Modeling Human Happiness - Research Agenda

A brief overview of the research agenda for the Modeling Human Happiness project.

Our primary objective is to develop innovative scientific models of happiness to inform research, public debate and policymaking. These models will be based on an interdisciplinary integration of insights from ancient philosophical conceptions, philosophy of science and modern psychological research. Specifically, we aim to develop models of happiness as:

(a) fundamentally social;
(b) inherently value-laden;
(c) a function of human nature, and;
(d) a temporally extended, dynamic activity.

In this document we describe the research agenda for the project in more detail.

Happiness is Social

Humans are profoundly social and prosocial (Benjamin et al. 2014, Churchland 2018, Thin 2012, Tomasello 2019), but most of modern happiness science is focused on individual well-being. A large proportion of the human brain is involved in understanding other people and social interactions (Blakemore, 2008). Individual lives are interwoven, integrated and constantly interacting – we are homo sociabilis (Røysamb & Nes). These insights bring to the fore the social contexts of happiness and generate questions about the cultural, economic and political influences on happiness and the role that, e.g., class and gender play in one’s prospects for happiness. In contrast to the individualistic tendency in modern times (Gill 2008), Plato, Aristotle, Epicureans and the Stoics provide competing models for conceptualizing happiness in terms of interpersonal and communal relationships (Morrison 2001). ModHap will investigate the consequences of humans’ sociality along several trajectories, exploring the hypothesis that there is an essentially relational aspect of happiness, including the idea that there is some sense of a happy group or community that amounts to more than the aggregate happiness of its members.

Research questions

Conceptual

  • Which social or political factors are important to individual happiness?
  • Are the individualistic features of happiness (such as self-sufficiency and freedom) related to socially determined features of happiness?
  • What is the relationship between a happy society and happy Individuals?

Methodological

  • How can we determine whether the social dimensions of happiness should be understood as constitutive of happiness or as causes of happiness?
  • What implications will the distinction between constitution and causes of happiness have for empirical research and for scientific explanation of happiness?

Empirical 

  • What are the aspects of social relations (e.g., support, attachment, conflict, trust) that are most predictive of subjective assessments of life as good?
  • How should collective happiness be operationalized and measured?
  • To what degree, and in what ways, are well-functioning communities associated with components of individual well-being?

Happiness is value laden

Empirical approaches to happiness claim to be descriptive and thus neutral on questions about value. Nevertheless, mainstream research on well-being is better seen as a hybrid that is implicitly committed to philosophical theories of value (Alexandrova 2017). Three such normative theories tend to dominate:hedonism, which holds that pleasure is the good; satisfactionism, which holds that the satisfaction of anindividual’s desires or preferences is the good; and eudaimonism, which equates the good with the fulfilment of human nature. SWB approaches combine the first two value theories into hybrid models reflecting a hedonic and a satisfaction dimension, whereas EWB researchers endorse some version of the third. Despite this, neither tradition directly tackles the value question, partly because acknowledging a value commitment would seem to undermine its scientific legitimacy. Diener (1984, 543) argues for example that the ancient notion of happiness is inconsistent with modern science because of its grounding in a particular value framework. However, some researchers have recently begun to challenge the value-free ideal for science as misguided, arguing that science cannot and should not avoid values and that scientists who take on certain value perspectives need not be seen as thereby sacrificing scientific objectivity or legitimacy (Douglas 2009, Oreskes 2019). Similarly, the idea that a science of happiness can incorporate a value perspective without compromising its objectivity is supported in the growing literature arguing that some concepts are mixed by their very nature, and cannot be understood without reference to a value element (Alexandrova 2017). Accordingly, ModHap will explore the hypothesis that happiness is inevitably a value-laden concept, and that being value-laden is compatible with its being the object of scientific study.

Research questions

Conceptual

  • How should we conceptualize the relationship between virtue and happiness?
  • Are certain virtues relevant for happiness and, if so, why?
  • How should concepts of happiness that derive both from ethics and from science be developed and defended?

