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Why is middle age so depressing? Happiness is the most important subject of scientific inquiry. But it's not easy to study

Happiness is tricky. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Happiness is tricky. Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images


August 26, 2020   8 mins

I turn 40 this year. (Buy me something nice!) I’m sort of OK with it, mainly because the Covid-19 situation means that I don’t feel obligated to organise some enormous party or stag-do-like Lads’ Weekend Away. On the big day itself we’ll be in Center Parcs, because I’m a wild man. Still though: 40. It feels significant.

Here’s one reason why it feels significant. One of the most well-known findings in economics and psychology is the “U-shaped curve” of happiness. In short, it says that we’re happiest when we’re young, then there’s a decline, but later in life we cheer up again. The finding seems robust — the economist David Blanchflower has found a happiness curve in nearly 200 different countries, so it’s (probably) not just affluenza-induced mid-life crises in the rich West. And the point at which the average person’s wellbeing is recorded as lowest — male or female, developed world or developing — is in their 40s. 

As I said, it’s a well-known finding. And there’s a tendency — which I share — to ascribe a kind of destiny to it: as though we all sit on a great wellbeing rollercoaster, and go up and down in our cohorts, the 1980 babies all nearing the abyssal nadir at the same time, while their 1990 successors are just starting their downward run behind them.

I’m partly thinking about this because an interesting new study, by the Cambridge psychologist Dr Amy Orben and colleagues, finds something similar again: it suggests that “life satisfaction” (not quite the same thing as wellbeing) begins declining earlier, as young as 10, and starts coming back up around age 50. Another slightly unexpected thing it found was that although we tend to think of adolescent girls as suffering particularly badly, boys have a similar drop in wellbeing, just a couple of years later on average: Orben wonders if this is about the onset of puberty, and related brain development.

I am fascinated by happiness research. It seems to me that it might be the most important subject in the world; and yet it is also an absolute nightmare to study, because you’re trying to find answers that philosophers have argued about for three millennia with a five-item questionnaire.

Here’s what I mean by important. If you’re trying to cure cancer, why are you doing it if not, in the end, to make people happier? If you’re trying to build a better smartphone, why are you doing it if not, in the end, to make people happier? When a politician says they got into politics to “improve people’s lives”, what does that mean if not, in the end, to make people happier? 

Obviously I have just waded knee-deep into about six separate philosophical controversies there: what does it mean to be happy; is “the good life” about happiness, or about living a life of virtue, or a life that you are proud of, or what; is self-realisation and independence more important than happiness etc etc. 

But it seems to me that — on some, quite important, level — what matters is whether people are happy. If we cured all the world’s cancers, made the perfect smartphone and achieved the ideal form of representative government, but everyone was just as miserable after as they were before, then — did any of it matter? I think it is at least plausible that happiness, in some nebulous and hard-to-define but nonetheless real sense, is the most important thing in the universe.

And I don’t think it’s just me. The British government flirted with measuring wellbeing and using it as a national target, like GDP growth or inflation; the New Zealand government has actually gone further and done it. (At government level, everyone’s a utilitarian, I guess.)

Which means we have a problem. Or several problems, first of which is: what are we talking about? When psychologists use the term “happiness”, they seem to use it relatively interchangeably (in my experience) with “subjective wellbeing”, which is distinct from “life satisfaction”. 

Subjective wellbeing is how you’re feeling right now, in the moment; psychologists might measure this by asking someone to agree or disagree with the statement “I feel good about myself” or “I feel cheerful”. Life satisfaction is how you rate your life when you are asked to take stock of it; psychologists might measure this by asking people to agree or disagree with the statement “If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing” or “I am satisfied with my life”. 

These measures are related, but distinct. To return to the U-shaped curve, most studies refer to wellbeing; the Orben et al paper is about life satisfaction. Dr Julia Rohrer, a psychologist at the University of Leipzig, gave me a couple of helpful examples of how they’re distinct.

First, often when people have children, their subjective wellbeing goes down: being a parent is hard, and you feel tired and harried and don’t get any time to yourself. But their life satisfaction goes up: they feel proud of their kids, and they add meaning to life. Conversely, she says, people who are unemployed often report reduced life satisfaction; but sometimes their subjective wellbeing actually goes up, because work is hard and not always all that fun.

(This isn’t true for everyone, obviously. We are always talking about averages across population.)

So we’ve defined it. But now the second problem is we have to measure it, and that’s difficult too. It’s not like measuring someone’s height, where there’s a clear and reliable system. You’re using a questionnaire to assess something internal and subjective.

