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Agree Maslow was right! :)
Professor Ori Heffetz
Associate Professor of Economics, Cornell University and Hebrew University -
Agree Interesting proposition. Rare personality types is not something economists tend to focus on, so I'd appeal to our personality psychologist colleagues to answer in more quantitative detail about the rarity. However, from all the evidence about the importance of relationships for wellbeing, I'd certainly call such individuals "outliers". Though I would note that warm relationships/friendships can be with other species, too.
Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Associate Professor, McGill University -
Agree Social relationships are one of the strongest drivers of subjective wellbeing in every piece of research I have seen that includes them. This includes both their impact on evaluative measures and also their impact on measures of experienced wellbeing. People with low levels of wellbeing generally are people who experience poor outcomes across the majority of the drivers of subjective wellbeing. Similarly, people with high wellbeing are, empirically, people with good outcomes across the majority of the drivers of subjective wellbeing. This makes the existence of people with high wellbeing but poor social relations unusual, but not impossible.
Doctor Conal Smith
Principal, Kōtātā Insight -
Completely disagree "While research consistently shows that strong inter-personal relationships contribute positively to individual well being, survey based evidence, at least in Western nations, also consistently shows that most people report high levels of subjective well-being. In Australia, for example, the HILDA Survey finds that mean life satisfaction scores on a 0-10 scale year average close to 8 every year. Further, my own analysis of long-term life satisfaction suggests very few Australians report being persistently dissatisfied: less than 2% of the population (of persons aged 15+) average 5 or less on this scale when measured over multiple years. At the other end of the scale, 50% of the adult population average 8 or more. This distribution is thus too heavily weighted in favour of high scores to support the hypothesis that only rarely do ""loners"" have high levels of well-being. Indeed, using a simple measure of loneliness, and just using data from the 2019 survey wave, I find that among persons who report strongest agreement with the statement ""I often feel very lonely"" (i.e., selected 7 on the 7-point disagree/agree scale) more than 40% still reported life satisfaction scores of 8 or more. On average, lonely people are much less satisfied with their lives (mean score of 6.7 for the most lonely vs a mean of 8.5 for the least lonely), but that is very different to the claim that it is rare for lonely people to have high levels of well-being."
Professor Mark Wooden
Professorial Research Fellow and Director of the HILDA Survey Project, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic and Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne -
Agree Emotionally warm social relationships are highly conducive to enhancing wellbeing. In answering the question, however, we need to consider what might be regarded as a 'high' level of wellbeing. The statement is likely to be correct when comparing people within a country (e.g. see overviews such as Layard: 'Happiness', 2011, or Easterlin: 'An Economist's Lessons on Happiness', 2021). However when comparing people across the globe, we see high levels of evaluative wellbeing (say at least a 7/10 on life satisfaction - when the 2018 WHR shows a global median of 5/10) for many people in rich countries, some of whom are likely to suffer from loneliness etc. Their material wealth and freedoms in part compensate for their personal circumstances.
Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington -
Agree The findings contributed by economists and psychologists studying human suffering from loneliness, divorce, the loss of loved ones, and other experiences of withdrawal from positive social relations show clearly that this social withdrawal harms wellbeing. Further, literatures on the origins of criminal behaviour and psychopathology indicate socially-mediated abuse (i.e., dysfunctional social relationships of various sorts) as a primary cause. So, positive interpersonal connections bring happiness and normal functioning to humans. It is possible for more than a "very rare" fraction of humans to enjoy high levels of wellbeing even without positive social connections? On this point i am less certain, and studies less frequently ask the question in this way. Some people have excellent imaginations and can train themselves to get quite a lot of pleasure from other things even when low on social contact, at least temporarily. It is also possible to train up using AI substitutes to some extent, though given the present technological frontier i doubt this would be able to create a full substitute.
Professor Gigi Foster
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, School of Economics, UNSW Business School -
Agree Having warm social relationships is a basic need of human beings. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that subjective well-being (SWB) rests on the three pillars having, loving and being. If a person does not experience "loving", the other two pillars have to carry the load. This is not entirely impossible (think of a happy hermit), but for most human beings not very realistic. Most likely, a lonely billionaire will not chose the 9 or 10 on the happiness scale. Most humans are better off with warm social relationships.
