The New Happiness Studies
Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, empirical work takes the lead
JULY 25, 2018 PREMIUM
Christa Gearhart Denney
Daniel Haybron, a professor of philosophy at Saint Louis U., led a research project on "happiness and well-being" that bridges the sciences and humanities.
"I actually detest the word ‘happiness,’ which is so overused that it has become almost meaningless," wrote Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. "It is an unworkable term for science, or for any practical goal such as education, therapy, public policy, or just changing your personal life."
What constitutes a life well lived? What makes people feel that they’re flourishing? That is the type of broad, vital question the study of happiness and well-being should grapple with. Yet by the time Seligman made his declaration, the field had become a victim of its own success. Positive psychology, a prominent subfield, was especially vulnerable to caricature as a warm and fuzzy, solipsistic self-help arena prone to hype and dumbing down. Psychologists called for more context, more work crossing disciplines and cultures, more data.
A recently concluded three-year, $5.1-million project suggests that all that has begun to happen. "Happiness and Well-Being: Integrating Research Across the Disciplines" — supported by $4.6 million from the John Templeton Foundation and $453,000 from Saint Louis University — bridged the sciences and the humanities and was the largest effort of its kind in the field of well-being, says Daniel M. Haybron, the project leader, who is a professor of philosophy at the Jesuit research university. More than 150 researchers on 21 teams from 20 countries participated in research and workshops or as advisers. They included philosophers, psychologists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, religious-studies scholars, and theologians. Many of the studies the St. Louis-based project spurred are still underway.
The work offers a glimpse into the new state of happiness studies. Participants have explored well-being and disability; the ethics of policies that use "nudges" to incentivize behavior; optimism and hope among low-income populations; compassion among health professionals; well-being and inequality; how religious values affect happiness; norms and coercion in defining the good life; perceptions of well-being over different life stages; and how depression affects one’s sense of beauty.
A couple of decades ago, Haybron says, he could pretty much keep up with the entire literature of happiness and well-being studies. Now? No way...