There’s a quite deep philosophical assumption here, or two assumptions. First, that there is what Rohrer calls an “unobserved quantity”, something internal and real and true, that is our “happiness” or our “wellbeing”. And second, that this unobserved quantity somehow relates, in a reliable, predictable way, to what is going on when we say “I would rate my subjective wellbeing three out of 10.”

That doesn’t feel too implausible. But if you’re assessing someone’s happiness in Britain and someone’s happiness in China, are you getting at the same quantity? If you ask someone to rate from 0 to 10 how happy they are — does that work? Do the English word “happiness” and the Mandarin word “幸福” (xingfú, apparently), which Google tells me is the translation, really address exactly the same concept?

We don’t even need to go to China. Would the answer that a 16-year-old gives be directly comparable to the answer a 40-year-old gives? Or a 70-year-old? Are they reading those numbers off the same internal scoreboard? Whatever this “unobserved quantity” is, can we be sure that it is the same when you ask a child as when you ask her grandmother? “It can’t be the same construct across the life course,” is Rohrer’s answer. “Going from age 10 to age 80, it must be a completely different type of assessment.”

(Orben is entirely aware of this, I should say: “Measuring happiness and life satisfaction is extremely difficult and we interpret it differently throughout our lives,” she says. Her research is carried out in the full knowledge that it is difficult and uncertain and needs to be approached with caution. Psychology is the hardest science.)

So those are the problems with researching it. But there’s another layer of difficulty, which is that presumably we want to know about happiness in order to create more of it; but it seems that it is quite hard to make. Somewhere between 50% and 80% of the variation in happiness in the population is inherited with your genes; for many, if not most, of us, there is quite a hard limit to how much you can improve your happiness. 

That doesn’t mean that 50% of “your happiness” is in your genes (what would that mean?), rather that the differences between people’s reported happiness scores in a given society are at least 50% down to their different genetic make-up. The rest is traditionally divided between our “circumstances” — our material wealth, our upbringing, our social environment — and our decisions.

You can see what I mean when you look at the impact of life events — childbirth, divorce, marriage, unemployment, loss of a spouse — on reported life satisfaction. In many cases (not all; unemployment is the obvious exception), people’s scores change dramatically, but relatively quickly return to where they were. There really does seem to be a set point, and while you can be shifted from it, you have a sort of inertia which tends to bring you back to it. (That said, in the case of widowhood, both men and women seem to end up happier a few years after the death of their partner, which is frankly disturbing.)

It may not be that there is literally a happiness gene, says Rohrer: “The heritability estimates don’t tell you why happiness is heritable,” she says. “It could be because happiness is innate, but we know cognitive ability is highly heritable, which would affect your achievement, which would affect your income, which would affect your wellbeing. It could just be that you’re blessed with skills that society happens to value.”

On which point, it’s worth noting that although the one thing that everyone knows about happiness psychology is that money doesn’t make you happy, money does, in fact, make you happy. Dr Nick Brown, another psychologist, points out that there is in fact a strong correlation between GDP and happiness, and (on a personal level) between income and happiness. “There’s an old joke I saw on an office wall,” he says. “‘Money doesn’t make you happy. People with $10 million are no happier than people with $9 million.’ Once you get above the middle-class income in a median area of the US [probably around $75,000] it might not make much difference, but actually the intuitive feeling, that people with more money are happier, is right.” 

(Again, on average. For some people this will be more true; for others, less so.)

This all has quite profound implications, or so it seems to me, for government policy. If we take the position (as many do) that government should improve happiness, and it turns out that material wealth and genes account for most of the variation in happiness, then the policies that would imply might be very different from if individual decisions are especially important for happiness. This stuff is hard to research, but the findings that come out of it seem to plug directly into the very core of what we want policy to do.

The Orben paper, incidentally, found an impressively large decline in wellbeing in early adolescence. Orben herself wondered whether that was to do with how our brains develop: that happiness, or life satisfaction, is heavily linked to comparisons with others — if you’re saying you’re not satisfied with how your life is, presumably you’re thinking it could have gone otherwise; and the only comparisons you have are other people’s. And the ability to make those comparisons doesn’t turn up fully formed with your milk teeth.

In adolescence, she says, “you have intense social development, a theory of mind develops, you’re thinking about how people are thinking, your perspective develops; you can compare yourself to people around the world” — you go from being an unreflective child to a reasoning, reflecting young adult, and suddenly the question “are you satisfied with your life” has a meaning beyond where the next ice cream is coming from. She is interested in how much of a role social media plays in it all, although her previous work shows that most of the more doomy claims about social media and wellbeing are overstated.

