Reprinted with Permission from The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach To Getting The Life You Want

The Happiness Continuum

Human happiness, like height or temperature or IQ, lies on a continuum, a numerical scale that ranges from very, very low to very, very high.  Shannon represents the lower end of the happiness continuum.  Randy and Angela are at the high end.  All of us fit somewhere on that scale, and it is critical to find out where exactly that may be.  No matter whether you are deeply depressed or are simply not as happy as you’d like to be, before you can begin the process of becoming happier, you need to determine your present personal happiness level, which will provide your first estimate of your happiness set point.

From the Greek philosopher Aristotle to the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud to Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, writers and thinkers have offered wide-ranging definitions of happiness.  Aristotle wrote that happiness is “an expression of the soul in considered actions,” Freud noted that it’s a matter of lieben und arbeiten – to love and to work – and Schulz famously proclaimed, “Happiness is a warm puppy.” Most of us, however, are well aware of what happiness is and whether we are happy.  To paraphrase the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, happiness is like obscenity: We can’t define it, but we know it when we see it.

I use the term happiness to refer to the experience of job, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.  However, most of us don’t need a definition of happiness because we instinctively know whether we are happy or not.  Academic researchers prefer the term subjective well-being (or simply well-being) because it sounds more scientific and does not carry the weight of centuries of historical, literary, and philosophical subtexts.  I use the terms happiness and well-being interchangeably.

So, how do you measure the degree to which you are a happy or an unhappy person?  Because no appropriate happiness thermometer exists, researchers generally rely on self-reports.  In much on my research with human participants, I have used a popular simple four-item measure of overall happiness that I developed and call the Subjective Happiness Scale.  The title is fitting, inasmuch, as happiness is inherently subjective and must be defined from the perspective of the person.  No one but you knows or should tell you how happy you truly are.  So reply to the four items opposite to determine your current happiness level, which you need to know before you can estimate your set point. (More on that later.)

Click here to download the Subjective Happiness Scale (and the full range of tests described in this article)

As you may have gathered, the highest happiness score that you can get is 7 (if you give yourself a 7 on all four items).  I have administered this scale to many different groups of people, as have other researchers, and the average score runs from about 4.5 to 5.5, depending on the group.  College students tend to score lower (averaging a bit below 5) than working adults and older, retired people (who average 5.6).

Now you have determined the value of your current happiness score.  If you’re past college age, and your happiness score is lower than 5.6, then you’re less happy than the average person.  To put it another way, more than 50 percent of people in our age group rate themselves higher on the scale.  If your score is greater than 5.6, then you’re happier than the average person.  Of course, what the “average person” is for you will depend on your gender, your age, your occupation, ethnicity, etc.  But what’s important to remember is that no matter what your score is, you can become happier.

Could You Be Depressed?

Some of us are likely to be not just slightly unhappy but clinically or sub-clinically depressed.  If your happiness score is 4 or lower or if you’ve been feeling down for more than a couple of weeks, I encourage you to complete a depression scale.  (If not, you may choose to skip this subsection.)  The depression scale takes less than ten minutes, and those minutes may turn out to be invaluable.

Opposite is a standard, commonly used depression questionnaire called the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, of CES-D.  There are many measures of depression, but this one is recommended for use with the general (i.e., nonclinical or nonpsychiatric) population.  Follow the instructions to complete the scale and determine your overall depression score.

REFER BACK TO YOUR SHEET OF TESTS NOW!

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