Professor Jan Delhey
Professor of Sociology, University of Magdeburg -
Completely disagree High-quality interpersonal relations have been shown to be fundamental to people's satisfaction with life. Bjorn Grinde has even provided an evolutionary explanation for the importance of human relations in people's happiness. Both quantity and quality of interpersonal relations matter for happiness; research shows that it is very important for these relations to be genuine, person-based, and non-instrumental. Thus, we must not confuse the concept of social capital (which focuses on civic and instrumental relations) with that of person-based interpersonal relations (which focuses on enjoyment of life)
Professor Mariano Rojas
Professor of Economics, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla -
Agree I agree partially with the sentence because I don't believe that "only very rare individuals" enjoy life without social relationships. However, the pooled European Quality of Life Survey shows that 81% of respondents with rich social lives declared to be satisfied with their lives, whereas the share of satisfied people among those with poor social relations is 55.5%. A mix of cultural, social and evolutionary reasons can explain this relationship, and probably there is some truth in all of them. However, it is unclear which of the three aspects matters most. The answer is important because if it is an evolutionary trait, then a culture that promotes individualistic and materialistic values will likely generate cognitive dissonance, unhappiness and conflicts. The Covid-19 pandemic offered another reason for the association between happiness and social relations: countries in which people enjoy rich social lives fared the pandemic better than others: they experienced less stringent policies, less positive cases, and faster recovery after a peak in contagions.
Doctor Francesco Sarracino
Economist, Research Division of the Statistical Office of Luxembourg -STATEC -
Completely agree "It is pretty much the central finding in the wellbeing literature that warm social relations are a huge part of wellbeing and that people without them suffer. We see this in thousands of studies. There is no research I know of that has identified a sizeable group of very happy people who go without good social relations. There is no paper called ""the happy hermit"" or ""satisfied in solitary confinement"". Yet, despite it being so ubiquitous, the finding is not without strong implications, particularly for an age of lockdowns and social distancing that reduces the intimacy of social ties. The finding exposes lockdowns as wellbeing-reducing. Also, the finding has implications in particular for economics that has as its workhorse model the notion of the solitary consumer who is unaffected by what others consume. On that basis, higher material consumption is the main thing for policy to aim for. If warm social relations are the main thing to aim for, totally different policy aims come into view, such as how other societies can copy cultures where warm social relations are normal. "
Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics -
Agree The positive effect of good social relationships on individuals’ wellbeing emerges from many and many studies, without necessarily specifying the exact meaning of the term ‘good’. For example, ‘trust in others’, ‘reciprocity’, ‘altruism’ are a very used proxies for good social relationships, but they do not necessarily imply ‘having strong and emotionally warm social relationships’, which is more demanding. A more complete and effective (but complex) measure is used by psychology studies in the Attachment Approach applied to adults: i.e. ‘having an easy of becoming emotionally close to others; feeling comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me; not being worried about being alone or not being accepted by others.†An economic-psychology study shows some evidence that economic growth increases subjective well-being more in those countries where the average of this measure of social attachment is higher (Böckerman et al., 2016).
Professor Maurizio Pugno
Full Professor of Economics, University of Cassino -
Agree "There is a large literature showing that supportive relationships are a consistently strong correlate of well-being. More than this, several theories regard social connection as a basic need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Ryan & Deci, 2000). People who lack social support and social connections are more likely to experience loneliness and suffer negative health consequences from chronic stress. That said, it’s worth noting that certain components of well-being may be more strongly tied to social support than other components. In a global sample of adults, social support and feeling respected correlate .18 and .11 with life satisfaction, but .29 and .36 with positive feelings (Tay & Diener, 2011). Thus, to some extent, it may be possible for a person to have high life satisfaction without strong social support—particularly if they are wealthy. However, supportive relationships are likely to contribute to greater emotional well-being, meaning in life, and still make an independent contribution to life satisfaction above and beyond a person’s wealth. Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529. psyh. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497 Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78. psyh. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68 Tay, L., & Diener, E. (2011). Needs and subjective well-being around the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 354–365. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0023779 "
Professor William Tov
Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University -
Agree "Professor Diener work stresses the importance of social capital for our happiness beyond and above our material wellbeing. The happiness literature has consistently shown a positive and strong correlation between wellbeing and social capital, both formal and informal. It is however difficult to identify which part of it is causal. For example, professor Diener (Diener and Biswas-Diner, 2008, chapter 2) would argue that it is not only that social relationships are crutial for our wellbeing, but it is also happiness (being cheerful, smiling, optimisms,…) that helps us to connect to others which, in turn, will increase our wellbeing. In other words, a virtuous circle. People feel attracted to those that smile and it’s pleasant to be around. This means that it is not clear what would be an exogenous effect of social capital on happiness, although it seems plausible that the correlation would persist. Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener, 2008. Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Wiley-Blackwell."
Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC -
Agree While not everyone is the same, the quantity and quality of our social relationships is an important driver for well-being on average. I would argue that this not only encompasses family and friends, but also how we treat strangers and how much we trust others in society. So some of this is objective in terms of who we meet and have in our lives, but some of this is also subjective, how we perceive those relationships.
Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich -
Completely agree "If one were to equate wellbeing with nothing more than life satisfaction, then this statement is very likely false: it isn't hard to find people who will sincerely report high levels of life satisfaction in just about any sort of life, including people who are depressed or are resigned to lives they think are going badly. (Being satisfied doesn't mean you think your life is going well, just that it's good *enough*, can't complain.) But of course, relationships are still strongly related in general to life satisfaction, along with about every other wellbeing indicator, and there's probably nothing more important for human wellbeing. One the many vital roles Ed Diener played in this field is that he was very cautious about what the science showed, and never pretended that life satisfaction alone sufficed for wellbeing. It's a really important and valuable indicator, and vastly better than just counting money. But this is partly a philosophical question, as wellbeing involves a value judgment about who is better or worse off. And no one working on the philosophy of wellbeing that I know of would identify wellbeing with life satisfaction alone. But we'd likely all agree that it's rare if not impossible for someone to attain a high level of wellbeing without good relationships."
Professor Dan Haybron
Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University -
Completely agree As Aristotle said, Man is a social animal. Autistic individuals may be an exception, but having strong and emotionally warm social relationships is a biological need for almost all people. Loneliness not only lowers wellbeing, but also has negative health consequences.
Professor Guy Mayraz
Lecturer, University of Sydney -
Agree Regular and close social contacts, trust in others and having people with whom to share experiences, be they positive or negative, are generelly among the most important ingredients to living a happy and satisfied life.
Professor Andreas Knabe
Professor (Chair in Public Economics), Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg -
Neither agree nor disagree "If high level of happiness implies that the individuals are in equilibrium with both their micro and macro universes, then it is logical that the individual’s connection with herself/himself and other individuals are functioning well. However, given that the connections of an individual with others are both formal, informal and a combination of formal and informal, some individuals might experience more often formal connections that are by construction less emotionally warm. Therefore, even though the earlier literature reported evidence that ""warm and trusting relationships with others"" are important for the individual's high level of wellbeing, we need to learn more about the dynamics and the sustainability of this evidence over time and how long and how much could ""something else"" compensate for the absence of "" having strong and emotionally warm social relationships"". Today's progress and creativity in collecting information might very soon change both the way in which we collect and measure the individual's wellbeing and emotionally warm social relationships. But, nonetheless, “clinicians, policy makers and citizens stand to benefit significantly from standardisation of measurement toolsâ€.* * Hone, L.C., Jarden, A., Schofield, G.M., & Duncan, S. (2014). Measuring flourishing: The impact of operational definitions on the prevalence of high levels of wellbeing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 4(1), 62-90. doi:10.5502/ijw.v4i1.4 "
Professor Daniela Andrén
Senior Lecturer, Örebro University School of Business -
Agree If we consider personality (e.g. Big 5) and needs hierarchy (Maslow), then we know that agreeable open people who are not too conscientious and free of emotional instability, are happier. As we ascend Maslow’s hierarchy we move from sustenance and shelter towards the need for human interaction, a relationship. People who are in a stable relationship tend to be agreeable open type people, and happier. The question is: does our progress from sustenance to relationship emerge from our genes, or, from learned experience. We receive love from others (especially when we are young) and we reciprocate by extending love to other. To do anything else puts us in a state of cognitive dissonance, we get that queasy feeling in the tummy (negative affect). Human like to be liked, we like to love., that love makes us feel happy.
Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
World Wellbeing Panel
Only very rare individuals have high levels of wellbeing without having strong and emotionally warm social relationships.
