Thinkers have pondered over the meaning of true happiness for ages and great men from all fields of science and philosophy have tried to figure out how to achieve happiness. Wouldn’t life be a lot simpler if there was a mathematical formula for happiness? Well, it turns out that researchers at University College London have figured it out:
Hmm, usually when things seem too good to be true, its because they are and that is somewhat the case in this situation as well. The reason is that this mathematical equation doesn’t explain how to attain happiness in your particular situation. It can only predict how happiness levels fluctuate with respect to reinforcements or rewards in a particular game. The equation was built using 26 individuals playing a gambling game inside an f MRI machine. The game would lead to wins or losses and every few rounds participants would rate their happiness on a scale of 0 to 100 which was then correlated with their brain activity.
The interesting thing is, that the researchers discovered that expectations play a substantial role in determining our momentary happiness. So if a player expected a loss of $2 dollars and received $0, he/she would be far happier than if they won a $0 and expected to gain $2. This shows that happiness really isn’t about the tangible outcome but rather about exceeding expectations.
Once the formula was built the researchers tested it on 18,000 people who played a similar game through a phone app. The formula was correct in predicting their happiness fluctuations with each win and loss. The difficult question for us is, how do we apply these findings in our life? Well, the obvious implication would be to have low expectations. However researchers also stress that expecting the worst isn’t great either since a negative outlook on life is detrimental to our well-being. Perhaps what one should do is expect less from depersonalized, societal issues including politics and have modest and realistic expectations when it comes to personal matters.
The formula may be adequate in predicting emotional outcomes to games but one should entertain the idea that perhaps that is all it is. Since the formula aims to reduce incredibly complex emotions to a bunch of numbers. The reductionist view often gives us an apparently clear picture of the scenario but it is rarely ever the whole picture.
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