Norm Allen: In general, what is your opinion of self-help books? Do they increase peoples’ level of happiness?

Sonja Lyubomirsky: Yes, I think they can. I think self-help books are very different. There are some self-help books that basically reflect the authors’ personal opinions or personal observations or anecdotes or judgments. And those, I think, are not as helpful as the self-help books that rely on scientific research or systematic investigations of what makes people happier. You might imagine that if you base your advice on your own opinion, that might work for you, it might work for your friends. But it might not work for the average person. That’s why it’s important to do experimental research where we can be more confident in the conclusions for the average person, and not just for our friends. There’s a lot of diversity on self-help literature. Some books are great and some are not so good. I guess that’s true for anything.

Allen: That’s a good segue into my question regarding your book “The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.” What is the science of happiness?

Lyubomirsky: The science of happiness basically refers to research on happiness. That’s a pretty broad topic. Some people study to find out whether people in some countries are happier than people in other countries, or if people who are richer are happier than people that are poorer. That’s called correlational research, comparing groups or comparing individuals. We can learn quite a bit from that research. My book is basically about experimental research. It’s research on what are called “happiness interventions.” They’re basically clinical trials. But instead of testing a new treatment or a new drug, they’re testing different kinds of happiness strategies or activities or techniques. My lab, for example, does lots of happiness interventions. We measure people’s happiness before and after. We have a comparison or control group. This way we can find out, for example, if expressing gratitude makes people happier than not. Which is more effective. expressing gratitude once a week or three times a week? We can test specific questions about what makes people happy. What kinds of people might benefit the most? What kinds of ways of enacting these strategies might be most effective?

Allen: If our happiness is largely a result of the choices we make, what about the influences in our lives that we cannot control? What about our environments, our families, the weather, the climate, our leaders, and so forth?

Lyubomirsky: My book, “The How of Happiness” presents what I call a pie charts theory. It’s sort of a theory of what are the influences of happiness. Even though it’s just kind of an estimation of the numbers that are involved, I think it’s a good answer to your question. Basically, according to that theory, about 50% of the individual differences in happiness are due to genetics. So if you randomly take 100 people off the street, and you ask why some of them are happier than others, then about 50% of the answer, basically, is their genes. Some of the answer is in their right circumstances, as you say. Some people are richer, some people are poorer. Some people are in bad marriages. There are differences in age, where they live, what country they live in, etcetera. It turns out those differences are not as big determinants of happiness as we think. Generally, studies show that only about 8%-10% or 15%-20% of individual differences in happiness are accounted for by differences in life circumstances. Most people are really surprised to hear that because they think that it should be a much bigger number. But the caveat is that if your life is poor, or if you’re in an abusive relationship, or if you live in a country with a lot of instability or corruption, then you’re going to be unhappy. I’m really talking about once you’re comfortable, after that threshold is met, having more good stuff in your life is going to make you happier, but it’s not going to make you hugely happier.

Allen: On a related note, which social, political and economic systems are most conducive to happiness?

Lyubomirsky: I can tell you the answer to that from correlational studies. Of course, we can’t do causal experiments. We can’t change governments or force people to live in certain places and not others. But the correlational data show that the democratic countries have the happiest citizens. Countries that have higher GDP are also happier, but that is very much co-related with other things like democracy, equal rights, lack of graft, corruption, instability, war, and that kind of thing. That’s what the correlational data show.

Allen: Social studies have indicated that married people are generally healthier and happier than unmarried people. If this is true, does this mean that all people should eventually get married if they wish to live happily?

Lyubomirsky: That’s a very complicated question because the biggest differences among married, divorced, widowed, and separated, is that the divorced, separated and widowed are the unhappiest. Single people actually are not unhappy. One of the reasons that married people are happier is that people who get married start off being happier. If you’re a happier person to begin with, you’re more likely to find a marriage partner. So the causality could work the other direction. Another issue with that research is that, by definition, when you’re interviewing someone who’s married, you’re capturing the happier people that are married. They’re not divorced, or they’re not divorced yet. The ones that are not so happy being married drop out of your study by separating or getting divorced. Forty-five percent of people get divorced. It’s a little bit of an unfair comparison. You’re not talking about all people who have ever been married, but people who have somewhat successful marriages because they are still together.