Most individuals can choose a happy way of life, though many do not realize they truly have such a choice.
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Agree Of course, not everybody. But many can. Why don't they? Many reasons. Stress, for example, often gets in the way; implementing a choice to reduce stress may involve the hard work of changing old habits. Easier said than done.
Professor Ori Heffetz
Associate Professor of Economics, Cornell University and Hebrew University -
Disagree There are certainly inspiring outliers who have embraced an optimistic mindset to life in the face of severe hardships. It also seems to be clear that everyone can benefit from training and practice in mental skills (mindfulness, emotional first aid, gratitude, etc) to improve their frame of mind independent of external circumstances. However, one of the strengths of measuring life satisfaction is that it is sensitive to circumstances in life that are not a matter of individual choice. It recognizes the importance of national and collective circumstances, of accidents of birth and early life, and so on. These factors (and our collective, not individual responsibility to address them) appear to be of overwhelming importance for wellbeing, globally and in most societies. Therefore, believing in the importance of "non-cognitive skills" for improving individual wellbeing does not mean that we should give support to statements like the one given. (We should not!)
Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Associate Professor, McGill University -
Disagree While some of the drivers of subjective wellbeing lie within a person's control, there are also large exogenous influences. Which country a person is born into, for example, has an extremely large impact on their expected wellbeing. Even within-country variation is affected both by luck and by exogenous influences. While a person can make choices that will lead to a happier life, given a set of external constraints, those external constraints still matter.
Doctor Conal Smith
Principal, Kōtātā Insight -
Agree "It is clear, at least in Western nations, that the large majority of the population, despite very different life circumstances, report being contented, satisfied and happy with their lives. But is this the result of choice? Some will likely argue that many have no choice; that luck also matters a lot. Clearly people make both good and bad choices throughout life, and people are also exposed to both good and bad events, but what matters most for well-being is how people cope with the outcomes of those choices and events. In some cases, bad choices or bad events overwhelm people, ultimately resulting in serious declines in well-being (reflected most obviously in mental health problems). But the survey evidence suggests that most people cope; most people are resilient and thus well-being tends to be maintained even when life seemingly goes to hell (or at least recovers quite quickly). So in short, I agree that most people can ""choose"" a happy way of life that suits them, and hence I agree with the statement, but at the same time I am not sure it matters all that much. Most people are able to cope with what life throws at them. Thus what matters more for well being is not the choices we make (or even the unanticipated shocks that occur) but how resilient people are to the consequences of these choices and events."
Professor Mark Wooden
Professorial Research Fellow and Director of the HILDA Survey Project, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic and Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne -
Neither agree nor disagree "The answer to this question in part depends on who defines what is 'a happy way of life'. In rich countries with widespread freedoms, the answer is likely to be 'agree' whether we allow the individual or an external evaluator (a la Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum) to decide. In countries where freedoms are more limited (e.g. restrictions on what females are allowed to do) then an external evaluator may decide that the person does not lead a happy way of life even if the person themselves decides they do. In many poor, and especially war-torn, countries many people evidently do not lead a happy way of life because of their trying external circumstances (World Happiness Report, 2018). It is hard to believe that the bulk of these people really have much of a choice about leading a happy way of life. "
Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington -
Completely agree The main exceptions to this that come to mind would be people with brain hormone imbalances who truly cannot choose happiness because their brain chemistry keeps them in a perpetually unhappy state, and people enduring so much physical pain or exhaustion that there is insufficient mental energy left to focus on making happy choices. The big lesson of cognitive behavioural therapy is that how you think about the situation you are facing strongly influences how you feel about it, and while we may not be able to control our feelings, with practice we can control our thoughts.
Professor Gigi Foster
Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator, School of Economics, UNSW Business School -
Agree I believe a conscious choice of a happy way of life is not necessary, as happiness is best understood as a by-product of other activities which are, in some way, "good" for us. Making happiness a declared goal might even complicate achieving happiness, as some cumbersome questions arise: What do I want? What suits me? Post-modern human beings need to be quite good philosophers.