What interests me, of course, is why the average person gets happier as they get older. There’s some suggestion that it’s a cognitive process — our brains start focusing on the good things that have happened, not the bad. Rohrer, though, says “I don’t think there’s a single explanation for the observed pattern. One possibility is that midlife is worst because of many obligations — careers tend to peak with the associated workload, kids still need to be taken care of, parents may suddenly require care as their health declines.” (Basically, what’s going on in this cartoon.) As you get older, those responsibilities tend to decline.

Also, she says, midlife is where you have to face up to the reality of what you’ve achieved: “aspirations and expectations are compared to the actual outcomes”, with time for significant change running out. As you get older again, she says, some research suggests “that people realise what’s important: they focus more on positive emotions, and on close relationships that are particularly satisfying, rather than meeting new people.” It’s also important to remember, she says, that the U-shape is an average, “only visible in aggregate”, and while large compared to a lot of psychological findings, is still only a small effect in terms of overall happiness.

To return to where we started: researching happiness is hard, but it does seem that the U-shaped curve describes some real phenomenon. So I approach my fifth decade with a certain trepidation. But it’s not destiny, not some vast fairground ride of joy and gloom: it’s not that everyone follows the same path: some people get happier, some people get sadder, people’s happiness jumps around. It’s all about averages. 

And, at least, I don’t have to have a party.


Tom Chivers is a science writer. His second book, How to Read Numbers, is out now.

TomChivers

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Alan Girling
Alan Girling
4 years ago

As Jordan Peterson suggests, ‘happiness’ is not viable as a goal. What if you achieve it, then the next day your spouse leaves you or you get cancer or your child dies? Then you’ve failed in life. Life is fraught with suffering. The proper aim, according to him, is to find meaning in life by taking on responsibility. Then whatever satisfaction that flows from that is a bonus. What we really search for and require is meaning.

David Gould
David Gould
4 years ago
Reply to  Alan Girling

There is always the seed of a greater or equal success in everything . Everyone has problems & crap in their lives it’s how you deal with it that make the difference .

My spouse left me with two young kiddies a few months after I got life changing disabling injuries ..Yipeeeee ! An amazing escape from 14 years of living with a very selfish woman (She seems to have suffered severe case of wedding cake poisoning and never got better , god only knows what caused her to give in & make love for the two kids) ).

Four years later I met a gal a lot younger than a me and am now celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary in a few days time. …. never been so happy .. I’ve truly found my soulmate .
I get cancer , so what ? We all have to snuff it of something even if it’s just getting short of breath .
Your kiddie dies .. The world does not stop turning for such events , deal with it rather than mope your life away in perpetual misery . . My second wife had five
13 week or so miscarriages before we finally had a succesful pregnancy 16 years after getting married .
You do not fail at life ( unless you are dead ) most people simply become too scared of death to learn to live their life to the full & be the best they can be .

Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
4 years ago

I’m not at all convinced that happiness is what individuals, or governments on their behalf, should be striving for. Contentment, perhaps.

The wealth question is interesting to me. There is a tendency for governments to want to use increased happiness as justification for increasing consumer wealth. I wonder though if in so far as wealth is connected to happiness it has more to do with it providing security. From a policy perspective it isn’t the same – you can have working class or lower income jobs that are nevertheless very secure, requiring good employment practices, making sure all have access to good education for their children, adequate housing, and proper healthcare. That tends to make for a lot of security and fairly contented and stable communities.
You can also have higher incomes on average and lots of toys, but if people worry that they will lose their jobs, won’t be able to find a home, or educate their children, and can’t reliably plan for the future, you will have less contentment.
There has been a significant decrease in economic security over the last 20 years, especially among lower paid workers.

Graeme Laws
Graeme Laws
4 years ago

Money can’t buy happiness but you might as well be miserable in comfort.

Michael Yeadon
Michael Yeadon
4 years ago
Reply to  Graeme Laws

Or, “Its a lot easier being miserable on the nice side of town”.

Andrew Roman
Andrew Roman
4 years ago

I think you are making an important point in substituting contentment for happiness. Happiness is a difficult word to use in a questionnaire. It is both a matter of degree and kind, and at the opposite end of that scale lies what? Unhappiness? Sadness? Depression (as the title to this article suggests)? Content versus discontent seems less extreme and perhaps less variable in meaning among the people surveyed.

David Gould
David Gould
4 years ago

Happiness is a personal choice of mind set , try choosing to be happy and look for the good in everything rather than searching for the negative and being miserable when you find them and can’t think past them .
Once you learn you have freedom of mind to choose to be happy no matter what happens your life really starts to buzz with the good things in life . You don’t need much money either but if you choices lead to an fair amount then more power to your elbow ..you can always give it away to those that think they need it & those that really do . .

