Happiness, meaning and well-being

If someone were to ask you what you want from life, how would you reply? Plausible answers might include: ‘to be happy’, ‘to be successful’, ‘to make a difference’, or perhaps ‘to experience as much as possible’. Whatever these aspirations mean in their detail, they capture various implicit assessments of what we think it means to live a life that is good for us.

A recent psychological study presents interesting data that suggests that two of the things we might want in our lives – happiness and meaning – sometimes do not go together. In fact, some of the things that lead to a life being happy are negatively associated with it being meaningful and some of the things that seem to confer meaning detract from happiness. If this occasional incompatibility is in fact the case, does this mean that we must sometimes make a decision about which to pursue?

Many philosophers have tried to formulate metrics by which to assess how well a person’s life is going for her. The concept often invoked in this debate is that of well-being: if we can determine the person’s level of well-being (perhaps averaged over her life so far), then we can see how well her life is going for her. Philosophers tend to agree that the things that improve a person’s well-being (e.g. circumstances, experiences) are things that are ultimately good for that person. Being ‘ultimately good’ means that they are valuable just because they pertain, not because of (or even despite) any further effects.

However, how we are to assess what actually contributes to our well-being is a topic of some debate. There are three main broad theories of well-being; ‘hedonism’ holds that in order to increase a person’s well-being, one need only maximize that person’s experiences of pleasure and minimize her experiences of pain or suffering. On this sort of theory, a person’s life is going well for her if she has lots of pleasure and little pain. The second sort of theory – ‘desire-satisfaction’ theories – holds that having one’s desires satisfied is integral to well-being. On this sort of theory, the extent of a person’s well-being will depend on the extent to which that person has satisfied her desires.

Whilst these two types of theory make the routes to increased well-being contingent on what the person finds pleasurable or on what the person desires respectively, the third theory is objective, contending that the routes to accruing well-being are the same for everyone, regardless of what they actually like or care about. Known as objective list theories, the idea here is that there are certain things – like friendship, knowledge, health, and creative activity – which are good for people regardless of what they think of them. On these sorts of theory, a person’s well-being depends on their achieving certain items on this objective list.

The data from the psychological study suggest that following a hedonistic approach to life – if we understand this roughly as maximizing happiness – may not only be conceptually at odds with the alternative conceptions of well-being, but might in some cases actually detract from well-being, if well-being turns out to be dependent on one’s life being maximally or at least sufficiently meaningful. Let’s take a look at some of the results from the study.

In general, meaningfulness and happiness were positively correlated, so they are somewhat related phenomena. There are many factors that make a life both meaningful and happy, which is probably not surprising. For example, feeling connected to others, feeling productive and not being bored contributed to a life being assessed as both happy and meaningful.
However, the data revealed that there are also some substantial differences in the correlates of happiness (corrected for meaning) and meaningfulness (corrected for happiness).

The researchers summarise:

Our findings suggest that happiness is mainly about getting what one wants and needs, including from other people or even just by using money. In contrast, meaningfulness was linked to doing things that express and reflect the self and in particular to doing positive things for others. Meaningful involvements increase one’s stress, worries, arguments, and anxiety, which reduce happiness. (Spending money to get things went with happiness, but managing money was linked to meaningfulness.) Happiness went with being a taker more than a giver, while meaningfulness was associated with being a giver more than a taker. Whereas happiness was focused on feeling good in the present, meaningfulness integrated past, present, and future, and it sometimes meant feeling bad. Past misfortunes reduce present happiness, but they are linked to higher meaningfulness.

They conclude that it is possible to have a highly meaningful but unhappy life. A person may not desire to have the negative experiences she has, and may have her goals frustrated, but these unpleasant, undesired aspects of life can, it seems, ultimately confer meaning.

So what do these findings suggest for theories of well-being? If our intuitions are that meaning matters (although this would, of course, be up for debate) then the findings seems to count against a purely hedonistic account. Moreover, given that some of the correlates of meaning – such as stress and anxiety and dwelling on the past – are often associated with unfulfilled desires and frustrated goals, the findings also do not fit neatly with a desire satisfaction theory; having said this though, it should be acknowledged that the process of fulfilling desires can sometimes have negative by- products which are not themselves desired. Nevertheless, it seems plausible to claim that at least some correlates of meaning will be associated with frustrated desires, rather than being by-products of a desire’s fulfillment.

Does this mean that if we think meaning matters for well-being, then we must accept an objective list account? After all, many of the items commonly given as plausible examples for the list seem to have a natural relationship to meaning: acquiring knowledge, building friendships, creative activity etc. However, although this conclusion seems compelling, it is not necessarily warranted by the psychological data analysed here alone. One reason why it is not warranted is a result of the fact that participants in the study were rating the level of meaning in their lives themselves. This is important because people may well implicitly have their own lists of what makes a life meaningful, and these may or may not correlate with what objective list theorists include on their lists. This raises the question of whether meaningfulness ought to be understood as an objective aspect of well-being, or whether the quest for meaning is more appropriately understood as being more like an attempt to fulfil a particular sort of desire for meaning, whose content is subjectively determined. It would be interesting to follow up this study with questions asking participants about their actual understanding of, and desire for, meaningfulness, as this would allow us to attain a better insight into what these findings imply for philosophical theories of well-being more generally.

Wondrlust view; an interesting and thought provoking article. Indeed if you took a book like Mans Search for Meaning, by Frankl – you can understand the viewpoint. But we do not agree with the terminology of happiness. In fact ‘meaning’ is one of the key pillars to habit and lifestyle choice that can lead to happiness and fulfillment. It does for us at least.

To view the original article click here

Published December 19, 2013 By Hannah Maslen
Oxford University