Professor Jan Delhey
Professor of Sociology, University of Magdeburg -
Neither agree nor disagree I think persons have some room to choose a way of life that leads to happiness, but this does not imply for their happiness -or unhappiness- to depend exclusively on what they choose. I would not forget the role that context plays in a person's happiness; in fact, the literature shows that circumstances matter for people's happiness. It is not the same to navigate in calm waters than to do it in turbulent ones, even if you are an expert sailor. Similarly, even if you have good personal skills to aim at happiness, it is not the same to do it within a favorable context than to do it within a hostile one. Thus, being unhappy is not necessarily an individual's fault and it does not necessarily implies a mistake in choosing his/her way of life. It is very important for scholars to study the social, economic and political contextual factors that contribute for these persons to be able of attaining a satisfactory life.
Professor Mariano Rojas
Professor of Economics, Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla -
Disagree I believe that people can choose a happy way of life, and that they do their best to choose a course of action that can lead to a happy life. Their ability to choose, however, is limited by external factors, including the prevailing socio-economic and political context. For instance, in a society oriented to profit-maximization, that introduces a trade-off between leisure and working time, in which what people can or cannot do depends on what they have, the possibility to choose a happy way of life is limited. Rather, people are "pushed" to prioritize targets that provide the illusion of happiness, such as positional goods, and to sacrifice aspects that, on the contrary, would durably contribute to their well-being.
Doctor Francesco Sarracino
Economist, Research Division of the Statistical Office of Luxembourg -STATEC -
Agree "Happiness is indeed an orientation as much as it is an outcome. As an orientation it points people towards social relations, mental stability, meaningful activities, and seeking the impulses needed to be entertained and occupied. Hence to ""do what makes me happy"" is also a means to other ends than happiness. ""Is this job really making me happy?"" and ""Am I really happy in this country with these people"" are natural questions in a happiness ""way of life"". It is a way of life that arguably increases autonomy and reduces materialism. The wellbeing literature hardly used to talk about this, nor is this the view in government or much of the population in the West. The dominant view is that happiness is 'merely' an outcome that needs 'inputs' to be produced, like a cake that needs ingredients. That view is limited in that it does not take the knowledge people have about their own happiness and about the quality of experiences with various parts of their life seriously as a means of discovery of what to do about different parts of their life. Effectively, questioning major parts of life as to whether they are ""making us happy"" is a heuristic for self-discovery and for living. Yet, the mindfulness literature, cognitive behaviour therapy, consumer sentiment analysis by companies, and many other recent changes in the wellbeing landscape are about taking the information already within individuals as to what makes them happy much more seriously."
Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics -
Completely agree "Adequate evidence to prove this statement is hard to find (and to produce). Nevertheless, the following studies help for a positive answer. Fleurbaey and Schwandt (2016) show, on the basis of a representative sample of the US population, that 31% of them recognize that they have unexploited possibilities to enhance their subjective well-being, being money non-constraining. They could realize these possibilities, but 12% think that other goals are more important. Oreopoulos (2007) and Oreopoulos and Salvanes (2011) show that adolescents may be myopic when they decide to drop out of school, thus failing to improve their own wellbeing, which they could have obtained with greater education (as effective way for better health and relationships). The psychologists Dunn, Wilson, and Gilbert (2003) show that students of a convenient sample place less weight, when imagining their future happiness in dormitories, on social features than on physical features of their location, despite accurately recognizing that social features were more important when asked explicitly about the determinants of happiness. Therefore, in order to increase societal wellbeing, education is important, and new attention should be paid to avoid goods and activities that distract people from the fundamental determinants of wellbeing. Böckerman, P, Laamanen, J-P, Palosaari, E (2016). The role of social ties in explaining heterogeneity in the association between economic growth and subjective well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies 17: 2457-79. Dunn EW, Wilson TD, and Gilbert DT (2003) Location, Location, Location: the misprediction of satisfaction in housing lotteries. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29(11), 1421-1432. Fleurbaey, M, Schwandt, H (2016). Do people seek to maximise their subjective well-being – and fail? IZA DP No. 945. Oreopoulos P (2007) Do Dropouts Drop Out Too Soon?. Journal of Public Economics, 91(11–12): 2213–29. Oreopoulos P, Salvanes KG (2011) Priceless: non pecuniary benefits of schooling. Journal of Economic Perspectives 25, 159-84."
