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Soc (2016) 53:273–277

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Happiness is the Right Metric to Measure Good Societal

Functioning

Robert A. Cummins1

Published online: 1 April 2016

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Abstract Professor Etzioni argues that ‘happiness’ is ‘the wrong metric’ as a measure of a good society. He argues from the perspective of Communitarian Philosophy and uses two kinds of happiness evidence. One is correlational results from survey data and the other concerns ‘self-actualization’ as the highest-order need proposed by Maslow. Unfortunately, both kinds of evidence are flawed for this purpose. First, contemporary understanding of happiness allows a different perspective from the one depicted. Second, correlational results from cross-sectional studies cannot be used to conclude causation. Third, the construct of self-actualization has been discredited as having scientific validity. Overall, Etzioni’s argument rests on an outdated conception of happiness and the invalid interpretation of scientific evidence. It is concluded that happiness is the right metric by which to judge a successful society, as long as the nature of measured happiness is understood.

Keywords Happiness . Subjective wellbeing . Life satisfaction . Homeostasis . Society . Resources

Professor Etzioni argues that the construct of ‘happiness’ is ‘the wrong metric’ as a measure of good societal functioning. The basis of his arguments lies within Communitarian Philosophy. My aim is to comment on this paper from the perspective of contemporary happiness science. That is, from the perspective of psychology. This description of happiness will first be outlined, followed by a discussion of Etzioni’s arguments based on happiness as a construct.

* Robert A. Cummins

[email protected]

School of Psychology, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Hwy, Melbourne, VIC 3125, Australia

Defining Happiness

Perhaps the most vexing issue in the happiness literature is the failure of authors to define their terms. This omission is far from trivial. The various meanings that authors ascribe to ‘happiness’ differ so much from one another that effective communication is threatened.

Etzioni’s article is no exception. The only relevant information provided is that, following Bentham (1780), economists use the term ‘utility’ to mean happiness, Bdefined as pleasure, or some other source of satisfaction^ (p.17). Further, that Mill’s (Mill 1863) proportionality doctrine concerns happiness defined as Bpleasure and the absence of pain^ (p.17). But these are ancient historical ideas derived from philosophy, with little or no relevance to contemporary understanding of happiness.

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As a scientific construct, happiness belongs to psychology. Within this discipline, the most specific and theoretically embedded definition of ‘happiness’ is as a single variable within the circumplex model of affect (Russell 1980, 2003; Yik et al. 2011). The Affective Circumplex is the generally accepted model in psychology for the classification of affective adjectives. The circumplex depicts a circle, within which there are two orthogonal and bi-polar axes. The horizontal axis represents unpleasant to pleasant, anchored by ‘dissatisfied’ on the left and ‘satisfied’ on the right. The vertical axis represents high arousal (top) to low arousal (bottom). The mathematical model that creates the circumplex locates individual affects on the circumference of the circle, with each location defined by the relative content of pleasantness and arousal. Around the circumplex perimeter, similar (i.e. highly positively correlated) affects lie close to each other. For example, ‘mood happiness’ lies very close to ‘life satisfaction’ and to ‘subjective wellbeing’. This indicates their similar affective composition, and all are dominated by HPMood (see later). Thus, in the text that follows, these terms will generally be considered interchangeable. Understanding Happiness

When defined as a single affect, happiness has two quite different meanings. Most commonly ‘happy’ is used to describe the feeling resulting from a short-term event, such as a pleasant social interaction (Diener et al. 2004). That is, something has happened that makes the person feel happy. This form of happiness is transitory and is referred to as an emotional state. An emotion is a transient, positive state of mind caused by a specific experience.

The second kind of happiness is quite different. It comprises a long-duration positive mood trait (Seidlitz and Diener 1993). Mood happiness is genetically driven and normally forms a constant background to our thoughts. It is lowstrength, mildly activated, and its purpose is to keep us feeling good about ourselves. In fact, this mood is so important, it has its own management system.

SWB Homeostasis The term ‘homeostasis’ was coined by Cannon (1932) who, at that time, was studying the physiological response to stress. He coined the term to describe the way separate physiological systems work together to re-establish stability after a disturbance. It is now understood that homeostatic systems are commonplace. Every physiological variable that needs to be maintained within a narrow range for normal functioning is managed by such a system. An example is the maintenance of body temperature.

The theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis proposes that subjective wellbeing (SWB) is also actively controlled and maintained (Cummins and Nistico 2002). This form of homeostasis attempts to maintain a constant, background level of mood happiness, which provides the positive sense of wellbeing that people normally experience. This stable positive mood is called Homeostatically Protected Mood (HPMood: Cummins 2010). This mood also dominates trait measures of life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing.

The composition of HPMood is dominated by a sense of contentment flavored with a touch of happiness and excitement. It is this general and abstract state of wellbeing which the homeostatic system seeks to defend. As one consequence, the level of satisfaction or mood happiness people normally experience has the following characteristics:

1: It is normally very stable. While the emotion caused by unusually good or bad events causes feelings to change in the short term, over a period of time homeostasis will normally return SWB to its previous level (see Hanestad and Albrektsen 1992; Headey and Wearing 1989)

2:	Each person has a level of HPMood that is set genetically. This ‘set-point’ for SWB liesin the ‘satisfied’sector of the dissatisfied-satisfied continuum. That is, on a percentagepoint scale, where zero represents complete dissatisfaction with life and 100 represents complete satisfaction, people’s set-point normally lies within the range of 70 to 90 points (Cummins et al. 2014).
3:	At a population level within Western nations, the average level of SWB is 75. In other words, on average, people feel that their general satisfaction with life is about threequarters of its maximum extent (Cummins 1995, 1998).

While this generalized sense of wellbeing is held positive with remarkable tenacity, it is not immutable. A sufficiently challenging environment can chronically defeat homeostasis and, when this occurs, the level of subjective wellbeing falls persistently below its homeostatic range. For example, people who experience strong, chronic pain from arthritis or from the stress of caring for a severely disabled family member at home have low levels of subjective wellbeing (Cummins 2001).

However, for people who are maintaining a normally functioning homeostatic system, their levels of SWB will show little relationship to the daily events in their lives. Emotions come and go, but SWB returns to the set-point of HPMood. So, how does homeostasis achieve such stability? The answer we propose, is that there are three levels of homeostatic defence and we call these defensive systems ‘buffers’.

The first buffer is provided by behaviour, for example, we try to move away from an unpleasant interaction. The second set of buffers are external sources of support. There are three major sources, ‘The Golden Triangle of Happiness’, comprising an intimate relationship, money and a sense of purpose.

The most powerful external buffer is a relationship with another human being that involves mutual sharing of intimacies and support. Almost universally, the research literature attests to the power of such relationships to moderate the influence of potential stressors on SWB (for a review see Sarason et al. 1990a, b). The second external buffer is money used to protect wellbeing through the purchase of supportive resources (Cummins 2000). The third is a sense of purpose, which gives meaning to life and the motivation to live.

However, despite our best efforts to ward off adversity, bad events happen that are beyond the control of the external buffers. When this occurs, and the normal level of SWB is threatened, our internal buffers come into play. These comprise protective cognitive devices designed to keep us feeling good about our self. They do this by minimizing the personal impact of failure. There are many such devices, collectively called Secondary Control techniques (Rothbaum et al. 1982) and a detailed discussion of these systems in relation to SWB is provided in Cummins and Nistico (2002). They protect SWB by altering the way we see ourselves in relation to a challenging agent. This can be achieved in various ways.

For example, one can find meaning in the event (‘God is testing me’), fail to take responsibility for the failure (‘it was not my fault’) or regard the failure [dropping a vase] as unimportant (‘I did not need that old vase anyway’).

In summary, the combined influences of adaptive behaviour, together with the external and internal buffers, ensure that our wellbeing is robustly defended. Indeed, under ordinary life conditions, the level of SWB varies by about 8 percentage points on either side of its average from one moment to the next. While a strong and unexpected experience will shift the sense of personal wellbeing to abnormally higher or lower values, this is usually for a brief period of time, until adaptation occurs. However, if the negative experience is sufficiently strong and sustained, homeostasis will lack the power to restore equilibrium and SWB will remain below its setpoint range. Such homeostatic defeat is marked by a sustained loss of positive mood and a high risk of depression. Etzioni’s ideas on happiness will now be examined in the context of the above description.

