The Neuroscience of Happiness

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Julie Beck has an interesting read in the Atlantic about how our brains are naturally wired to focus on the negative because evolution has optimized our brains for survival, but not necessarily happiness, which means that we feel stressed and unhappy even though there are a lot of positive things in our lives. 'The problem is that the brain is very good at building brain structure from negative experiences,' says neuropsychologist Dr. Rick Hanson. 'We learn immediately from pain—you know, "once burned, twice shy." As our ancestors evolved, they needed to pass on their genes. And day-to-day threats like predators or natural hazards had more urgency and impact for survival. On the other hand, positive experiences like food, shelter, or mating opportunities, those are good, but if you fail to have one of those good experiences today, as an animal, you would have a chance at one tomorrow. But the brain is relatively poor at turning positive experiences into emotional learning neural structure. 'Positive thinking by definition is conceptual and generally verbal and most conceptual or verbal material doesn't have a lot of impact on how we actually feel or function over the course of the day. A lot of people have this kind of positive, look on the bright side yappity yap, but deep down they're very frightened, angry, sad, disappointed, hurt, or lonely.' Dr. Hanson proposes several ideas for helping 're-wire' our brains for happiness. One of them is that we need to learn how to move positive experiences from short-term buffers to long-term storage. 'But to move from a short-term buffer to long-term storage, an experience needs to be held in that short-term buffer long enough for it to transfer to long-term storage,' says Hanson. 'When people are having positive thinking or even most positive experiences, the person is not taking the extra 10, 20 seconds to heighten the installation into neural structure. So it's not just positive thinking that's wasted on the brain; it's most positive experiences that are wasted on the brain.'"

Comments

We have a cure

[50000BTU_barbecue]

It's called Scotch Whisky. Just another gift from the Scots. That and logarithms and engineers. (Oh and haggis!)

Re:We have a cure

[PopeRatzo]

And kilts! Don't forget the kilts. I'm Italian, and I love to wear my kilts, though I do tend to get a lot of dandruff on my shoes.

Other positive attributes

[turning in circles]

Research has shown that gratitude, admiration, elevation of others increases people's happiness more than remembering being happy. Not sure how it scores against Scotch whiskey.

Sometimes it's a matter of pain

[phantomfive]

Once you've had enough pain in your life, you learn to appreciate the good things you have. If you wake up in the morning and the first thing you think is, "Oh yeah, carpet under my feet! I remember when I didn't have carpet, this is so much better." That sort of thing does wonders for your happiness levels.

Re:Sometimes it's a matter of pain

[TheRaven64]

Every morning, I turn on my shower and let potable water run down the drain while I wait for the it to heat up. The fact that I have hot running water, and can afford to let potable water go to waste like that without much thought places me not just in the wealthiest 10% of people currently alive, but in the wealthiest 1% of people who have ever lived. Spending a moment pondering that in the morning makes you feel very lucky to be born into a society that can take such things for granted.

Brain Hax

[srwood]

Therapy based upon this has been available for years. No need for a physiological explanation: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ804035.pdf

Re:Rx Wine, women and song

[Anonymous Coward]

"Women" of course could be "men".

I hate when that happens.

Re:Positive vs negative reinforcement

[xtronics]

Animal trainers have demonstrated repeatedly that positive reinforcement is more effective at eliciting behavior than negative. In other words, the carrot works better than the stick.

To me, this seems contradictory.

There is a lot of papers on the point you bring up. What makes something positive? Eating after not having food is positive or is it the end of a negative experience? If you have plenty to eat, is food still a reward? (animal trainers keep their animals a bit hungry ).

So is a paycheck positive? Or is it preventing a negative. etc etc..

Re:Positive vs negative reinforcement

[venicebeach]

Reward is useful for shaping behavior, but it turns out not to be particularly effective at creating happiness. See: drug addiction.