Paddy Taylor
Paddy Taylor
4 years ago

“The British government flirted with measuring wellbeing and using it as a national target, like GDP growth or inflation”

Nothing seems more likely to undermine the happiness of its people than the State stepping in to try and measure it or engineer it.

Martin Butler
Martin Butler
4 years ago
Reply to  Paddy Taylor

Why? Not ‘engineer’ it just do things that are likely to increase it. Surely that’s what governments are suppose to do. That only appears a problem if you assume the truth of some kind of radical libertarianism. You assume a free for all is best for everyone – but evidence does not support this.

John Vaughan
John Vaughan
4 years ago

For younger folk, I never took part in the ‘climb-the-ladder’ neo-liberal world, preferring life in the Scottish hills. I did 14 Munros in a day when I was 43 and have not celebrated a birthday for 4 decades. I now have 6 incredible grandchildren, 3 of each, ranging from ballet dancer to rugby player, gymnast, horse-riders and Bob Hope smokers. Oh, yes, by the way, I’m a right miserable a***’ole but you don’t have to live the standard way to be a misery!

Eugene Norman
Eugene Norman
4 years ago
Reply to  John Vaughan

A life lived well.

B G
B G
4 years ago

You know you’re reaching 40 when you insist on spelling “Center Parcs” as it really should be spelt, “Centre Parcs.” 🙂

Anecdotally, for me (turning 50 next week), years 37 to 47 were tough. Text book stuff – dad died, midlife crisis, walked away from a high flying BAFTA award-winning career, moved as far west as I could, came to terms with loss of perceived status and reinvented myself.

I’ve never been as happy, in love with my wife and financially as wealthy as I am now. I’ve also learned that could all change in a blink – and that’s OK.

I’m not sure anything can/should be done by the state to mitigate any of this – to me, it has just been one of life’s rites of passage and I’m all the better for it.

Ian Anderson
Ian Anderson
4 years ago
Reply to  B G

Well expressed; chapeau.

Andrew D
Andrew D
4 years ago
Reply to  B G

Centre Parks surely?

B G
B G
4 years ago
Reply to  Andrew D

Someone more pedantic than me – well spotted, sir.

noisyoly
noisyoly
4 years ago
Reply to  B G

Actually, the company itself spells it as Center Parcs 🙂

https://www.centerparcs.co.uk/

Eugene Norman
Eugene Norman
4 years ago
Reply to  Andrew D

That’s not how the company spells it, so no.

David J
David J
4 years ago
Reply to  Andrew D

Officially: ‘Center Parcs.’

Tom Chivers
Tom Chivers
4 years ago
Reply to  B G

god it is Center Parcs isn’t it. thanks, I’ll get them to fix.

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
4 years ago
Reply to  Tom Chivers

Ah, the Gods have spoken! This is the first time I’ve seen an Unherd writer (bless them) join in. I thought maybe it was against the regulations, but perhaps just against the ethos……

Jeffrey Chongsathien
Jeffrey Chongsathien
4 years ago
Reply to  B G

So, you moved to Hollywood?

Scott Powell
Scott Powell
4 years ago
Reply to  B G

Here in Australia, it’s the BIG4. And, man, don’t ridicule it. I would have, in my 20s and even 30s. But, for a fledgling family, looking for a break from the rat-race, give me a trailer park (with cabins) on the middle of nowhere!

perrywidhalm
perrywidhalm
4 years ago

Happiness seems to me a temporary emotion usually based on externalities. Joy, on-the-other-hand, arises from deep within and can last a lifetime. For me, a sense of joy in living comes from accepting that things will eventually turn out as they should.

Avigail Abarbanel
Avigail Abarbanel
4 years ago

Middle age has not been depressing for me and for many I know (I am a psychotherapist in private practice so do know one or two things about this). Turning forty was the best thing that happened to me, especially as a woman. You are not a woman, so you don’t know for example, that women are not listened to nor taken too seriously, especially by men, while they are still young and conventionally attractive.

Turning forty made my voice more effective and fifty was even better. It is not how it should be but it is common even in our Western societies ” I have so far lived in three. Age is an advantage for women.

Most people I have ever met in my practice over two decades have been happier as they grew older because they learned from experience to worry less about what other people think of them. They are much less likely to give a rat’s arse about what others think and do not need a lot of persuading to learn to say no, set healthy boundaries and generally take better care of themselves “¦ Interesting thoughts you share but please be careful with generalising. I find science writers do that quite a lot”¦ Cheers.

