Happiness over the decades

Since 1938, researchers at Harvard University have been examining the question of what makes a happy life in an epic longitudinal study of 268 American college sophomores — a group that included U.S. president John F. Kennedy and revered newspaperman Ben Bradlee. George Vailliant, who directed it for 30 years, concluded that fulfilling relationships, a capacity to work through sorrow without abiding regret, and a sense of altruism were the keys. “Happiness is love. Full stop.”

In 1978, three American psychologists published a seminal text in happiness studies. They looked at people who had won lotteries and people paralyzed in catastrophic accidents. It turned out those who enjoyed bonanzas considered themselves no happier than people in a control group. Here’s the rub. The lottery winners did expect to be happier in a few years. But no happier than the control group, and less happy than what the accident victims forecast for themselves.

In 2006, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert hit the bestseller lists with Stumbling on Happiness, an insightful and funny look at how humankind is regularly wrong in predicting what will make us happy. The best way to predict happiness in the future is, as our grandparents well know, is to talk with people who have been through similar experiences. “One of the benefits of being a social and linguistic animal is that we can capitalize on the experience of others rather than trying to figure everything out for ourselves.”

In 2011, the Canadian Index of Well-being — looking to improve on the blunt instrument of the GDP — released its first national report (and, in 2014, its first Ontario report) finding that individual well-being has been growing much more slowly than economic productivity.

Sadly, a study released in December, based on data from The Million Woman Study in the United Kingdom, said there is no evidence that happiness, in and of itself, will extend your life.