Idleness

[Dripdry]

One thing I'd like to be sure isn't lost here is the clearly stated difficulty: Keeping a positive moment in mind long enough for it to go to long term storage.
If we don't have enough time to stop and appreciate positive moments they are lost, obviously.

There is a body of literature on idleness and over the last few years I've begun to amass a collection of it. The more I follow idleness as an art, as a way of being, the happier I've become. It hasn't gotten rid of too many negatives, per se, but I find myself happier in general (though that might be due to any number of other factors, correlation/causation etc). It has even contributed to a little delinquency, for sure (hooray fun!), but seems on the whole a good habit.

It's been said many times, but this article bears it out: If we don't stop to smell the roses and really appreciate them, appreciate others and the gifts we bring each other every day, we are rushing blindly and headlong toward just physical death, but the death of the spirit too.

So you, yes you, the person with 4 monitors, a tablet, and an iPhone buzzing with facebook while the TV is blaring in the background, who feels all high off gadgetry (and maybe cheetos)... I dare you to try the hardest thing you'll ever do: Stop and do nothing for a day. Just sit, stare out a window, make a pot of tea. Just stop. and. be. idle.

Though if you do get antsy I can recommend reading "How to Be Idle", a fun read and an antidote of sorts.

Re:Idleness

[Dripdry]

Have you ever noticed how being idle REALLY pisses off the masters and drivers of our economy? People like Edison HATED idlers (though he himself took naps ALL the time) If we were idle, what then would we consume? Not nearly as much, I wager. We might think, might eventually interact with each other in the real world, and might accomplish more than moving a few pixels about a screen or some metal and plastic from one place to another. Forfend!

And now... I'm going to go take a long, delightful snooze.

Re:Idleness

[ledow]

It's also, if you are one, one of the best things about being introvert.

Most people associate introversion with shyness / being pathetic / being socially inadequate. Though I'm sure that's true of a lot of people (and probably even myself), it's not the sole cause.

The cause is that sitting quietly and thinking and just enjoying the "idleness" is MORE attractive to the introvert than being thrown into a social situation where they are forced to discuss, at length, things like the weather, or how shit their job is, or what that idiot on reality TV is doing at the moment, etc.

I find that being in a party (even a dinner party situation, as I've gotten older) is really one of the most stressful things I can find. Having to make small-talk (yuck). Having to be nice to people I don't particularly know well. Having to be doing SOMETHING all the time. Not being left alone ("come and dance", "don't sit there, come meet my friend", etc.).

You can spot this by putting an introvert near another. They will get on. They will get on by being able to talk about only things they find interesting (and if there's a common ground, they'll find it) and not have to worry about saying "something" all the time, no matter how inane the conversation. They'll still chat and discuss their lives but only the bits they are interested in, the positive notes of their lives, and strenuously try to find something interesting in the other person.

Put them in a room with a guy who just wants to talk about himself, gets pent up being quiet in a room, etc. and you'll see that both hate the situation.

It's enjoying the peace, the quiet, the lazily wandering around the house that allows people like myself to relax and enjoy life. No, I don't find rushing out to every friend's house relaxing. I'd invite them over, one-to-one, to watch a movie, or play some board games or read a book, or even just sit out in the garden chatting.

The problem comes from people who don't understand this: "How can you just sit there?" Easy. Watch.
"Why don't you get out more and do lots of things?" Because I'm happy here. Doing little.

Is it laziness as in lack-of-effort-when-it's-required? No. It's a choice to NOT do some things when they aren't necessary at all. That feeling that most only get when they get home from a strenuous day at work and get to sit down for five minutes before they then rush off to do other things? I feel that a lot. Because those other things aren't as important as me relaxing and enjoying life.

We are blessed to live in a modern age where you don't have to work from the second you wake to the second you sleep, not get enough sleep anyway, and have to fight through the day against everything from nature to other people. Enjoy life while you have it. Because waiting for retirement to sit down and have even ten minutes to yourself is STUPENDOUSLY unhealthy and dangerous.

