Is Our
Happiness Preordained?
By Laura Blue
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1721954,00.html
[Mike Ghouse - Article follows my comments:
It is consoling to the soul who is down and
under "oh, it was to be this way" and kind of accept the happenings
of life. It mitigates the suffering. As everything in nature is planned - the
DNA research is indicating that the eyes, hair color, hair and a lot of elements
of physical body are programmed in the genes. Is what we do and what we think
is pre-planned as well? We can argue both ways depending on the state of mind
we are in. Personally I believe we have the freedom to determine where we go,
what we do, if we do not put the required effort, we may default to the
position we are in.]
Though most of us spend a lifetime pursuing happiness, new research is
showing that that goal may be largely out of our control. Two new studies this
month add to a growing body of evidence that factors like genes and age may
impact our general well-being more than our best day-to-day attempts at joy.
In one study, researchers at the University of Edinburgh suggest that genes
account for about 50% of the variation in people's levels of happiness — the
underlying determinant being genetically determined personality traits, like
"being sociable, active, stable, hardworking and conscientious," says
co-author Timothy Bates. What's more, says Bates, these happiness traits
generally come as a package, so that if you have one you're likely to have them
all.
Bates and his Edinburgh colleagues drew their conclusions after looking at
survey data of 973 pairs of adult twins. They found that, on average, a pair of
identical twins shared more personality traits than a pair of non-identical
twins. And when asked how happy they were, the identical twin pairs responded
much more similarly than other twins, suggesting that both happiness and
personality have a strong genetic component. The study, published in Psychological
Science, went one step further: it suggested that personality and happiness do
not merely coexist, but that in fact innate personality traits cause happiness.
Twins who had similar scores in key traits — extroversion, calmness and
conscientiousness, for example — had similar happiness scores; once those
traits were accounted for, however, the similarity in twins' happiness scores
disappeared.
Another larger study, released in January ahead of its publication in Social
Science & Medicine this month, shows that whatever people's individual
happiness levels, we all tend to fall into a larger, cross-cultural and global
pattern of joy. According to survey data representing 2 million people in more
than 70 countries, happiness typically follows a U-shaped curve: among people
in their mid-40s and younger, happiness trends downward with age, then climbs
back up among older people. (That shift doesn't necessarily hold for the very
old with severe health problems.) Across the world, people in their 40s generally
claim to be less happy than those who are younger or older, and the global
happiness nadir appears to hit somewhere around 44.
What happens at 44? Lots of things, but none that can be pinned down as the
root cause of unhappiness. It's not anxiety from the kids, for starters. Even
among the childless, those in midlife reported lower life satisfaction than the
young or old, says study co-author Andrew Oswald, an economics professor at the
University of Warwick in Britain. Other things that didn't alter the happiness
curve: income, marital status or education. "You can adjust for 100 things
and it doesn't go away," Oswald says. He and co-author David Blanchflower,
an economist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, also adjusted their results
for cohort effects: their data spanned more than 30 years, making them
confident that whatever makes people miserable about being middle-aged, it
isn't related, say, to being born in the year 1960 and growing up with that
generation's particular set of experiences.
At first glance, the new studies may appear at odds with some previous ones,
largely because in happiness research, a lot depends on how you ask the
question. Oswald and Blanchflower looked at responses to a sweeping, general
question: "Taken all together, how would you say things are these days —
would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy or not too happy?"
(The wording changes slightly depending on where the survey was conducted, but
the question is essentially the same.) In a 2001 study, Susan Charles at
University of California, Irvine, measured something slightly different:
changes in positive affect, or positive emotions, versus negative affect over
more than 25 years. Charles found that positive affect stayed roughly stable
through young adulthood and midlife, falling off a little in older age;
negative affect, meanwhile, fell consistently with age.
Charles thinks that feelings like angst, disgust and anger may fade because as
we get older we learn to care less about what others think of us, or perhaps
because we become more adept at avoiding situations we don't like. (The
Edinburgh researchers, too, found that older study participants scored lower
than younger ones on scales of neuroticism — worry and nervousness — and higher
on scales of agreeableness.) Oswald chalks up the midlife dip in happiness
shown in his study to people "letting go of impossible aspirations" —
first, there's the pain of fading youth and the realization that we may never
accomplish all that we had dreamed, then the contentment we gain later in life
through acceptance and self-awareness. "When you're young you can't do
that," Oswald says.
An oft-cited finding from other happiness research suggests, however, that
neither very good events nor very bad events seem to change people's happiness
much in the long term. Most people, it seems, revert back to some kind of
baseline happiness level within a couple years of even the most devastating
events, like the death of a spouse or loss of limbs. Perhaps that kind of
stability is due to heredity — those happiness-inducing personality traits that
identical twins have been shown to share.
Still, lack of control doesn't necessarily mean lack of joy. "The research
also shows that most people consider themselves happy most of the time,"
says University of Edinburgh's Bates. "We're wired to be optimistic. Most
people think they're happier than most [other] people." And even if you
aren't part of that lucky majority, Bates says, there's always that other 50%
of overall life satisfaction that, according to his research, is not
genetically predetermined. To feel happier, he recommends mimicking the
personality traits of those who are: Be social, even if it's only with a few
people; set achievable goals and work toward them; and concentrate on putting
setbacks and worries in perspective. Don't worry, as the saying goes. Be happy.
http://worldmuslimcongress.blogspot.com/2008/03/is-happiness-preordained.html