Professor Maurizio Pugno
Full Professor of Economics, University of Cassino -
Agree "I agree that individuals can make choices that enhance their well-being but this does not mean that everyone can simply choose to become extremely happy and cheerful. Twin studies suggest that well-being is moderately heritable (Bartels, 2015), that there are genetic influences on well-being. These genetic influences play a large role in the stability of well-being levels. This is consistent with the idea of a well-being set point that differs across individuals. However, environmental factors can still have large effects on well-being (Geerling & Diener, 2018), and there is evidence that set points are not fixed but can change in response to life events (Diener et al., 2006). Thus, set points might be better conceptualized as the center of a range within which well-being levels can fluctuate. Though it is not easy for a person to completely change their environment, they can make choices that help them stay in the upper range of their well-being potential, and live lives that are more satisfying to them. Bartels, M. (2015). Genetics of wellbeing and its components satisfaction with life, happiness, and quality of life: A review and meta-analysis of heritability studies. Behavior Genetics, 45(2), 137–156. psyh. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-015-9713-y Diener, E., Lucas, R. E., & Scollon, C. N. (2006). Beyond the hedonic treadmill: Revising the adaptation theory of well-being. American Psychologist, 61(4), 305–314. psyh. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.61.4.305 Geerling, D. M., & Diener, E. (2018). Effect size strengths in subjective well-being research. Applied Research in Quality of Life. psyh. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9670-8 "
Professor William Tov
Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University -
Neither agree nor disagree "Once needs are met (and I do understand that needs are context dependent), a happy life is not only linked to the material achievements, but to at least three other important aspects: social capital, leisure, and personality traits and attitudes, all of which are very much interrelated. These aspects seem to be under the individual control, at least to. A large extend. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that, for some individuals, it might be harder than for others to change these. Personality, for example, evolves over time, but it is partly inborne and partly determined by individuals circumstances that are beyond our control (for example, the death of a beloved one at an earlier age). In addition, if a society does not provide the conditions such that all individuals can work, while still have the opportunity to balance social and family life, it will be hard to argue that we all have the opportunity to choose a happy way of life. "
Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC -
Agree In many ways, our choices can be informed by what makes us happy. I think, though, that there is some limit to this, as many things are beyond our control and we can only choose how to react to them. And sadly, quite often, we do not realize what the best choice in terms of a happy way of life might be, or worse, we have a hunch about it and then decide differently anyways... In this way, I don't agree with the statement as it suggests that we just have to make this decision once and all will be well. It's a process.
Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich -
Neither agree nor disagree "I'll give a typical philosopher's answer: I don't really understand the statement. Happiness isn't simply a choice, like a mocha latte at Starbuck's. To suggest otherwise is among other things cruel to the many people who suffer from depression and other maladies that may be very hard to resolve. Generally, happiness depends heavily both on our social and physical environment, which is not always easily changed--see ""pandemic living 2020""--as well as habits that take time and effort to change. Most of us can change those things, just as we can learn to play piano. Most of us, I imagine, can choose to run a marathon. (Eventually.) In that sense, at least, I think most people can absolutely choose to be happy. Probably, many of us can do so without quite so much effort. But still, some of us are probably too lazy for it, or have other priorities. Maybe one is happy enough, even if not quite happy. But one not-bad happiness strategy is to focus on doing worthwhile things with one's life, cultivating yourself to be the sort of person you want to be. Someone who appreciates the gifts of this beautiful world, say, and who your friends and family can be proud of. (Example: Ed Diener.) One sort of worthwhile thing: working to build a better society, so that people don't need to fuss about how they can be happier. Happiness tends to come naturally when basic needs are met and your way of life makes sense, and that's partly a group project."
Professor Dan Haybron
Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University -
Neither agree nor disagree I agree that most individuals can choose a happy way of life. But most people would be happy with any reasonable choice. Unhappy people can sometimes become happy by making different choices, but for the most part they need something different: mental health support or (particularly in developing countries) more money.
Professor Guy Mayraz
Lecturer, University of Sydney -
Disagree Most individuals report to be quite satisfied with their life (e.g. they place themselves in the upper third of a satisfaction scale). This suggests that most people are aware of what makes them happy and are able to choose a happy way of life to the extent that they have such a choice. Of course, there are life circumstances that reduce peoples wellbeing that are beyond their choosing - unemployment, sickness, unfortunate events happening to their loved ones etc.
