e is the random variable. X is exogenous. Y is stochastic, as it is a function of a random variable. But predictions about Y can still be made, as long as you provide a confidence interval or something similar.
Stochastic implies randomness. How happy you are depends on 2 random factors: genes and what life brings you.
It is my understanding that “genes” implies that hereditary factors matter. That is, from the point of view of the individual, who your parents are is a matter of chance. That is, it’s stochastic.
The only other factor here is “prenatal environment”: I don’t think the authors implied that this affected one’s genes (it doesn’t, right?).
I don’t follow the last sentence.
This I understand. The authors appear to imply sympathy for another POV when they cautiously state, “One is tempted to speculate that natural selection has tended to favor happy people because they were more likely to mate and raise children and thus to become our ancestors.” (I don’t necessarily share this sympathy, btw).
Look, I admit I didn’t go through the article carefully. And I’ve noted my methodological reservations. But I’m still not following your interpretation.
Happiness is stochastic: all attempts to improve it are transitory. The effects of joining a religion or winning the lottery are transitory. Socioeconomic and marital status don’t matter. The only things that do matter are things out of your control, specifically hereditary factors. “It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller and therefore is counterproductive.”
The authors’ evidence involves questionaires given to twins. Identical twins had a .52 intraclass correlation with their happiness scores while nonidentical twins had roughly 0 correlation.
Ugh… I can see most people don’t know what they’re talking about. We are some pretty dang complex organisms, and this modern society we live in has only been around for a very short time. We haven’t had time to study the long term effects of all this sensory input we get on a day to day basis. Watching TV keeps us in an alert state, playing video games excite us, thinking about these things and imagining them in our mind induces the same state of mind as if you’re actually doing the damn thing and people do that quite often when they think they’re “resting”.
On top of that we work all day, and don’t really take breaks and if we do, it’s nothing like one we would have taken back in the day: walking around the grass and basking in the sun and really taking a break. Too many stresses on the nervous system and not enough rest and nutrition are tiring us out. We’ve forgotten all about the healthy practices our ancient ancestors had passed down to us, and focus in on all our greedy desires. You can’t have it all, all the time.
It’s way deeper than that, but too much for me to waste my time posting about. It’s not evolutionary, and it’s not genetic: it’s our modern lifestyle and all the lots of little pieces that come with it.
Gilbert maintains that a psychological immune system tends to assert itself in the face of large disasters (loss of job or loved one), but not in response to small ones (car breaks down). So oddly one’s happiness may relate more to small frustrations than large challenges. I know, :dubious:. The claim is certainly counterintuitive. But according to the NYT reviewer, Gilbert substantiated this framework with a variety of studies.
We are also wired to be really really bad at predicting what makes us happy. The fallout from horrible events is shorter than we think, as is the joy gleaned from that new car or lover.
I’m not certain about the set point theory. According to research dug up by George Ortega on cognitive dissonance and happiness imply that long term changes can be made.
“Notwithstanding, several happiness increase experiments (sources) have succeeded in raising subjects level of happiness approximately 25 percent in as few as two to four weeks, and after 2 1/2 months of happiness training, subjects reported a mean increase of 12 percent nine to eighteen months after such training had ended.”
I also read a study not too long ago that when a guy acts sullen and introverted he is only percieved as attractive about 30% of the time but when the same guy acts happy and extroverted it jumps to about 70%. So things like that seem to imply that we are attracted to happiness, that we desire happy mates the same way we desire wealthy or attractive mates. The question is why aren’t we happier than we are now?
Having recently read the moral animal I can see why we are deluded into thinking some things will make us happy that really wont. Things that increase our survival or reproductive success are designed to trick us into thinking we’ll be forever happy once we get them only to have it taken away once we get there like you said earlier. I’m pretty sure it was Naomi Wolf who coined the phrase ‘cult of dieting’ to discuss women who believed that once they lost weight (and increased their reproductive value) that all their problems would be solved. People do the same thing with money (if I make 20k a year more all my problems will disappear) only to have that happiness turn out to be an illusion.
Oddly, I’m not sure Happiness Skills Theory conflicts with Gilbert (though it may).
It’s possible that our inclinations aren’t a particularly good guide to happiness (and that we are naturally deluded into thinking otherwise). Nonetheless, there’s no reason why a deliberate strategy (or certain pharmaceuticals) couldn’t secure us a beneficial state of mind.
Still, I’m a little concerned about a life-strategy study that tracks its subjects for only 6 weeks or 2.5 months. If happiness tends to bounce around a given mean during one’s lifetime, then we’d need to study longer time intervals. Presumably some strategies have more permanent effects than others: I would want to see followup interviews 1-2 years later.
I’m not defending Gilbert by the way: set-point theory doesn’t describe my experiences particularly well, subjectively speaking. But hey, I’m just a single data point, and an insufficiently informed one at that.
Glad you liked Moral Animal. BTW, Robert Wright now hosts http://meaningoflife.tv/ , “Cosmic thinkers on camera”, which I admittedly have not explored due to my allergy to streaming video.
The whole depression thing is messy. I have it, and I struggle with it at times. It’s weird how it works.
What bothers me most about it is, I really don’t have any control over when it strikes. I have a pretty nice life, I really do. I think I’d have to look pretty hard to find something to be depressed about. And yet, sometimes I’m not very happy.
Gotta love those things that aren’t within your control.
Also, Fordyce (1983) measured subjects’ SWB 9-18 months after 10 weeks of training and found them 12 percent happier than controls, demonstrating the lasting effectiveness of his happiness increase course.
Also the set point theory may not be unbreakable either. I was reading the god gene and it talks about how a person’s ability to experience transcendent spiritual experiences are largely genetic, but a single dose of psilobycin can increase the rates from 20% to about 65% even if the single dose was taken 20 years ago.
Fordyce (1983) is available here. I have some methodological concerns[sup]1[/sup], but I thought that it was an interesting piece of work. Further research is worth pursuing, IMHO.
Just to be clear (at the risk of repetition), I don’t think that set point theory necessarily conflicts Fordyce et al. It may be that most people’s attempts to pursue happiness are ineffectual (though not necessarily harmful), but that other methods could be more effective, even over long periods of time.
Furthermore, I haven’t seen strong evidence for any of these frameworks, set-point theory included, but that’s closely related to my unfamiliarity with this literature.
Apropos nothing, a FAQ on Subjective Well Being (SWB) is available here.
[sup]1[/sup]Eg the 14th fundamental may bias measures of SWB.