What Do Happiness Studies Study?

By Jim E. Griffin. 2007

93 citations recorded by the source corpus.

What do, or should, happiness studies study? Everything to which we refer with the word ‘‘happiness’’ is worth some study. But the study of subjective states covers only part of the ground covered by the word ‘‘happiness’’ and by no means all the ground central to understanding happiness. On the central use of ‘‘happiness,’’ to be happy is to be glad or satisfied or content, which suggests subjectivity, with having a good measure of what is important in life, which suggests objectivity. We find the same suggestion of both subjectivity and objectivity in the list of what enhances the quality of life. There are strong arguments in favour both of the subjectivity of what enhances life and of its objectivity. I argue that neither is right, that the story is more complicated. The conclusion of the story is that there is a list of several non-reducible features that contribute to the quality of a characteristic human life, and that anything that contributes to the quality of any human life will be one or other of these features. But there is a problem. When we speak of the quality of a human life, there may be no one thing we have in mind. Perhaps some of us are not disagreeing with one another over the nature of a ‘‘happy’’ life but speaking of different things.

Subfields: Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1ab1faa252d560ae3e9351ef8ad3d8871566ef49

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Social Psychology

1. S. Filep
2. M. Deery
3. Patti Peters
4. Kelly Cichy
5. S. Toepfer

Citations in the corpus

• Letters of Gratitude: Further Evidence for Author Benefits (2012, background): “Both studies were consistent in showing that the writing campaign of three letters improved affective states of happiness which includes feelings of gladness, satisfaction, fulfillment (Griffin 2006; Myers 1992).”
• Towards a picture of tourists' happiness (2010, background): “Later on, however, happiness came other interpretations, major ways happiness can be to mean having good hap (Griffin, 2007).”