THE MATHS OF HAPPINESS

RESEARCHERS CAME UP WITH AN ACTUAL MATHEMATICAL FORMULA FOR HAPPINESS! HERE’ S WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOUR CYCLING LIFE.

WE KNOW intuitively that r iding bikes makes us happy. There’s also plenty of research that connects the phenomenon to a flood

of feel- good hormones (see ‘ Why Cycling Feels So Damn Good!’, right).

But recent research in how the brain processes information offers an adjacent perspective. Scientists at University College London developed an equation after measuring people’s happiness in a controlled series of exper iments in which subjects picked a known or unknown monetary reward – essentially a gamble. And what is a bike ride but a gamble? Can you go with the fast group when they accelerate? Will you clean the rock garden this time?

Each symbol in the equation (except the W) represents a factor that influences happiness, says Archy de Berker, a PhD candidate in neuroscience at UCL who was involved in the study. ( The W represents a constant value needed to compute the maths, he says.)

The research suggests two general conclusions, says De Berker, who is also a cyclist. First, happiness depends on your expectations. Did your performance on a ride match or exceed what you think you’re capable of? Cycling is more fun when you’re good at it, right? It’s goal- oriented and empirical: you train to get fitter, then test that fitness every time you ride.

Second, happiness can be comparative. Subsequent research by De Berker measured happiness in the context of a multiplayer game. The result: another, more complex equation that suggests happiness relies in part on how other people fare. Cycling is a social activity. If a rider you regularly best beats you up a climb, no matter how well you rode, you feel disappointed.

The ke y to bo t h conclusions: happiness depends on your perspective. Riding bikes isn’t a magic ticket to happiness any more than money or fame is. If you can free yourself from the urge to compare, to measure – whether against others, or just your own ideals – you can focus on how riding brings you back to that intuitive, intrinsic source of joy: fresh air, a kick of endorphins, and that feeling – even if brief – of effortless flight.

Written in the equation as Happiness(t), this is a measure of happiness after the most recent event. In cycling: how you feel at a particular moment on a ride. The sum of all of the elements that come after it in each part of the equation. The certain reward, a known value. In cycling: riding with a group whose pace you know you can sustain. The gamble value, unknown, could be higher or lower thanCRj. In cycling: an attack on, say, a climb – will you drop the others, or get caught? Reward prediction error, or the difference between the outcome and what you expected (not relevant when subject chooses the CRj). In cycling: staying away when you expect to get caught. A ‘ forgetting factor’ that weights more recent events higher. In cycling: that point early in the ride when you felt like crap? It doesn’t seem so bad after you win that climb.