Katy Randle
Katy Randle
4 years ago

I have upticked you because I like what you’re saying. I would just like to add a caveat to your assertion that age is an advantage for women. I find it is so IF you are content with your relationship status. I am 54 and single, not by choice. I was hoping that once my looks had faded, men would be less intimidated and I would find someone happy to engage with me. Instead, they look through me, to women half my age. Of course I realise that this is the biological imperative, but it stings a bit.

I agree with your last paragraph and would add that with age comes the acceptance of the dark side of life. Loved ones die, friends get ill or lose their jobs, and there isn’t necessarily a reason nor anyone to blame.

Scott Powell
Scott Powell
4 years ago
Reply to  Katy Randle

A heathy philosophy. I’ve also encountered that, but on the male side of the spectrum. (Not that I was *gorgeous* or anything, when I was in my prime, but, hey, I did ok 🙂 )

James Evans
James Evans
4 years ago

Why live your life by other people’s statistics?

I’m 54. The last 15 years of my life have been my happiest. It took me till about 40 to just start to understand myself and my relationship to life in general.

If you’re born happy that’s fab. I had to work it out. Took 4 decades.

Olaf Felts
Olaf Felts
4 years ago

Happiness is listening to ‘Happiness’ by Black Uhuru. My children make me happy, my wife makes me happy, helping people makes me happy, being with friends makes me happy, listening to magical music makes me happy, having a drink makes me happy. Seeing people hurt others makes me sad, witnessing suffering and loss makes me sad, watching a world destroy itself makes me sad, watching people letting themselves be brainwashed makes me sad. Always thus – not aged related, just a state of being at any given time.

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
4 years ago
Reply to  Olaf Felts

Sounds like a life lived much better than many of us, friend. Keep it up.

Scott Powell
Scott Powell
4 years ago
Reply to  Olaf Felts

We need a song in the TOP40 that has this as its theme.

Andrew D
Andrew D
4 years ago

Stop trying to be happy. The Americans have it written into their constitution, yet have more therapists than any other country

perrywidhalm
perrywidhalm
4 years ago
Reply to  Andrew D

I find it baffling why so many Britishers feel it necessary to attack America / Americans at every turn yet when war threatens the British ….. we are the best of friends. Never understood the hypocrisy.

robboschester
robboschester
4 years ago
Reply to  perrywidhalm

Ach, you’re an easy target. Get over it :). Think of it as sibling banter. I’m not sure Americans quite get ‘banter’ ;).

perrywidhalm
perrywidhalm
4 years ago
Reply to  robboschester

Dunkirk is how the British declare victory …. yes? Now, don’t be offended ….. it’s just banter.

Giulia Khawaja
Giulia Khawaja
4 years ago
Reply to  perrywidhalm

Oh yes, a very British victory!

Eugene Norman
Eugene Norman
4 years ago
Reply to  perrywidhalm

Actually it took a bombing of American battleships by Japan and a subsequent declaration of war by Germany, three days later, for the US to come to Britain’s aid – two years into the war. Britain was almost on the rocks for some of that, without the RAF we would have been.

perrywidhalm
perrywidhalm
4 years ago
Reply to  Eugene Norman

The US created a Lend-Lease program (including warships and aircraft) on March 11, 1941 to aid the UK, Free France, China and the USSR. Of course, the brave pilots of the RAF played a major role in protecting Britain yet without Lend-Lease, the UK would have lost the war in 1941. At least that’s what Churchill thought.

Scott Powell
Scott Powell
4 years ago
Reply to  Andrew D

It’s the PURSUIT of happiness, not happiness itself, that is enshrined.

Andrew D
Andrew D
4 years ago
Reply to  Scott Powell

Trying to be happy and pursuing happiness – a fairly fine distinction surely?

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago

I have not found middle age to be more or less depressing than any other time of life, with my happiness or otherwise generally having been determined by Derby County’s league position. And even allowing for that I am reasonably content as long as I can still run around a football pitch.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
4 years ago
Reply to  Fraser Bailey

I think if you feel “lucky” then you are probably happy.

I accidentally became a Liverpool fan 50 years ago, and am currently counting my blessings 🙂

Lee Johnson
Lee Johnson
4 years ago

Its not a ‘happiness’ U graph its a ‘competition’ U .
or…
Its not a happiness graph its a misery graph and the ‘U’ is upside down.

A child is not yet aware of the competition it faces to find a mate, make money and procreate.
The unhapppier you are, the more you compete.:-((((

If you are older, have kids and feel you have done what life is about then you no longer compete and are happy :-))))

I wonder if the ‘happiness’ theory holds for poorer oldies with no family .

