Plainly, a lot of people these days are interested in happiness — how to get happy, why some people are happier than others, etc. For example, there’s Dan Gilbert’s best-seller Stumbling on Happiness and, currently at No. 1 on the N.Y. Times‘s list of most e-mailed articles, a piece by Dan Max about university happiness studies.
Among the most intriguing happiness theories I’ve come across is this one, put forth in a recent issue of BMJ. It asserts that the citizens of Denmark are happier than their European counterparts, even though they rank high in the kind of things that are typically affiliated with a low happiness rank, like bad weather, bad food, and high alcohol consumption.
So what’s their secret?
Low expectations. “It’s a David and Goliath thing,” says Kaare Christensen, one of the study’s authors, in a brief article in today’s N.Y. Times. “If you’re a big guy, you expect to be on the top all the time and you’re disappointed when things don’t go well. But when you’re down at the bottom like us, you hang on, you don’t expect much, and once in a while you win, and it’s that much better.”
This theory makes sense to me, just as it makes sense that people who earn a few thousand dollars more than their colleagues say they are happier than if they were earning more money but less than their colleagues. As with many things in life, relative happiness may be far more important, or at least measurable, than absolute happiness.
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Bad weather? Bad food? High alcohol consumption? I don’t know about you guys but when it is raining outside I LOVE pulling into a wing joint, ordering a bucket of spicy garlic buffalo wings, knocking back a half-rack of cold beer, and smiling until I’m silly. Course…that’s just me.
Bad weather? Bad food? High alcohol consumption? I don’t know about you guys but when it is raining outside I LOVE pulling into a wing joint, ordering a bucket of spicy garlic buffalo wings, knocking back a half-rack of cold beer, and smiling until I’m silly. Course…that’s just me.
As a resident of southern Sweden I might have some insight in the question regarding the Danish happiness. I would say that it is not so much the low expectations as the fact that danes just don’t care. They are for instance far more liberal than the large majority of uptight swedes I meet every day. When it comes to politics there’s really no limits to what danes may or may not discuss in “Folketinget” their equivalent of the American congress.
All in all the danes have captured the true sense of personal and social freedom. And in my opinion I believe they have a good (maybe not healthy) relationship to alcohol, which is in deep contrast to their regulating neighbour in the east, Sweden, a country with one of the highest suicidal-rates among youngsters in the whole world. No surprise I often gaze westwards to the other side of the small sea separating Sweden from Denmark looking for liberty
As a resident of southern Sweden I might have some insight in the question regarding the Danish happiness. I would say that it is not so much the low expectations as the fact that danes just don’t care. They are for instance far more liberal than the large majority of uptight swedes I meet every day. When it comes to politics there’s really no limits to what danes may or may not discuss in “Folketinget” their equivalent of the American congress.
All in all the danes have captured the true sense of personal and social freedom. And in my opinion I believe they have a good (maybe not healthy) relationship to alcohol, which is in deep contrast to their regulating neighbour in the east, Sweden, a country with one of the highest suicidal-rates among youngsters in the whole world. No surprise I often gaze westwards to the other side of the small sea separating Sweden from Denmark looking for liberty
How about driving in traffic? I’m happier if I’m in the fastest lane of overall slow moving traffic than if I’m in the slowest lane of relatively fast moving traffic…
How about driving in traffic? I’m happier if I’m in the fastest lane of overall slow moving traffic than if I’m in the slowest lane of relatively fast moving traffic…
“As with many things in life, relative happiness may be far more important, or at least measurable, than absolute happiness.”
Don’t you mean relative *standing* and absolute *standing*? That is, these studies are measuring only *absolute* happiness as independent variable based on *relative* standing as dependent variable.
Talking about absolute happiness or relative happiness is interesting, though, in a “meta” kind of way. Suppose you exceed your neighbor in every aspect that leads to happiness, but your neighbor still winds up happier than you. Does that reduce your happiness even further?
Or suppose you’re the exception, the type that feels guilty if you’re happy. You are now happy because you make more than you’re neighbor. But then you’re unhappy because you’re happy. So at least you’re now unhappy … which makes you happy, right?
“As with many things in life, relative happiness may be far more important, or at least measurable, than absolute happiness.”
Don’t you mean relative *standing* and absolute *standing*? That is, these studies are measuring only *absolute* happiness as independent variable based on *relative* standing as dependent variable.
Talking about absolute happiness or relative happiness is interesting, though, in a “meta” kind of way. Suppose you exceed your neighbor in every aspect that leads to happiness, but your neighbor still winds up happier than you. Does that reduce your happiness even further?
Or suppose you’re the exception, the type that feels guilty if you’re happy. You are now happy because you make more than you’re neighbor. But then you’re unhappy because you’re happy. So at least you’re now unhappy … which makes you happy, right?