Cheong Suk-Wai, Straits Times 28 Jul 09;
NOBEL laureate Bertrand Russell once said that a person was happiest if he flowed with 'the stream of life', instead of being as hard and separate from it as a billiard ball.
Shanghai-born psychologist Christopher Hsee has refined that idea further by distinguishing between stream-of-life happenings that compare social standings and so drive unhappy wedges among people, and events that don't.
His work has been highlighted in scholarly journals and mainstream media. In 2002, Nobel laureate in economics Daniel Kahneman cited Prof Hsee's work at some length in his lecture.
Prof Hsee holds the Theodore O Yntema chair at the Booth Business School of the University of Chicago. He earned a PhD in psychology at Yale University in 1993.
The son of an engineer and a doctor, he is also legally blind from a congenital eye defect that can be little corrected.
It is ironic that the married father of two is now credited as being among the first to introduce the science of happiness to China, as none of its colleges would admit him as an undergraduate because of his blindness. His family eventually migrated to Hawaii and he went to college there.
In town recently to teach at the Booth campus along Penang Road, Prof Hsee told me why joy is elusive:
# Are the materialistic less happy?
It's very difficult to show a causal relationship between materialism and happiness. We don't know whether people who believe in materialism are less happy or that people who are less happy tend to believe in materialism.
# Why?
To do so, you would need to have some people believe in materialism and have some others not believe in it, and then test their happiness. But this is difficult to do. It is also very difficult for us to understand which causes which.
# So it's a chicken and egg thing.
That's right. It is possible that happy people tend to make more money because they're more optimistic, more motivated and, eventually, they are more liked and can get higher paying positions. In any case, increasing wealth can increase one's happiness but it very much depends on what you want.
# When is wealth no longer contentment but contention instead?
Many have debated about whether happiness is relative or absolute. What I have found is that it depends on whether it is what I call a Type A or Type B event.
A Type A event is that which people have an absolute standard as to what's good and bad. For example, loneliness makes us unhappy.
Type B events are based on social comparisons, like how big your diamond is. The distinction is important because if we spend a lot of resources to improve Type B goods, it will largely be a zero sum game.
# Why is that?
If everyone wears large diamonds, our average happiness will be the same as when everyone wears small diamonds. On the other hand, working to improve Type A goods can absolutely improve people's happiness. In hindsight, this may seem quite obvious, but it can help governments and companies invest their resources better.
# So why does human nature have us believe that things can make us happy?
Well, there are two reasons. The first is that people have to survive before they can pursue happiness. Even the US Declaration of Independence talks about three inalienable rights - and life goes before the pursuit of happiness.
The dilemma today is that people who are no longer concerned about basic survival needs still pursue material goods. That's because of inertia. Money used to be so scarce that, even with money now, people still feel they have to pursue it.
# Why is finding joy in things bad?
The problem is that it has a cost, because the fact that you have a bigger diamond makes others who don't less happy. So the pursuit of Type B (happiness) is worse than a zero sum game because to afford a bigger diamond than what others have, you will have to work harder and longer to make more money. And the mining companies will have to find more diamonds, at great cost to the environment.
# Is joy borne of struggle greater than joy borne of a silver spoon existence?
I know many wealthy people in China who are in their 50s and are happy now because they were very poor as kids. They're rich through their own efforts and have also benefited from reforms over the last few decades. Yet I'm not sure their kids, who get to stay in five-star hotels, are as happy as their parents. They won't have as much upward improvement as their parents had.
# How much does living in an increasingly uncertain world hobble our happiness?
I'm not sure we face more uncertainty than our ancestors who had the uncertainty of survival. Uncertainty is not always bad. One of the obstacles to happiness is, in fact, certainty. Suppose someone could live in heaven where there's all peace and certainty. He may be very happy at the beginning, but in the long run, people who adapt too much get bored.
# So being less able to adapt is good?
The point is that to increase or maintain happiness we should pursue events which are resistant to adaptation. For example, if you have a very expensive granite countertop in your kitchen, you will adapt to the joy you get from it after a while.
But if you have a puppy which is dynamic and variable, you cannot adapt to it easily and so it can give you pleasure for a longer time. Most social events are less prone to adaptation, so having pets or enjoying the arts gives us greater joy in the long run.