Liz Davison
Liz Davison
4 years ago

It’s a lot to do with outside pressures. Once we reach puberty the sexual imperative comes into play and we start to want something or somebody perhaps beyond our control. Also we realise that we’re expected to get a job soon. Then we start work and have the pressures of commuting, being an obedient and productive employee and feeding ourselves and eventually our families. I doubt that we get happier in our fifties though. The menopause kicks in then, we start to notice our loose-skinned necks and small wrinkles. That for most women is the worst decade. By our sixties we’re through that, are about to retire and our family responsibilities have decreased. Once work’s finished our life is our own. The pressures are those we choose (aside from health worries) and we have some measure of personal freedom. This makes for tangible feelings of contentment. We no longer think of “happiness”. That’s for the young.

Chris Jayne
Chris Jayne
4 years ago
Reply to  Liz Davison

I came to say basically the same thing but would take it one step beyond just responsibility.

At 11 you hit high school. At 55-65 people start retiring. It’s more than responsibility, it’s also the growth of externally dictated requirements that constantly conflict with your own wants and desires and needs.

If one of my children is ill and I have to miss a social event then don’t begrudge that to anywhere near the same extent as if work overtime eats into my family or social time. The first is responsibility on my terms, the second is an imposition.

David Gould
David Gould
4 years ago

What a whinnying whining whimp. Life is what you make it , Think like a wet dish cloth & you’ll have the life that goes with it .

Life is brilliant , try missing a few days of it .
The majority of the population seem far to dependent on the state to do their thinking for them . So much that they have become Sheeple.
My first wife left me with two kids when I got crippled in 1974 , we ended up loosing the house and being emergency re housed in a council sink estate building .
Her legging it and leaving us was fantastic , we’ve never looked back even when I got a second dose of life changing injuries 19 years later .

I’m now 70 yrs old remarried 35 years ago had a second family and am as happy as a sand boy ..I don’t sweat the small stuff and chose my friends & what gets put in my head wisely ..
We also own our own large bungalow .I guess it’s what you put into your life that in the main determines what it will be like rather than just reacting to life’s events as they happen .

Giulia Khawaja
Giulia Khawaja
4 years ago
Reply to  David Gould

Maybe people who have had problems and overcome them, as you seem to have done, are more able to appreciate what they have and therefore more content.

Michael Yeadon
Michael Yeadon
4 years ago
Reply to  Giulia Khawaja

There may be something in that.

Alan Girling
Alan Girling
4 years ago
Reply to  David Gould

I like how you spell ‘whimp’ with an h, intentionally or not. Nice post, by the way.

lizhood1
lizhood1
4 years ago

For me, self-realisation and independence ARE happiness.

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
4 years ago

After having broken any trust that ever existed between us, someone I had tried to make happy promised to destroy my life (and used all the considerable governmental, relational and personal power she could muster to do so). Her destructive attitude was the very reason I stayed away, but she was too enraged and self absorbed to see this. I declared that despite all her efforts, i would always be happy and she would always be miserable and so it has been for 27 odd years. I had to take control of the only power I had: the power of self determination including a focus on forgiveness, community and the love of people and nature embedded in me as a child.
Old injuries and the like slow me down, but I will never be so young again and so better to make the best of it. I can worry when I’m dead.

Gerry Fruin
Gerry Fruin
4 years ago

I’m a simple man. It is a puzzle to me how people in cutting edge ‘scientific’ research such as psychology get paid. If your the nutter on the board that thought hiring one of these ‘scientists’ to prove by researching a subjective constantly changing and individual emotive ‘feeling it would change our policy or our views and so on. Your fired.
The world of ‘ologists’ is overfull with charlatans researching subjects, been interviewed on the BBC (and getting paid) for producing unprovable utter claptrap. There is no reason to accept, or worse pay these pseudo scientists.
The best you can do is use your experience and knowledge and make your own mind up. (you know you will anyway:-))

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
4 years ago
Reply to  Gerry Fruin

Elite Overproduction is the term.

billwald123
billwald123
4 years ago

Same thing happened to me at age 40 or 50. The previous 10 years I had spent time thinking what I would do when I retired. Then I realized that I had a wife, 5 young kids, my wife and I were going down hill physically . . . and none of those things would happen.

