BOOK REVIEWS

Neuroscience of Happiness

Review of Stefan Klein Die Glucksformel: oder Wie die gutenGefuhle entstehen (The happiness formula, or how good feelingscome about) Reinbek:Rowohlt, 2002. ISBN: 3-4980-3509-6, 320 p.

Stefan Klein is a German science journalist and this book linkshis interests in happiness and brain research. Commercially thebook is a great success: it has sold many copies in Germany andhas been translated into many languages. On the basis of the title‘‘The formula for happiness,’’ one might assume that Klein is aself-help writer. The introduction of his book also points in thisdirection. Klein shows that the brain of an adult is still mallea-ble. He thereby opposes biological/genetic pre-destination theoryand the idea of childhood determination. He aligns himself withthe American dream of unlimited possibilities.

Still, this book is valuable, possibly even more so for socialscientists than for the broader audience. The pop-psychologyconsumer could be disappointed with Klein’s somewhatfuzzy style and with his undeniably difficult message. Happinessresearchers, on the other hand, will welcome Klein’s broadknowledge of the literature and his distinctive biologicalapproach. Many researchers have a correlation approach andfocus mainly on the differences between nations. They try toexplain how national wellbeing is related to factors likepurchasing power, individualism and democracy. Klein, on theother hand, focuses more on the individual and prefers biochem-ical studies. By showing that happiness is a real non-imaginativephenomenon with its own physiology, brain processes and evo-lutionary function, he opposes the popular view that happinesscannot be studied scientifically.

Journal of Happiness Studies (2005) 6:343–350 � Springer 2005DOI 10.1007/s10902-005-8255-z

Klein is also unique in his ability to merge empiricalresults with great philosophical questions. Are happiness andunhappiness two distinct concepts or mere poles of one com-mon dimension? Should people avoid sorrow or should theymaximise happiness? Is happiness a by-product of activities orthe result of achieving pre-determined goals? Should people ex-press their negative feelings or keep them under control? Arehuman beings slaves to their genes? Why do we invest time andeffort in goals that do not satisfy us? Is it possible to avoid mis-ery by diminishing our expectations? Is happiness determinedby objective events or by subjective perceptions? Is happiness ahabit that can be developed? Is never-ending happiness possi-ble? Is happiness the sum of different positive and negativeexperiences, or is it something else?

It becomes clear that Klein has a more positive view on hap-piness compared to moral philosophers and starry-eyed idealistswho associate happiness with shallowness and egoism. Afterreading Klein’s book, these sceptics should cherish happinessmore than anything else. Klein sums up empirical studiesshowing that happy people are more creative, better problemsolvers, more attentive and more sympathetic towards thegeneral interest.

The diversity of topics that Klein addresses, from intuition tosexual boredom and from friendship to religion, is fascinating.At the same time, one could argue that the density of informa-tion sometimes undermines his conceptual clarity. Questionslike ‘‘What exactly is happiness?’’ ‘‘Does happiness equal posi-tive feelings?’’ and ‘‘Are happiness and the prevalence ofdepression inversely related?’’ are not satisfactorily answered.Still, Klein’s book is highly recommended for his approach tohappiness: unique, positive and scientific.

MAARTEN C. BERGErasmus University Rotterdam Inst. of Health Policy and ManagementP.O. Box 1738, 3000, DR RotterdamThe Netherlands

E-mail: berg@fsw.eur.nl

BOOK REVIEWS344

DOI 10.1007/s10902-005-8256-y

How it feels when life suddenly gets better

How it feels when life suddenly gets better Review of ‘‘Thenature of happiness’’ by Desmond Morris Little Books Ltd.,London, UK, 2004 ISBN: 1 904435 28 9, 176 pages.

Desmond Morris is a zoologist and anthropologist with a greatinterest in the evolutionary origins of human behavior. He isthe author of many books, among which the famous ‘TheNaked Ape’ (1967) and ‘The Naked Woman’ (2004). In hislatest book ‘‘The Nature of Happiness’’, Morris considers hap-piness in an evolutionary perspective. One example: Morris ex-plains the fact that co-operation and helping other people stillcontributes to our happiness which stems from the change ourforefathers made from a gentle, repetitive, fruit-picking way oflife to the more strenuous, demanding lifestyle of pack-hunterson the plains.

Morris defines happiness as follows:

The true nature of happiness is frequently misunderstood. It isoften confused with contentment, satisfaction or peace of mind.The best way to explain the difference is to describe contentmentas the mood when life is good, while happiness is the sensation weexperience when life suddenly gets better. At the very momentwhen something wonderful happens to us, there is a surge of emo-tion, a sensation of intense pleasure, an explosion of sheer delight– and this is the moment when we are truly happy, Sadly, it doesnot last very long. Intense happiness is a transient, fleeting sensa-tion. We may continue to feel good for quite a while, but the joy-ful elation is quickly lost. As one cynic put it: life is prolongedmisery interrupted by brief moments of happiness (p. 12).

