “Law” of attraction.

It is not a prescription to only look on the bright side. Instead, it’s a call to study these things scientifically. If all the data points to positive thinking, so be it; if it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

It is also not a denial about problematic mental states, which are real and debilitating. This is not a take-over!! The study of topics like well-being, character, gratitude etc., is supposed to go alongside other topics – not take the place of them!

References

Gable, S.&Haidt, J (2005). What (and Why) is Positive Psychology? Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 103–110

See this paper also for more info:

Seligman, M. E. P.&Csikszenmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5-14.

Although they are often unpleasant, negative emotions have an important purpose in our lives, because they prepare us to deal with potential threats. If someone transgresses against you, you become angry, so that you might retaliate and discourage future transgressions. If you find yourself in a dangerous situation, anxiety will help you avoid the same situation in the future. The purpose of negative emotions is to focus your attention, make you aware of things that are very important, and get you to take appropriate action. In a way, they are safety mechanisms – your mind thinks you’re in trouble and cuts off access to other states to make you react more quickly.

In this sense, there are no ‘negative’ emotions. As an example, eyewitnesses to a violent attack can often describe the weapon used in detail, but remember little about what the assailant looked like. When there’s a dangerous maniac around, you need to know that he’s carrying a knife, and where exactly that knife is at all times; not whether he matched his shoes with his belt that day. The problem of course, is that in some people, these unpleasant emotions are triggered too often, or in situations where they aren’t needed.

On the other hand, positive emotions have the opposite effect. Rather than narrowing our attention and potential behaviours, they broaden it. Instead of reducing the number of thoughts that enter your head, or the restricting your behaviours, these repertoires are increased. So when your happier, you’re more creative, flexible and you look at the bigger picture rather than the little details. This makes uplifting moods more useful for tasks like brainstorming, where you have to come up with new ideas. It also makes them less effective for tasks like proofreading, where attention to detail is essential. By understanding how our mood influences our perceptions, we can make sure our emotions are appropriate for the task at hand (such as through our choice of background music; something upbeat for creative tasks, and something more downbeat and thoughtful for tasks that need attention to detail).

Refs;

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology. American Psychologist. 56 (3), 218-226.

Note: I’m not sold on this theory. More on that later, but for now, this is how the theory of the happiness formula is commonly explained.

What your instincts tell you about how to be happier is probably wrong. Most people try to change their happiness by changing their circumstances. The logic is, by changing their life situation to one they are happier with – more money, better house, different gender, whatever – they’ll become happier because they like the new situation more. This true to a certain extent, but is basically misguided.

The happiness you experience comes from three sources; your genetics, your life circumstances, and your intentional activities, split like this:

So the ‘happiness formula’ is this:

Happiness = Genetic Set Point + Life Circumstances + Intentional Activities

According to this model, life circumstances account for only 10% of your happiness, genetics account for 50%, and intentional activities account for 40%. Intentional activities are the ways we act, think about, and respond to the world. In other words, the same life circumstance has the potential to cause different amounts of happiness in people depending on how they react to it. There are certain ways of thinking and behaving that cause people to respond to events with more negative emotions, and likewise, there are ways of thinking and behaving that cause people to respond with more positive emotion.

While there is some debate about the specifics of this model, one thing is well accepted – if you want to be happier, the best way is to focus on changing your intentional activities. You can’t change your genetics, and circumstances seem to have a smaller effect. Of course, if your circumstances are particularly bad; if you’re in an abusive relationship, if you’re homeless, if you’ve recently been incarcerated – your circumstances will have a stronger effect on your emotions. But it’s not possible for me describe the way out of every bad situation every reader of this might find themselves in. Everyone can change their intentional activities, though.

Why would circumstances count for so little? It might seem backwards, but it makes more sense when you add in the concept of hedonic adaptation, which we learned about earlier in this chapter. Many things give us a boost in happiness, but we adapt to them over time, and the happiness wears off. Circumstances are more long-standing. Intentional activities are either short-term (giving no time to adapt), change how we react to circumstances, or they make changes to the brain such that it brings more positive emotion and less negative emotion.

Let’s try an example. Take marriage. Marriage is long-term, and seems to make most people happier for a few years, before they adapt to it. But expressing gratitude to each other, having those awful picnic things where you feed each other food (yuck!), savouring the good times, talking about all the other disgustingly romantic things you did together; these things boost happiness, but as they are episodic there’s no adaptation to them. You just have to keep doing different activities.