The Nature of Happiness

In describing the nature of happiness, Professor Etzioni Bviews individuals as seeking to maximize their pleasure and minimize their pain. (And pleasure is associated with the command of material goods, needed to gain what is pleasurable)^ (p.2). This gives the impression that humans are constantly striving to advantage their happiness ratio. While this has some mild level of validity within

Homeostasis Theory, the nature of happiness and its relation to pain is far more complex than the statement suggests.

As an emotion, a high level of happiness does signal pleasure, but people do not normally conduct their lives with this as their primary motive. Rather, their normal feeling state is one of contentment, low level happiness and alertness (Homeostatically Protected Mood) which allows then to feel good about them self while also having the motivation to conduct their lives effectively. Their resources, such as command over material goods, are most effectively used to maintain positive mood, not to achieve emotional happiness. Pain, on the other hand, is a very different feeling, not simply linked to happiness. While intense pain is normally inimical to happiness, it is common for people to engage in freely-chosen leisure pursuits in the full knowledge that pain, as well as pleasure, will be a likely consequence. Contact sport, endurance running, and gambling in casinos are obvious examples.

In summary, Etzioni’s description of the nature of happiness is at odds with empirical science. People are generally content to be in happiness cruise-control managed by homeostasis, rather than constantly striving for emotional happiness.

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Enhancing Happiness

Throughout this text, Etzioni misinterprets the connection between resources and happiness as indicating causation. This is misleading because the studies cited as evidence are almost inevitably based on cross-sectional data. A fundamental statistical and logical principle is that correlations within such data cannot be interpreted as causative. For example, people with low access to a homeostatically-defensive resource, such as a supportive relationship, tend to have low happiness. This cannot be interpreted, simply, that the lack of a supportive relationship causes low happiness. It is at least as likely that people with low happiness display depressive tendencies, which inhibit the formation of supportive personal relationships. In this causative direction, low mood happiness is the cause of poor relationships.

Interpreting the connection between homeostatic resources and mood happiness is crucial to this current critique. Five kinds of resources are mentioned by Etzioni as evidence for his thesis, and each will now be considered.

Money Etzioni correctly states that Bincreasing incomes above a certain threshold tends not to increase happiness^ (p.6). This is so for two reasons, both of which are based in homeostasis. One is the rapid adaptation of pleasure subsequent to the purchase of luxury goods. Thus, using money to create emotional happiness is effective as an acute, but not a chronic strategy to increase positive feelings. The second reason for the threshold is that the homeostatic buffering power of money can be saturated. That is, once the defences that can be purchased have been acquired, further wealth confers no additional benefit to the happiness of the individual.

Importantly, however, mood happiness rises steadily with income below the wealth threshold at which happiness plateaus. In Australia this threshold has been estimated as an average gross household income of AU$100,000pa (Cummins et al. 2013), which is approximately double the national average income (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014). That this threshold is high provides crucial information to understand the relationship between average national happiness, money and a desirable society.

Consider first, people who are wealthy. High levels of average individual wealth are linked to desirable societal characteristics. At a national level, the 20 countries with the lowest corruption (Transparency International 2016) are all developed economies, which also tend to be the nations with the highest average mood happiness (e.g. Zweig 2015). At an individual level, community volunteers are generally characterised by being financially and emotionally secure (Cummins et al. 2006, Fig. 8.6). Thus, it appears that high levels of average wealth yield desirable societies. This is true to a point, but invites the question of what level of wealth is required for this purpose.

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The answer lies in the level of personal income that allows people to maintain normal levels of happiness. Within developed economies, it is the people with low income who are most vulnerable to homeostatic failure and in most need of additional resources. Such people are least likely to engage in activities viewed as directly benefiting society at large, since the altruistic donation of resources is inimical to their mission of personal survival. Thus, the role of governments to create desirable societies includes the responsibility to provide additional wealth to the poorest levels of society, to the point that the recipients regain normal homeostatic control. This will both bring their mood happiness back to within its normal range and enhance the probability of the recipients engaging in communitarian activities. Measured happiness is the right metric to identify such people.