In this definition happiness is an intense passing emotion,akin to Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’ as an emotionaltop-experience (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). This use of the wordhappiness is different from the more common meaning of ‘life-satisfaction’, which is a more enduring state of mind;

BOOK REVIEWS 345

comparable to what Morris calls ‘contentment’. In this journal,the term happiness is used in the latter sense (Veenhoven et al.,2000) and depicts people’s appreciation of their own life as awhole. This appreciation contains an element of evaluation andthis is a typical human capacity; incorporated in our cortexwhich is one of the most spectacular products of human evolu-tion. Morris presents many alternative definitions of happinessin the last part of his book but he disregards happiness as ‘life-satisfaction’. This is unfortunate since ‘life-satisfaction’ is aninteresting type of happiness from an evolutionary point of view.

Having defined happiness as a short-lived emotion, Morrisgoes on to distinguish several variants of that experience. Hementions 17 of them and briefly discusses their evolutionaryaspects. The following list results:

1. Target happiness as a result of successful efforts to achievea specific target.

2. Competitive happiness as a result of winning a struggleagainst other people. In the most extreme form, this is thehappiness of the sadist and the torturer.

3. Co-operative happiness as a result of helping other people.4. Genetic happiness as a consequence of reproducing ones

genes by falling in love, pair bonding, giving birth and suc-cessfully rearing the offspring.

5. Sensual happiness as a result of hedonistic experiences likeeating, drinking and sex.

6. Cerebral happiness as a result of intellectual activities likeplaying games, artistic creativity and scientific research.

7. Rhythmic happiness as a result of activities like dancing,music, singing, aerobics, gymnastics and athletics.

8. Painful happiness as a result physical or mental masoch-ism, like self-chastisement or the masochism of puritanswho deny themselves every pleasure in life.

9. Dangerous happiness as a result of taking sensational risksas in gambling and in such extreme sports as mountainclimbing and parachuting.

10. Selective happiness as a result of ignoring reality and con-centrating on one’s own emotions, like Nero fiddling whileRome was burning.

BOOK REVIEWS346

11. Tranquil happiness as a result of meditation.12. Devout happiness as a result of worshipping, like in Lour-

des and Mecca.13. Negative happiness as a result of eliminating or dealing

with specific causes of unhappiness, like dressing entirelyin black for the rest of one’s life after the death of a child.

14. Chemical happiness as a result of taking drugs, alcoholand smoking.

15. Fantasy happiness as a result of daydreaming, supportedby books, films and television.

16. Comic happiness brought on by humor and laughter.17. Accidental happiness as a result of good luck, if your suit-

case comes up first on the carousel after a long and tiringflight on a jumbo jet.

This classification is the core of the book. Regrettably that core isquestionable. Morris does not explain how he derived this list, hejust posits. Though the reader may recognise much in this phe-nomenology, some will also miss specific experiences on the list.What about the joy of a beautiful sunset? It is also unclear towhat extent these emotions are universal; speculation about pos-sible evolutionary aspects is no proof. All in all a well readablebooklet, perhaps directing some people to new sources of happi-ness, but it is not a great contribution to the science of happiness.

REFERENCES

Csikszentmihalyi, M.: 1990, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience(Harper & Row, New York).

Veenhoven, R., Diener, E. and Michalos, A. Editorial, Journal of happinessstudies, 2000, Vol. 1, No.1, pp. v–viii.

JAN OTTErasmus University RotterdamFaculty of SciencesP.O. Box 17383000 DR RotterdamThe Netherlands

Email: ott@fsw.eur.nl

BOOK REVIEWS 347

DOI 10.1007/s10902-005-8257-x

Intriguing but misty Paradox

Intriguing but misty paradox Review of Ziyad Marar’s ‘TheHappiness Paradox’ Reaktion Books Ltd., London, UK, 2003.ISBN: 1-86189-182-2; 208 pages

Ziyad Marar is Editorial Director at Sage Publications London.His book ‘‘The Happiness Paradox’’ is in the tradition of thehumanities, it is a journey through thoughts about happiness inphilosophy and psychology with stopovers in literature and poetry.His book is not based on empirical research; it is an armchairreflection. Marar contemplates the elusive nature of happiness,which he sees as a result of two mutually dependent but contradic-tory human needs: the need for freedom, adventure and self-expression on the one hand and on the other, the need to feeljustified by security, social appreciation and interpersonal support.

