How do you think your level of happiness would change if you won ...

[dalyningkenk]

How do you think your level of happiness would change if you won the lottery? What about if you were paralyzed? Justify your answers.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

How do we define happiness? How do we measure it?
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[ryhom]

Answer to Question 1

Have you ever wondered if you won the lottery, would your problems mostly go away, and you would be happy for the rest of your life? A classic study by Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman sought the answer to this question. They looked at lottery winners and paralyzed victims of accidents to investigate the effects of extreme changes in fortune, both positive and negative, and whether these changes would result in long-term changes in happiness. The investigators demonstrated hedonic adaptation for the lottery winners in finding that after winning the lottery (one participant won the lottery less than a month before the study was conducted, but the rest won it within a range of 1 month to a year and a half prior to the study), in spite of their good fortune, they astoundingly later had roughly the same levels of happiness as the non-winner controls in the study.

Further, those selected for the study because they were paralyzed with spinal cord injuries (for 1 month to 1 year prior to the study) reported happiness scores above the mid-level (neutral zone). Though this study is often cited as evidence for hedonic adaptation, it should be noted that the hedonic adaptation effect was most pronounced for the lottery winners and less so for those who were accident victims. In fact, even though time had passed for adaptation, the paralyzed participants still rated themselves significantly less happy in general than controls.

Answer to Question 2

The first and most prevalent view among psychologists is that happiness is defined as subjective well-being (SWB). For example, Sonja Lyubomirsky states that she uses the terms happiness, which she defines as the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile, and well-being interchangeably. This subjectivist view suggests that each person knows best his or her level of happiness. Since there is no test tube objective measure of happiness we can use to accurately determine a person's happiness levels, we must then rely on the person's subjective appraisals. These appraisals can be measured by self-report tests.

What do people base their subjective happiness appraisals on? They seem to rely on several factors. According to Kesibir and Diener, subjective well-being consists of the following general components: These components include life satisfaction (global judgments of one's life), satisfaction with important life domains (satisfaction with one's work, health, marriage, etc.), positive affect (prevalence of positive emotions and moods), and low levels of negative affect (prevalence of unpleasant emotions and moods).