The research does show pretty convincingly that single people are not less happy than married people. I have a new book coming out called “The Myths of Happiness,” coming out in January. I have a chapter on singlehood or singledorn that goes into great detail about how single people are just as happy as married people. Lots of people live their entire lives being single and they have a lot more friends than married people. They have very close connections and they don’t seem to suffer.

Allen: What are some of the other myths of happiness?

Lyubomirsky: “The Myths of Happiness” basically refers to fallacies or beliefs that we have about what we think will make us happy, which is not always the case. It’s also about what we think will make us miserable, which is also not always the case. I have chapters, for example, about having children. We think that having children will make us happy. It turns out that some people are less happy when they have children. That’s not everyone on average. If you don’t make much money, if you don’t have a stable job, if you’re single or younger, you tend to be not so happy when you’re with children. Your peers who don’t have children are actually happier.

I talk about work. A lot of people think, “once I get that job that I always wanted, then I’ll be really happy.” The research shows that getting a new job that you like does make you happy, but it doesn’t last forever. You get this boost at first. “Wow! This is great. I love this job.” But the boost inevitably dissipates. You adapt to the great job. It’s a process called static adaptation. No matter how good the job is, you start looking for something even better.

The same thing happens with relationships, too. You think that once you find the right partner you’ll be happy forever. But marriage is hard work, and you adapt to your married partner, as well. On the opposite side, people think when they get old they’re going to be unhappy, or if they become ill they’ll be unhappy. I discuss research that shows that’s not the case for a lot of people. With an illness, of course, it depends on what it is. But people who receive a diagnosis that’s not so good actually wind up being quite resilient, and sometimes even get happier and stronger as a result of illness or disease. In terms of aging, the research is pretty clear that older people actually are happier than younger people. So that’s definitely a myth, as well.

Allen: On a similar note, we human beings are conscious of the fact that we are going to die one day. How can we be happy knowing that we are going to die?

Lyubomirsky: That’s a good existential question. I have a section in “The Myths of Happiness” about getting older and facing death or being ill and facing death. There are different ways that people deal with that. Some people focus on their legacies. What can they leave the world after they’re gone, and it could be as simple as focusing on your children and your grandchildren. Or it could be leaving a work of art or some kind of contribution like writing that is still going to be there after you’re gone. That’s one way that people handle it. Generally, researchers find that people don’t obsess about death. You get absorbed in the day-to-day mechanics of life and focusing on your life goals while you’re alive. Focusing on enjoying life day-to-day is what gets you through it.

Allen: During antebellum times, there was this notion of the happy-go-lucky slave. Afterward, during Jim Crow times, there was this notion that African Americans were actually happy during their plight. Can one get through life and be happy if they are thoroughly oppressed? For example, if a woman is living in a patriarchal or theocratic society, can she be happy? If an LGBT person is living in a thoroughly homophobic society, can that person be happy? Can they develop certain coping mechanisms that somehow enable them to enjoy life or be happy?

Lyubomirsky: That’s a really, really good question. The perceptions like you talked about, the happy slave, etcetera are obviously self-serving perceptions. People don’t want to feel guilty about people that are oppressed. It’s sort of a dangerous question because most of my answer is “yes.” People can be happy even in dire circumstances, even when they are oppressed. I don’t want to say, “just be happy. Don’t seek change.” Because obviously we don’t want to be content and accept that situation and not change it, not do anything about it, not work toward change. But the first part of the answer is, “yes.” People are incredibly resilient. One example, I have a friend, Robert Biswas-Diener, who goes all around the world to study happiness. He went to Calcutta in India and did research and interviewed people living in the slums of Calcutta in really dire conditions. And he found that people were, on average, happy. It’s kind of amazing. What he basically found is that they were very focused on family. Of course, having children can make you happy no matter what kind of conditions you’re in. They were just so focused on the relationships and family that that brought them a lot of happiness. They were also quite adapted to some of the conditions they were living in. That’s not to say that everyone could adapt to that, or that they don’t want to change. But those conditions did not make them as unhappy as we thought they would. There are definitely studies that show that people can cope. In prison, those who are incarcerated learn how to adapt to and cope with the conditions of living in prison. People are remarkably resilient. But again, I don’t want to imply that that means that we should simply say to people, like the opium of the masses, that, oh, well, people can be happy in any condition. We should also show that the happiest people are also the most energetic and goal-oriented. They’re the most likely to actually go and get off the couch and do something, to seek justice, or to change the world. If people who are oppressed were really depressed, then they would not be able to change the situation, because they would lack the motivation, decisiveness, and energy that they need to get together and seek change.