In Marar’s vision, freedom as well as justification require anaudience of people who will only appreciate individual actions ifactions are expressions of freedom. This makes freedom and justi-fication mutually dependent: real freedom requires justification,and justification requires people to take initiatives in freedom,risking disapproval or even humiliation, instead of appreciation.The support of audiences is, on the other hand, only substantial ifthe people who constitute these audiences have the freedom to re-fuse such support. In love: partners must be able to be critical andmust in principle be willing to break up their relationship; other-wise they are unable to provide real support. In Marar’s words:uncritical support or ‘‘canned applause’’ is meaningless and use-less. Hence, freedom and justification need each other but are alsocontradictory since complete freedom is not compatible with thesearch for social support. In Marar’s view it is impossible to reacha permanent balance or equilibrium as Aristotle probably wouldhave wanted us to do. There is a perpetual oscillation between theneed for freedom and justification in all people.

In Marar’s view this oscillation makes happiness an elusiveconcept; the best we can do is to accept this oscillation andelusiveness and to learn to live with it. A nice example of his

BOOK REVIEWS348

message is the drawing simultaneously showing a duck and arabbit (p. 172). If we look at it as a duck, the rabbit will appearbefore our eyes, whether we like or not, and vice versa. The twobasic needs are, like these two images, inseparable.

This basic ‘‘paradox’’ is demonstrated in matters of love andwork; according to Freud the two most important domains inlife for happiness. In both domains people have to take risksand have to accept being vulnerable to others or, in Marar’swords: in both domains there are powerful audiences that mat-ter. In all domains, including love and work, happiness appearsto be elusive because we are always short of either freedom orsecurity. The clash between the idiosyncrasy of the individualand his social character appears to be the fundamental issue inMarar’s philosophy.

A weak point in the book is the absence of clear definitions ofcentral concepts. This weakness is demonstrated in Marar’schoice of a rather vague and outdated concept of happiness; for-mulated on page 23 as follows: The current ‘‘psychological’’ mean-ing is given as originating in the late 18th century and is as follows:a mental ‘‘feeling’’ or ‘‘affection’’ as distinguished from cognitive orvolitional states of consciousness. Also ‘‘feeling’’ as distinguishedfrom the other classes of mental phenomena. This vague formula-tion, stressing the emotional aspect without further specification,precludes the use of research into happiness in the present daymeaning of people’s evaluation of their own life as a whole.

Marar’s concept of freedom is also very broad in his ownwords on page 38: In fact, freedom in the sense I am using it is acomplex and textured array of overlapping notions that includesdiscovery, authenticity, independence, artistic creation, escape,bliss, uniqueness, irony, will, power, self-indulgence, fantasy,transgression, perversion, comedy, desire, genius, the call of thewild and the ‘‘search for strange’’. His justification, and moral-ity, concept are also rather vague. Justification is a moral con-cept but this morality is based on the approval and support ofother people, which is a rather unusual and counter-intuitiveinterpretation of morality.

This vagueness of central concepts makes it difficult tounderstand the relationships between happiness, freedom andjustification. Are the needs for freedom and justification really

BOOK REVIEWS 349

contradictory and, if so, is this contradiction really a seriousproblem for happiness? People can make decisions about theirinterpretations of freedom and justification and about possibletrade-offs. And perhaps people find pleasure in making suchdecisions!

Another weakness, related to the conceptual vagueness, is Ma-rar’s negligence to consider the results of empirical research onsubjective well being of which happiness research is a part. Thisresearch shows that life satisfaction and mood level are fairly sta-ble. So happiness in that sense is apparently not elusive and theimpact of ‘‘oscillation’’ is at least limited (Veenhoven, Inglehart).By taking a closer look at the results of empirical research Mararcould also have acknowledged that people tend to be happier ifthey have more political, economical and personal freedom andthat there is also a positive correlation between individualism andhappiness (Veenhoven, 2000). The fact that individualism andfreedom have a positive impact on happiness implies at least thathis ‘‘oscillation’’ can take place on different levels, even if there isno fixed balance or equilibrium. If Marar had studied such re-sults, he might have developed a more optimistic outlook on hap-piness. Tensions between basic human needs probably createproblems and perhaps different types of ‘‘oscillation’’, but mostpeople appear to be able to cope with these problems.

REFERENCES

Veenhoven, R.: 2000, Freedom and happiness: A comparative study in forty-four nations in the early 1990s, in E. Diener and E.M. Suh (eds.), (MITPress, Cambridge, USA), pp. 257–288.

Inglehart, R.: World Values Surveys and European Values Surveys, 1995–1997and 1999–2001.

JAN OTTErasmus University RotterdamFaculty of SciencesP.O. Box 17383000 DR RotterdamThe Netherlands

Email: ott@fsw.eur.nl

BOOK REVIEWS350