Happiness Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Happiness

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Zusammenfassung von Happiness

Name: Happiness
Rating: 4.1 (28 reviews)
Author: Richard Layard

Richard Layard

Lessons from a New Science

4.1 (28 Bewertungen)

23 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

Happiness by Richard Layard is a thought-provoking book that explores what makes us happy and how we can increase our collective happiness as a society through a combination of public policy and personal choices.

Themen

Sozialismus & Kapitalismuskritik Zufriedenheit

Inhaltsübersicht

Happiness
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What’s in it for me? Money won’t make you happy, but you can learn what will!

The pursuit of happiness is as old as humankind. Only recently, however, have scientists and researchers begun to examine exactly what it is that makes us happy.

That’s where Richard Layard’s Happiness comes in. In his bestselling book, the famed British economist presents and investigates much of this research and shows that, while money and material wealth can bring great happiness to people in poorer countries, wealth has no such power in the already abundant Western world.

Layard also uses research in neuroscience to demonstrate that the human search for happiness is fundamental and innate – even infants respond with happiness or unhappiness to certain stimuli that our brains are hardwired to respond to.

In the following blinks, you’ll find out why happy people are less likely to suffer from numerous diseases and health problems, like heart attacks, and more likely to have stronger bones and better skin.

You’ll learn why the pursuit of happiness is behind every decision you make.

Finally, you’ll discover why higher, progressive taxation is arguably a key factor in increasing people’s overall happiness.

Contrary to popular belief, happiness can be measured.

Most of us believe that happiness is a mysterious phenomenon – a feeling or state of being that eludes measurement and explanation. Yet, in fact, there are several scientific ways to measure happiness.

In most studies, participants are asked to simply assess how happy they are with their life situation in general. For instance, the General Social Survey – a longitudinal study conducted in the United States – asks participants the following:

Taken all together, how would you say things are these days – would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy or not too happy?

The resulting data of such studies suggests that the average rating of US citizens’ happiness hasn’t significantly increased since 1945.

Clearly, such studies depend on rather subjective assessments of one’s own happiness. However, neuroscientists have also experimented with some more objective methods.

Using EEG, for instance, they were able to identify certain areas of the brain that were active whenever subjects were happy or when they encountered things associated with increased happiness – like receiving a gift or compliment, or when presented with images of people they like.

Such studies have revealed that positive feelings – such as pride, joy or gratefulness – usually correspond to greater activity in the left frontal area of the brain. In contrast, negative emotions – like fear, anxiety or anger – are linked with the right frontal area.

The EEG approach can even work with infants: when they suck on sweet foods, their brains’ left frontal area is activated. Sour tastes, on the other hand, lead to greater activity in the right frontal area.

Moreover, it’s even possible to directly induce human emotions. For example, experiments have demonstrated that stimulating the left frontal part of the brain with a strong magnet can automatically lift a person’s mood.

Happiness is good for your health.

Being happy doesn’t just put a smile on your face – it’s also beneficial to your physical health.

Whenever we experience positive emotions, our brains release certain neurotransmitters – also known as “happiness hormones” – which have been shown to have a positive effect on many of our bodily functions.

The pursuit of happiness is a main driver of human behavior.

Think back to the last time you made a decision. Now ask yourself: What led me to make that particular choice?

Like most people, whenever you have to make a decision, you tend to choose the option that leads to your greatest happiness and well-being – whether that decision concerns what to eat for dinner, which job to take or your next holiday destination.

For decades, we’ve been getting wealthier – but not happier.

We tend to believe that, as Western societies have progressed in many ways, our happiness has increased too. Yet, since the 1950s, most people in the Western world have not gotten any happier.

In fact, the average income in the United States has doubled since the 1950s and, with it, the average standard of living. However, surveys have not found that more people describe themselves as happy. Clearly, the increase in wealth did not automatically lead to an increase in happiness.

Money doesn’t make you happy – as long as you earn less than your neighbor.

Would you rather live in a world where you earn more than you do today but less than everyone else, or one where you earn less than today but more than everyone else?

Given the choice, most people would prefer to live in the latter world.

We get used to everything, so material gain can’t make us happy in the long run.

Like every other animal, humans quickly become accustomed to new stimuli, environments and circumstances. We get used to the new people in our lives, such as a new spouse; we get used to becoming parents; and, of course, we get used to having a bigger house or a higher income.

For this reason, winning the lottery, receiving a sizeable bonus at work or finding a new job that offers you more money only bring temporary happiness. Even though you achieved something positive in your life, the positive emotions you’re rewarded with fade as you become accustomed to the new status quo.

While more money doesn’t make you happier, too little of it can make you unhappy.

On average, people living in the wealthier nations of the Western world are happier than those living in poor, developing countries.

This is also evident in countries that were once much poorer, but that gained some wealth in recent decades – like India, Mexico, Brazil and South Korea. In these countries, as the average wealth increased, so did people’s reported levels of happiness.

Mostly, happiness depends on things you can’t buy.

Since 1981, the World Values Survey has asked more than 350,000 people in fifty countries about their general happiness. The resulting data show that the following five factors, in descending order, have the strongest influence on our overall well-being:

As many studies indicate, family is the most important factor in our happiness – much more so than our financial situation.For example, going through a divorce has double the impact on one’s level of happiness as losing 30 percent of one’s income. Moreover, married people have been shown to live far longer and to enjoy much healthier lives.

A country’s goal shouldn’t be economic growth, but the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

As we’ve learned, even though material wealth has steadily increased, people haven’t become happier in the last fifty years.

One reason for this might be that our governments are simply pursuing the wrong objective. Economic growth has been the central goal of all Western societies in the past decades, while factors known to be crucial to our happiness – like, family, friends and health – have been left by the wayside. Even though the notion has been obsolete for a very long time, Western governments still seem to believe that if the economy grows, people will be better off.

One effective way of achieving greater happiness in a society is increasing taxation.

Would you agree that greater happiness can be reached by increasing taxation? If your answer is no, you’re not alone in that opinion.

However, consider what would happen if taxes were high and got higher the more people earned. The result would be people being discouraged from seeking happiness where it can’t be found!

Politicians should focus on what really makes us happy.

As we’ve seen, the primary source of happiness is family. But what can governments do in this regard? Quite a lot, it seems. For instance, they could make our working environments more family-friendly by enforcing flexible working hours and parental leave, establishing mandatory child care in offices and so on.

One proven way to encourage people to spend more time with those who make them happy is to reduce commute times and the continual switching of workplaces. Always being on the move makes it harder for people to establish stable relationships and friendships, and to truly belong to a functioning community. Governments could thus offer incentives that encourage working people to remain close to family and friends.

Final Summary

The key message in this book:

While wealth has steadily increased for decades in the Western world, people’s overall happiness hasn’t. Hence, if we want to be truly happy, we should stop focusing on acquiring wealth and start paying attention to the things that actually make us happier: friends, family, meaningful work and health.

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Worum geht es in Happiness?

In Happiness, economist Richard Layard examines what it is that makes us happy and how anyone can achieve greater happiness. Basing his studies on insights from such diverse fields as psychology, philosophy and neuroscience, Layard presents compelling arguments that are great food for thought, encouraging readers to question their daily habits and practices.

Wer Happiness lesen sollte

Anyone interested in research on happiness
Anyone who wants to find out why money won’t necessarily make them happy
Anyone searching for ways to increase their general level of happiness

Über den Autor

Richard Layard (b. 1934) is a renowned British economist and the director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics. Layard’s research on unemployment was the basis for the 1998 reformation of the job market in the United Kingdom, which significantly decreased the level of unemployment.

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