Allen: Speaking of “the opium of the masses,” that brings me to the question of religion. Many people believe that religion or spirituality are necessary for a happy life. Have you found this to be true? Could a secular Humanist be truly happy?

Lyubomirsky: The word “necessary” I definitely would not agree with. Religion is not necessary for a happy life. But correlational research – again, you can never do experiments, you can’t force some people to be religious and prevent others from being religious – does show that people who are religious and spiritual are happier. The question really is why. It turns out that there are two answers. The biggest answer is that religious people have a stronger community and more social support. They’re more likely to be married and to have strong families than people who are less religious. So it may be just that social component of religion. Of course, you can get that social component if you’re a Humanist or an atheist. You don’t need to be religious to have really good social support. The second answer is that people who are religious report having a stronger purpose in life, or meaning in life. That’s true. That’s a fact. But again, if you’re a Humanist, you can have a large purpose in life, as well. Religion is not a necessary condition for those things.

Allen: You talked earlier about people who are sick who can still be happy. There are people who are in those situations who are desperate and feel that they do not want to live any more. They want to end it all. Would euthanasia be an option if people are truly unhappy and seemingly destined to live their lives in non-stop misery?

Lyubomirsky: You’re asking for my personal opinion, and my personal opinion is yes. I believe that euthanasia should be an option for people who are miserable and in pain, and they feel that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Personally I believe that. There’s no research on that, so I’m not sure what to tell you about what the science says. Obviously, the danger is that some people do get depressed, and when you’re clinically depressed, your perspective is very much colored. Depression is biological. You can take drugs or you can take treatment that will help you get out of the depression. So you would want to make sure that the individual is not influenced by neurotransmitters. You would want to make sure that that perspective is not colored by mental health conditions. So that’s another caveat.

Allen: Ayn Rand wrote about the virtue of selfishness. Similarly, many conservative libertarians say that self-interest is the key to happiness. Yet others, especially great moral teachers, have asserted that generosity brings about happiness to the benefactor as well as the beneficiary. Which is more likely to generate happiness for the individual. self-interest or generosity?

Lyubomirsky: The answer is very clear there. The research shows that it’s generosity that makes people happier, not selfishness or self-interest. In fact, there’s a study that was done that tested that pretty nicely. It was a very simple study published in Science. The researchers gave people $20 at 9:00 am and told them to either spend the money on themselves – so there’s a self-interest condition – or to spend the money on someone else by 5:00 pm that day. They came back and then they tested how happy they were. The people who spent the money on others were happier than the people who spent the money on themselves. It makes us happy. It makes us happier to be generous to others for many reasons. It makes you feel like a good person, it can strengthen relationships, it can make us feel more charitable and independent with one another. Generosity has a lot of social consequences and a lot of positive consequences.

Allen: Are most people who study happiness happy themselves? Does one have to be happy to be able to study and understand happiness?

Lyubomirsky: Not everyone who studies happiness is happy themselves. I had a graduate student who wanted to work with me because he was very unhappy. He wanted to do research to figure out how to make himself happy. But scientists should be completely unbiased. So I don’t believe in studying a certain subject because you want to be happier. You don’t have to be happy or unhappy. You just have to be curious and love to be a scientist; because it’s a lot of hard work and monotony, as well. It’s not fun and games all the time. But you don’t have to be happy.

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor and graduate advisor in the department of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of “The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want” and the forthcoming book, “The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does.”