My weekend is coming up. I plan to do little. And that which I do plan to do, I've chosen to do, and it's quite non-strenuous (Jupiter is visible tomorrow night if I'm lucky with the weather - I'll go outside in the evening, set up a scope, and sit in the garden looking at stars... a really physically taxing hobby that I've discovered recently to be wonderfully engaging for my brain without being strenuous at all).

I'm sure there are people who would hate the idea of the whole concept and who don't even understand it. But, for some, it's the perfect way to live.

optimize for happiness if you like

[stenvar]

If you prefer to optimize for happiness, there are lots of drugs to help you with that.

Unfortunately, optimizing for happiness has serious disadvantages even in modern society. Preferentially learning from painful experiences has its benefits even today.

Re:optimize for happiness if you like

[slew]

As someone who optimizes for happiness and doesn't indulge in mind altering substances (unless you count the occasional good prime NY strip cooked medium rare), I haven't noticed any disadvantages you seem to be alluding to. Would you care to elaborate?

Not saying optimizing for happiness is what everyone should do (to each his own), but I don't even understand what it is like to go through life mostly motivated by attempting to avoid unhappiness (or pain, or whatever the opposite of what I'm doing is).

It's not to say I'm happy all the time (I think people would be delusional if they were), but if I had to figuratively walk across coals to get some literal happiness, I probably would consider it. I'm guessing a person with the opposite temperament would avoid this simply to avoid the temporary unhappiness of the figurative coals. No pain, no gain?

The /. summary doesn't do the article justice (okay that's not a revelation). They didn't say a lot people have some sort of happiness faÃade, the author said "I know a lot of people..." that means something totally different. Maybe (I'm guessing) that person knows a bunch of sad, angry, lonely, hurt or frightened people that could benefit from his advice (or perhaps could sell a self help book to?). He is a therapist after all (and no doubt sees a bunch of folks with serious psychological problems).

As to feigned happiness somehow being a cover up for some feelings of sadness, angry, lonely, hurt, or frightened feelings, I think that might be mostly restricted to people that need external validation. For example, I'm asking myself, if I was angry or lonely, why hide it by attempting to feign happiness to someone who could give a rats ass about what I felt? (since most folks give a rats ass about the affairs of total strangers or even casual acquaintances).

As many people will attest, when you stop caring what other people think about you, your happiness level will increase greatly... Perhaps this is the "clear" (not necessarily happy) thinking the author is alluding to that is necessary to be happy?

Treat happiness like learning

[TristanPalmer]

I struggled with depression for many years and eventually came up with a simple exercise to increase happiness: At the end of the day I write down as many good things that happened that day as I can; they can be as simple as having a nice sandwich or the enjoyment I got from listening to music. I aim to write at least five a day. I then read back over the last couple of weeks entries too. The way I figure it, the problem was that when I felt bad about something I couldn't remember the good things in life clearly enough for those memories to combat the feelings of sadness (ie. my brain hadn't burnt the good memories in clearly enough). I took the simple and proven techniques that I use when learning a new subject (write good notes, read over those notes several times) and applied them to emotional memories instead of facts. Works very well, only takes up 5 minutes a day.

Happiness & Pleasure

[eulernet]

The author is unable to differentiate happiness and pleasure !

Pleasure comes when I have a good experience. Pain comes when I have a bad experience.

Happiness is totally different !
Happiness appears mostly after pleasure.
For example, if I make love with my beloved partner, and I have an orgasm, I'll experience pleasure.
After the orgasm, I feel happy, because I feel at peace with my partner.

Happiness is simply a state of mind: I become happy when I'm in peace.
Pleasure is external (or related to external stimuli), and happiness is internal.
For example, when I meditate (=when I stop all my thoughts), I experience happiness.
Happiness is so easy to reach that in fact nobody really wants happiness, because it's so boring: nothing happens.

Everybody seeks pleasure, and pleasure always comes with pain.