Relationships Etzioni claims Bseveral researchers have concluded that human relationships and connections of all kinds contribute more to happiness than anything else^ (p.8). This statement requires modification. Certainly a relationship with another adult, that involves mutual sharing of intimacies and support, has the power to moderate the influence of potential stressors on SWB (for reviews, see Henderson 1977; Sarason et al. 1990a, b). However, a relationship that is abusive or unilaterally draining of personal resources is highly damaging to personal happiness. For example, informal carers who support a child with a mental illness or multiple disability have extremely low SWB in Australia, despite the provision of government financial support (Hammond et al. 2014).

Volunteering Bindividuals who devote substantial amounts of time to volunteer work have greater life satisfaction^ (p.9) and cites (Helliwell 2003). This is indeed what the cited author found. However, the study refers to cross-sectional data, so the causal direction cannot be determined. It is quite likely that people with low life satisfaction, most especially if they are depressed, are less likely to volunteer.

Religion BExtensive evidence indicates that people who consider themselves religious, express a belief in God, or regularly attendreligious services—are moresatisfied thanthose who do not^ (p.9). While a large literature makes the connection between religious beliefs and happiness, such studies are almost inevitably based on cross-sectional data. Such studies also generally conflate belief in God with group involvement, and normally fail to control for demographic and social network effects.

After controlling for these factors in the USA, Galen et al. (2015) report that Belief in God itself accounts for approximately 1–2 % of the variance in social embeddedness and <1 % of the variance in outside-group charity and community volunteering. They conclude that the prosocial benefits are more related to general group membership, equally available

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to religious and secular group members alike. Thus, religious beliefs do not lend substantial prosocial advantages to but rather are associated with in-group parochialism.

Maslow Etzioni cites Maslow in support of the notion that happiness and morality are linked through the gratification of high order needs. This is especially so when gratification is gained through the performance of good works in the community. For example, Bpeople who have already met their basic needs can increase their overall satisfaction by pursuing higher needs (higher in Maslowian terms)^ (p.14).

Maslow’s theory (Maslow 1954, 1970) asserts that people have five basic categories of needs: physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem, and self-actualization. He further proposes that these needs are arranged in a hierarchy of ‘pre-potency’ or dominance, in the order given. The less prepotent needs are neither desired nor sought until the more prepotent needs are satisfied or fulfilled.

While these publications have been widely cited (over 36, 000 at the time of writing), most citations are made uncritically and fail to acknowledge the very serious flaws identified by a number of thoughtful authors. For example, most citations refer to positive correlations within cross-sectional studies (Hagerty 1999). However, when longitudinal data are analysed, support for Maslow’s thesis is very weak (Lawler and Suttle 1972). Of most relevance is that the defined character of self-actualization, the highest-order need so strongly recommended by Professor Etzioni, has been excoriated. Defined by Maslow as Bthe tendency … to become actualized in what he is potentially^ or Bthe desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming^ (Maslow, 1970, pp. 91–92), the term has no meaning. As Locke (1976) points out in his extensive critique, to Bbecome more and more what one is’ is self-contradictory. To become ‘everything that one is capable of becoming’ is impossible if taken literally, since every person is metaphysically capable of becoming an almost unlimited number of things^ (p.1308).

Why Happiness is the Right Metric

When questioning whether happiness is validly associated with desirable society, two measurement conditions must be met. First, the measure must concern mood happiness, not emotional happiness. Second, the measure must be referenced to normal ranges for levels of mood happiness. If these conditions apply, then happiness is the right metric to employ for this purpose.

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People’s primary motivation is to acquire and maintain a level of resources sufficient for them to experience normal levels of subjective wellbeing. If people live in circumstances where they struggle to find the resources required for normal homeostatic maintenance, their primary motivation will be to acquire such resources. Under such conditions they will use their environment in whatever way they deem reasonable to acquire the additional resources they need. Such behaviour is unlikely to involve commitment to individuals or groups where the probability of net personal gain is less than the investment.

However, if such people are provided with sufficient resources to experience homeostatic control of their mood happiness, they are freed from the necessary burden of further resource acquisition. They may then find pleasure in other pursuits, which may include engagement in philanthropy and community welfare activities. In this scenario, low mood happiness is the right diagnostic metric signalling the need for society to provide additional personal resources.