Professor Andreas Knabe
Professor (Chair in Public Economics), Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg -
Neither agree nor disagree "The literature that focuses on the importance of the relative income for analyzing the individual well-being, connects the question to the human capital theory. The human capital theory demonstrates the importance of the individuals' skills (accumulated through schooling and training) for their wages. Schooling, education and learning are related but they are not the same. Therefore, individuals who can choose a happy way of life can do this because they learned and/or they are educated to this. In the same way, individuals who do not realize they truly can choose a happy way of life, were not educated and/or did not learn that this choice exist. During my yrears of schooling I read and I learned things about happiness and happy life. I learned in school at very young age, that education is the key to a happy life. I learned a few years later, during my university studies in cybernetics (in a socialist/communist country) that “all for one and one for all†is the one of the most important ingredients of happiness.* Fortunately, I learned, as soon as I started my PhD studies in economics in a country with a special (democratic) constitution and a very generous welfare system that each individual can choose a happy life! *During those years, I could read books such as Becker’s Human Capital (book) and Samuelson’s book in Economics (101) only after my application to read these books was approved by the University Library’s Board! "
Professor Daniela Andrén
Senior Lecturer, Örebro University School of Business -
Neither agree nor disagree I wonder whether people knowingly choose a happy life. The literature shows we are not very good at predicting our future happiness, or much else for that matter. We are caught up in our everyday life trying to meet our responsibilities, trying to stay out of trouble. In a way we are the victims of our inability to make the better choices that would lead to increased happiness. The cause? Who knows?. Our external environment, culture, religious beliefs, the decisions of others (politicians) that have negative and positive externalities upon us. Perhaps this is why the blissful guru goes off to live in a cave on the mountain? Something we all cannot do, else no production, and, we economists would be out of a job!
Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
The first statement reflected Ed’s research that looked at individuals who were consistently very happy over time, finding that they almost invariably spent a lot of quality time with family and friends. Ed claimed time and again that social relations were key to happiness, much more so than money or beauty.
Of the 19 expert respondents, 17 agreed or completely agreed with the first statement. Only one disagreed and one was on the fence with ‘neither agree, nor disagree’. Ferrer-i-Carbonell states: “Professor Diener’s work stresses the importance of social capital for our happiness beyond and above our material wellbeing”. However, Rojas reminds us “we must not confuse the concept of social capital (which focuses on civic and instrumental relations) with that of person-based interpersonal relations (which focuses on enjoyment of life)“. Smith states, “Social relationships are one of the strongest drivers of subjective wellbeing in every piece of research I have seen that includes them”, which was a thought repeated by many others in the panel (Knabe, Frijters, Grimes). Reasons given for this are: “Having warm social relationships is a basic need of human beings” (Delhey); that it is evolutionarily important to have people truly need good relations with others to be happy (Rojas), and; that loneliness has negative health consequences (Mayraz), such as via chronic stress (Heffetz, Tov). “Social withdrawal harms wellbeing”, (Foster).
Though nearly every panel member seemed to agree on what “warm social relations” are, there were some differences in interpretation as to what constitutes a “high level” of wellbeing. As various members who supported the statement noted, there are individuals who report being both lonely and happy at the same time. Sarracino notes that “the pooled European Quality of Life Survey shows that 81% of respondents with rich social lives declared to be satisfied with their lives, whereas the share of satisfied people among those with poor social relations is 55.5%” and Haybron notes that “it isn't hard to find people who will sincerely report high levels of life satisfaction in just about any sort of life”. Yet, those authors interpreted the statement to refer to very high wellbeing levels sustained over time and to the notion that a lack in warm social relations is damaging to the wellbeing of the majority of humans.
The only member on the fence, Andren, from Sweden, disagreed with the ‘warm social relations’ notion. She noted that it is possible for happy people to be rather formal with their social relations, implying that ‘warm’ may not mean the same thing across cultures. The only dissenter, Wooden, noted that while good social relations were certainly a very strong predictor of wellbeing levels, there were plenty of lonely people reporting to be happy. Using Australian data, he notes “from the 2019 survey wave, I find that among persons who report strongest agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (i.e., selected 7 on the 7-point disagree/agree scale) more than 40% still reported life satisfaction scores of 8 or more”.
Overall, there is almost unanimous agreement that social relations are very important to wellbeing, with the vast majority seeing the lack of warm social relations as damaging in the longer-run.