Just turned 80 . . . “Life begins when the kids move out and the dog dies.” <g>

Phil Bolton
Phil Bolton
4 years ago

Interesting piece. Just as an aside, when I meet someone I know I’ll ask them how they are and they will give the stock answer ‘Fine’, so I say ‘How many of of 10 ?’ and then they have to think and get in touch with themselves to give a true reflection. And it’s often a nice way to start the conversation started because you can ask them why they feel a ‘2’ or a ‘9’.
When I was at uni I looked for a methodology to study well-being and the closest I found then was something called POMS – Profile of Mood States, but it was still pretty unsatisfactory because it was so so subjective.

Michael Yeadon
Michael Yeadon
4 years ago
Reply to  Phil Bolton

I like this approach. There was a time in my 40s when I had given & taken my own advice to treat myself as if I really mattered. I’d quit smoking after a quarter century, lost over 3 stone (more than 42lb) and found I could get pretty good at middle distance running. Work was going well & I felt at the height of my powers. When asked how I was in passing along a corridor I would say “outrageously good, thanks!”.
No one who’d known me for a few years needed to guess why. I was one of the lucky ones able – just in time – to reinvent every habit I’d developed & to retain or add only those which felt & were good for me. I acknowledge a wonderful friend for never suggesting any of this but somehow acting as a catalyst for my changes.

Ron Sharp
Ron Sharp
4 years ago

Wilkinson and Pickett have collected the data (The Spirit Level and The Inner Level) suggesting a strong link between inequality (the UK is the fourth or fifth most unequal country in their samples) and measures of individual and societal wellbeing. We might be happier in a poorer but equal society than a rich unequal one.

Giulia Khawaja
Giulia Khawaja
4 years ago
Reply to  Ron Sharp

There is “relative poverty” in the U.K. but every society must have relative poverty. When you mention a ” poorer but equal society” do you have such a society in mind?

john dann
john dann
4 years ago

Tom, Happy Birthday from one preparing to enter his eighth decade. I offer no advice from my distant realm, no wisdom of the agèd, not because I have none to offer, but because I have never been ‘happy’ with the results of such attempts. ‘Happiness’ is a difficult gauge. Life is full of tragedy for us all. A sense of happiness is probably a chemical reaction in the brain. A recent discussion with my granddaughter gave me such a chemical sense of well being. She likes to write poetry, so I recited this to her.

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn’t care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears”
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity”

jeff.m.herman
jeff.m.herman
4 years ago

The Royal Kingdom of Bhutan has been measuring Gross National Happiness for several years and have developed a range of factors to measure. Bhutan is a relatively poor Bhuddist country but my brief experience there did indicate a general level of contentment.

John Vaughan
John Vaughan
4 years ago
Reply to  jeff.m.herman

Ah, Buddhists, in my experience the most obnoxious people, bowing automatically to stone figures without thought and forcing their kids heads down to do the same. ‘Respecting’ mountains by having monks strewn everywhere selling worthless trinkets and chanting at every turn and, worst of all, at a solemn site in Orkney, ‘The Ring of Brodgar’, I saw a Buddhist male set up a drum in the midst of the peaceful stone circle and start banging it and wailing, thus breaching the peace!

Frederik van Beek
Frederik van Beek
4 years ago
Reply to  John Vaughan

He was probably happy banging the drum, most people are

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
4 years ago
Reply to  John Vaughan

You have a very bitter and one-sided view of Buddhists, John! I think living in a Buddhist land would let you see other things….

John Vaughan
John Vaughan
4 years ago
Reply to  Dan Poynton

I’ve lived in Thailand and Japan.

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
4 years ago
Reply to  John Vaughan

Ah, the classic burnout perhaps? Pined for the home cooking? A bitter love affair with a native woman? I’ve certainly had bouts of all the above, and more, but fortunately I was still able to reignite my love for Buddhist lands and peoples (including the countries you mentioned and many more). Of course, the intense disciplined Buddhism/Shintoism of Japan and the more easy going mysteries of Thai Buddhist life are worlds apart, but perhaps you simply have an underlying ethos/character that doesn’t resonate with the East. It takes all types, John.

John Vaughan
John Vaughan
4 years ago
Reply to  Dan Poynton

They are not Buddhist lands and peoples. They are lands and peoples which happen to have had some influence from Buddhism, as has the country from which I am writing now. Thanks for telling me about yourself, your burnouts, pinings and bitter affairs but please don’t assume anything about me as your ideas, so far, seem way off the mark.

Dan Poynton
Dan Poynton
4 years ago
Reply to  John Vaughan

By “way off the mark” I think you mean you disagree with me. Fair enough, Dave – but I’d say your bitterness about where you’re living means it’s about time to go home. I have met many people who are not suited to living in Buddhist lands (or among Eastern peoples), and they do no one any good by remaining, especially themselves.

Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
4 years ago

“Happiness”, like health, is obviously a lack of something rather than a discrete positive in its own right. When we are unhealthy, and seek to be ‘healthy’ what we strive to do is return to a neutral postion where nothing needs to be done, where there is no perceptible condition which requires alteration. Happiness is the same. In both cases what is unremarkable can become remarkable at any moment, therefore all action is the desire to alter or remove undesirable states of affairs, some trivial, some important. So running for a bus which one misses is irritating, but not on the same scale of importance as being told that one has been sacked.

One of the problems with liberal utopianism as a drive to positive happiness is that it would literally imply a society where no-one ever acts at all, which is obviously absurd. The difference between the popular understanding of utopia and the real one is that no two people agree on what state of affairs would be such as to require no further action (hence to promote Utopia as a concept it is necessary to continually create problems where none actually exist – this provides the spur to action for decadents, who are unable to see (or who reject) what the world is really like). About the only people who really do find themselves in an identical state of positive circumstance (‘freedom’),and who therefore have no need to act, are dead people (literally problem-free).

It is often thought that idleness is not a form of action, but this is incorrect. It is the deliberate action to maintain a state of affairs where nothing unforeseen happens. All thought, action and ‘the desire for happiness’ are at base identical. And as no-one can predict the future (crossing the road to catch the bus might lead to unexpectedly being flattened by an oncoming vehicle) all we have is thought, which is desire, which is action, which is the true ‘happiness’. Depression is not an illness, but the cure for the illness (which is the inability to decide what to do). It is therefore the intermediate stage between frustration and the implementation of desire for action. Therefore it is true to say that ‘movement of the body’, of whatever kind, combined with a change of circumstance (‘get out of the house’) is a good cure for the inabilty to make decisions.

Auberon Linx
Auberon Linx
4 years ago

This is an interesting summary, and it would be improved even further if the statement “Psychology is the hardest science” were changed into “Psychology is a pseudoscience”. I do not mean to bash psychology – it is a worthwhile pursuit with plenty of insight to offer. Some of the most influential (for better or worse) thinkers in recent history were psychologists – Freud, Jung… But the more recent focus on quantitative results, measuring spurious parameters and then making conclusions about metaphysical concepts, and what’s more, arrogantly proclaiming these conclusions are “a scientific fact”, is plainly ridiculous.

The article is a case in point. Mr. Chivers correctly points out that it does not make much sense comparing happiness in, say, infants and 60-year olds. “Apples and oranges” does not even begin to describe it. Yet, the conclusion that the U-shaped happiness curve is real remains. In the article, this is framed as describing “some real phenomenon”, which is true I suppose, but is a rather trite finding, and not one requiring the methodological weaponry psychologists today are so fond of.

Scott Powell
Scott Powell
4 years ago

I believe I’m on the bottom of that U-curve, even though I’m now in my 50s, and that could be attributed to the fact that I’ve always been a tad immature.
Seriously, though, there is something to be said about coming out the other side. I do feel a bit of sunshine, but I think that is mostly because now my bullshit-detector is working really well, and that I tend to just say whatever the f**k I like, and don’t really care what anyone thinks about it.

t.kember1
t.kember1
4 years ago

Happiness can never be a goal at the government or personal level. It can be a byproduct of aiming to achieve something else.

jbunce01
jbunce01
4 years ago

It isn’t- unless I’ve never grown up or I’m prematurely senile (Both possibilities!). I’m mid fifties and happy!

J R Cole
J R Cole
4 years ago

I may have missed it. But, I’ve seen no reference to God in any of this commentary. A bit depressing and telling at the same time. Europe, including Great Britain, is dying and will continue to do so as long people turn away from the Judeo-Christian God.

Val Colic-Peisker
Val Colic-Peisker
4 years ago

It is hard not to notice that only about 1 in 20 comments is posted by a woman. Are blokes more opinionated and have more to say? Hm… I’d say they always have more time for their interests and past-times because somewhere in the background there is a woman/women doing work for them… Women do more work than men across the globe; the less developed a country, the bigger the gender gap in work (see ILO for details). Yet, happiness (life satisfaction, subjective wellbeing, all of them) studies show that women are on average happier than men. Yes, it is about meaning, and women generally care more about others, from children to spouses, to ageing parents, to friends, neighbours, you name it! …which is meaningful. They are better in keeping their social networks of (mutual) support going too, and this is THE most important domain of happiness, not mentioned in this article. Women bounce back after divorce and death of partner better than men (all on average, of course) because they are better at connecting with (other) people. And needless to say, everyone knows women own less wealth and earn lower incomes than men…so less money overall but still happier.