Methodological

  • What challenges to scientific objectivity are posed by acknowledging the value-ladenness of the concept of happiness?
  • How can models of happiness better take into account that they operate with inherently value-laden concepts?

Empirical

  • Do ancient theses about happiness resonate in current society? To what extent do people agree with key Aristotelian notions of happy lives?
  • What are the valued conditions that are perceived as key to a good life? How are conditions such as life satisfaction,’ ‘family well-being,’ ‘acts of courage,’ and ‘care-giving’ valued and ranked as components of good lives? What is the underlying latent structure of such valued conditions?
  • What role(s) does being a good person play in being a happy person? How can an improved measure of virtues be developed in a reliable and valid fashion?

Happiness is a function of human nature

Many ancient philosophers regarded science and ethics as continuous and complementary (Johansen 2004), and thought that happiness can be objectively grounded in relation to human nature. Aristotle, for example, believed that the goodness of living beings can be defined in terms of the fulfilment of their natural goals. We shall explore such grounding arguments, a topic hotly disputed by both ancient philosophers, in particular concerning what role the various aspects of our nature (biological, psychological, rational, social) should be given (Rabbås 2015, Hendry and Nielsen 2015), and by current neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists (Hursthouse 1999). In social sciences, these ideas can be recognized in basic needs theories of wellbeing (Doyal & Gough 1991, Ryan & Deci 2001), which often are contrasted with approaches grounded in the principle of private sovereignty. Hedonism and subjectivism are typical private sovereignty theories, as are SWB models and some EWB approaches, like those suggested by Waterman (1993) and Ryff (2016). Inspired by ancient theories, ModHap will explore the hypothesis that happiness can be understood as a function of human nature.

Research questions

Conceptual

  • What role should be given to various aspects of human nature (biological, psychological, rational, social) in explanations of happiness?
  • How should the relationship between human nature and an individual’s nature be understood?
  • What is the role of pleasure in good explanations of happiness?

Methodological

  • Is the effect variable “happiness” as studied in quantitative genetics research an appropriate effect measure? If not, what could be better measures?
  • To what extent might GWAS of eudaimonic happiness be relevant to explaining and understanding happiness and/or contribute to our understanding of human nature?
  • What kind of cause (of happiness) is a single nucleotide variation (SNP)?
  • How should we understand the relationship between genetic and environmental factors in determining happiness?

Empirical 

  • How do the genetic influences on subjective well-being, operationalized as polygenic scores, also manifest in other happiness dimensions such as social relations?
  • What are the genetic correlations between various happiness components, and what is the underlying genetic structure?
  • In what ways might genetic factors in happiness create and shape environmental exposures – which operate as mediating mechanisms in the pathways from DNA to happiness? 
  • What environments are conducive to the expression of genetic potential for happiness?

Happiness as a temporally extended dynamic activity

Ancient analyses of happiness made useful conceptual distinctions between activities, processes and states, and understood humans as aspirational beings whose activities have happiness as their ultimate goal. Building on these notions, ModHap will analyze and develop the ancient conception of happiness as a goal-directed activity. Our hypothesis is that understanding happiness requires a dynamic model that makes the temporal and goal-oriented dimension of happiness central. The Functional well-being approach (Vittersø 2018) and the concept of well-moving (Røysamb & Nes 2018) are steps in the direction of an activity-based modern conceptualization of happiness.

Research questions

Conceptual

  • Should happiness be conceptualized as an activity? 
  • What role do activities and goals play in a good understanding of happiness?
  • Should life’s narrative structure be incorporated into an account of happiness?
  • How can the notion of a practice be used as an analytic scheme to develop new models of happiness and methods of measuring it?

Methodological

  • Can teleological analyses still be scientifically relevant, and can they be relevant for understanding happiness?
  • What tools or measures can be developed that can take into account the dynamic and narrative aspects of happiness?

Empirical 

  • How and to what extent do different happiness components change and/or co-develop across time?
  • To what extent are goal-directed activities and well-moving crucial to assessments of life as good?

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