The second statement referred to a more controversial, famous claim by Ed Diener that "Probably the biggest insight, and I am not sure whether we can learn this from others or we have to actually experience it, is that happiness is not just a place, but also a process... it takes the right attitudes and activities to continue to be happy."
The panel members were more divided on this one, with much more disagreement on what the statement implied or whether it was true: seven agreed, three disagreed, and ten were on the fence. Pugno gave the most researched affirmative answer on this: “Fleurbaey and Schwandt (2016) show, on the basis of a representative sample of the US population, that 31% of them recognize that they have unexploited possibilities to enhance their subjective well-being…they could realize these possibilities, but 12% think that other goals are more important…”.
Delhey and Frijters agreed in a more philosophical sense with Diener’s point that happiness comes from a kind of ‘way of life’ that has to be experienced before it is understood, with Delhey saying “happiness is best understood as a by-product of other activities which are, in some way, ‘good’ for us”. Somewhat related, Wooden interpreted the ‘way of life’ formulation as resilience, and hence that happy people can cope with different outcomes. Foster pointed to attitudes: “The big lesson of cognitive behavioural therapy is that how you think about the situation you are facing strongly influences how you feel about it”.
The others in the affirmative camp saw happiness more as an outcome that can be chosen, with Binder saying that “our choices can be informed by what makes us happy”, an opinion echoed by Tov. Sarracino agreed with that idea but pointed out that it can be hard to choose well if society ‘pushes’ people to care about ‘positional goods’ (aka, status). Pugno similarly noted this ‘pushed away from happy choices’ aspect: “The psychologists Dunn, Wilson, and Gilbert (2003) show that students of a convenience sample place less weight, when imagining their future happiness in dormitories, on social features than on physical features of their location, despite accurately recognizing that social features were more important when asked explicitly about the determinants of happiness”.
Smith, Sarracino, and Knabe, the three in the ‘disagree’ camp, pointed out that luck and adverse societal circumstances could make people unhappy, and that hence happiness was not something that can be chosen, or even the accidental outcome of a way of life or an attitude that could be chosen. Barrington-Leigh adds: “There are certainly inspiring outliers who have embraced an optimistic mindset to life in the face of severe hardships”. He adds, “everyone can benefit from training and practice in mental skills (mindfulness, emotional first aid, gratitude, etc) to improve their frame of mind independent of external circumstances. However, one of the strengths of measuring life satisfaction is that it is sensitive to circumstances in life that are not a matter of individual choice.”
The ones on the fence echoed a mixture of these arguments. Haybron thus says that “most people can absolutely choose to be happy” but points out that it would take a lot of time and effort to adopt the right habits and learn to live with bad social circumstances; Heffetz agrees. Beatton suggests, “our external environment, culture, religious beliefs, the decisions of others (politicians) can inflict negative or positive externalities upon us.”, thus affecting our happiness. Others point to empirical evidence of how fixed our personality is, or, how few are happy during times of war, whilst there are countries in which nearly everyone is happy. Their essential point is that in practice there is an awful lot that cannot realistically be ‘chosen’ (way of life or otherwise), so that long-run quality of the institutions in a country matter, luck matters, and help from others matter. As Grimes says it “depends on who defines what is 'a happy way of life'”.
There is hence strong agreement in the wellbeing expert community for Diener’s contention that warm social relations are key to high levels of wellbeing. His famous saying that happiness is a process and thus a kind of ‘way of life’ is less supported, though with more in the ‘aye’ camp than the ‘nay’ camp.
Rest in peace, Ed!
References
- Dunn, E,W., Wilson, T,D., and Gilbert, D.T. (2003) Location, Location, Location: the misprediction of satisfaction in housing lotteries. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 29(11), 1421-1432.
- Fleurbaey, M. and Schwandt, H. (2016) Do People Seek To Maximize Their Subjective Well-Being –and Fail? London School of Economics, UK. https://cep.lse.ac.uk/seminarpapers/WB-28-04-16-SCHpaper.pdf accessed 22 June 2021.
- Fleurbaey, M. and Schwandt, H. (2016) How some people can maximize their happiness even though they are not actively pursuing it. USApp– American Politics and Policy Blog (22 Jun 2016). http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67229/ accessed 22 June 2021.