Beyond happiness

Psychologist Martin Seligman on the basic elements of well-being

Is happiness overrated? Martin Seligman now thinks so,which may seem like an odd position for the founder of the positive psychology movement. As president of the American Pychological Association in the late 1990s,he criticised his colleagues for focusing relentlessly on mental illness and other problems. He prodded them to study lifes joys,and wrote a best seller in 2002 titled Authentic Happiness.

But now he regrets that title. As the investigation of happiness proceeded,Seligman began seeing certain limitations of the concept. Why did couples go on having children even though the data clearly showed that parents are less happy than childless couples? Why did billionaires desperately seek more money even when there was nothing they wanted to do with it? And why did some people keep joylessly playing bridge? Seligman,an avid player himself,kept noticing them at tournaments. They never smiled,not even when they won. They didnt play to make money or make friends.

They wanted to win for its own sake,even if it brought no positive emotion, says Seligman,a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Watching them play,seeing them cheat,it kept hitting me that accomplishment is a human desiderata in itself. This feeling of accomplishment contributes to what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia,which roughly translates to well-being or flourishing,a concept that Seligman has borrowed for the title of his new book,Flourish. He has also created his own acronym,Perma,for what he defines as the five crucial elements of well-being,each pursued for its own sake: positive emotion,engagement the feeling of being lost in a task,relationships,meaning and accomplishment. Well-being cannot exist just in your own head, he writes. Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning,good relationships and accomplishment.

The positive psychology movement has inspired efforts around the world to survey peoples state of mind,like a new project in Britain to measure what David Cameron,the prime minister,calls GWB,for general well-being. Seligman says hes glad to see governments measuring more than just the GDP,but hes concerned that these surveys mainly ask people about their life satisfaction.

In theory,life satisfaction might include the various elements of well-being. But in practice,Seligman says,peoples answers to that question are largelymore than 70 per centdetermined by how theyre feeling at the moment of the survey,not how they judge their lives overall. So what should be measured instead? The best gauge so far of flourishing,Seligman says,comes from a study of 23 European countries by Felicia Huppert and Timothy So of the University of Cambridge. Besides asking respondents about their moods,the researchers asked about their relationships with others and their sense that they were accomplishing something worthwhile.

Denmark and Switzerland ranked highest in Europe,with more than a quarter of their citizens meeting the definition of flourishing. Near the bottom,with fewer than 10 per cent flourishing,were France,Hungary,Portugal and Russia. Theres no direct comparison available with the United States,although some researchers say that Americans would do fairly well because of their sense of accomplishment.

Some happiness researchers have suggested that parents delude themselves about the joys of children: They focus on the golden moments and forget the more frequent travails. But Seligman says that parents are wisely looking for more than happy feelings. If we just wanted positive emotions,our species would have died out a long time ago, he says. We have children to pursue other elements of well-being. We want meaning in life. We want relationships.

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In observing peoples need for accomplishment,Seligman says,hes reminded of his early experiments that famously identified the concept of learned helplessness. He found that when animals or people were given a series of arbitrary punishments or rewards,they stopped trying to do anything constructive. We found that even when good things occurred that werent earned,like nickels coming out of slot machines,it did not increase peoples well-being, he said. It produced helplessness. People gave up and became passive.

To avoid that sort of malaise,Seligman recommends looking at the basic elements of well-being,identifying which ones matter most to you,setting goals and monitoring progress. Simply keeping track of how much time you spend time each daily pursuing each goal can make a difference,he says,because its easy to see discrepancies between your goals and what you do.JOHN TIERNEY