Happiness

by Ed Diener

  Talya Miron-Shatz studied what women think about through the day, while at work, shopping, daydreaming, or with family. She noticed one category that was very negative - women thought a lot about their weight, and it was almost always negative when they did so. In contrast, many women also thought frequently about religion, and in this case their feelings were almost always positive. Religion may include ideas such as sin and hell, but apparently women tend to think much more about pleasant religious concepts. This suggests that for women religion is more often connected to ideas like the Peace Prayer than to thoughts of sin and hate.

  Social Support

  Since the first war that pitted one religion against another, people have debated whether religions do more harm than good. Unquestionably, there has been tremendous animosity and destruction in the name of religion. But so too has there been an outpouring of help and support for friends and strangers alike. An important emotional benefit of organized religion is the social support that frequently comes with being a member of a congregation. Whether you are a member of a synagogue in New York, part of a small Christian congregation in Denmark, or one of the multitudes attending services at the Ramakrishna temple in Kolkata, being a member of a spiritual community provides not only a sense of identity and belonging to a group, but the knowledge that like-minded individuals will help if you fall on hard times. In fact, many religious traditions emphasize social activities.

  Several Jewish traditions speak to the group mentality of worship. A common maxim holds that a person cannot study the Torah alone, and Jews gather in minyans, prayer groups of ten or more. Similarly, some Christian denominations have group confession, and Mormons are well known for the amount of time they spend together in church activities. The strong social fabric of most churches offers a safe psychological haven for people. Some theorists believe that the support religion offers is of particular value to socially marginalized people.

  Take the example of Father Crispin, a priest from Kenya visiting a Catholic parish in the Pacific Northwest. As anyone who has studied, worked, or lived abroad knows, making the transition to a foreign culture can be difficult, and being welcomed by the local community can feel terrific. Upon arriving at his new parish, Father Crispin was invited to one home after another for meals and conversation. Despite arriving in a new place, the priest had dozens of instant friends. And this type of social support is more than feel-good friendliness. Remember the study we described at the beginning of this chapter-church-related social support actually lowered mortality rates!

  Connecting to Something Permanent and Important

  When you join a religion, you join something larger than yourself - a social movement with a history, shared by many adherents, and often with connections around the world. The major religions of the world date back a thousand years or more, and the faithful share a connection with individuals of similar beliefs over centuries. When a Muslim bows toward Mecca, he or she can be assured that millions around the world are doing the same, and millions more did so a century earlier. No matter how low a person's status might be, as part of a religion, just as with national identity, he or she becomes something more significant. Furthermore, many religions teach that each person is important and special.

  Perhaps most important, religion can give people a sense of meaning. It helps them understand their world, and gives a broad purpose to their lives. More than most human activities, religion can connect people to something larger than themselves. It can give even the most horrible life a sense of deep significance.

  Humans enjoy positive feelings when they "belong," when they are part of a cohesive group of supportive people with similar beliefs. At times, we experience this feeling with national loyalty, pride in our company, or allegiance to a local sports team. But few institutions produce the strong feelings of togetherness and group identity that are inherent in many religions. Imagine sitting together with 22,000 other Latter-Day Saints in the conference center in Salt Lake City, listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Or imagine the experience of togetherness that millions of Muslims making the hajj to Mecca each year must feel. Or the excitement of Catholics as they crowd together in St. Peter's Square awaiting the election of a new pope. Religious experiences connect people not only to others present, but to the entire group, past and current, and sometimes to all of humanity. When we participate in organized religious rituals, we are no longer alone in the world, and our lives gain significance by the connection to something larger than ourselves.

  Growing Up Religiously

  Another possible "active ingredient" in the religion-happiness connection is being raised religiously, which seems to confer benefits. It turns out that being raised with religious beliefs and attending church services as a child is associated with happiness, even if a person isn't religious as an adult. We found that even people who fall away from their childhood religious beliefs are happier, on average, than those who were brought up without religion and found faith later on. It is possible that a religious upbringing provides a sense of community, a moral foundation, and family unity that continue to benefit people over the course of their lives, regardless of their later spiritual practices. Maybe people who grew up religiously have a more positive view of the world, or maybe they feel more secure and grounded. Or perhaps religious homes had more harmony, stability, and togetherness than the average nonreligious home. Whatever the reasons, growing up religiously might be a help on the road to happiness. With a nonreligious upbringing, children must be supplied with other sources of values and stability.

  The Experience of Ritual

  One of the distinctive features of organized religion, whether it is Buddhism or Christianity, is the beautiful pageantry involved with religious services. Most religions have elaborate rituals steeped in tradition. Religious festivals are frequently marked by music, singing, and colorful displays. Religious buildings, ranging from the impressive rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia, to the massive stupa of Borobudur in Indonesia, to the flying buttresses of Notre Dame Cathedral, are among the crowning achievements of architecture. Much of the world's greatest art and music is religious in nature. The sights, smells, and sounds are an attractive appeal to the senses, and it is easy to get swept away in the beauty and sense of majesty. One of the authors of this book, Ed, had the opportunity to attend the coronation of a new pope at the Vatican. Ed describes his experience:

  The anticipated day of the papal coronation arrived and we made our way toward St. Peter's Square. There, hundreds of thousands of excited pilgrims had come to witness church history in the making. We were assigned bleachers built on top of St. Peter's for the event, from which we had a tremendous view of the throngs below. The square had been cordoned into sections, some holding thousands of priests, and others filled with a sea of nuns. Behind these partitions was an enormous fenced area for lay pilgrims, who had traveled to the event from every corner of the globe. In the very front rows, foreign heads of state gathered and chatted.

  Finally, the moment we had all been waiting for arrived. A thousand bishops marched in wearing their splendid robes, followed by eighty cardinals in their striking red vestments. The pope, resplendent in an elaborate white robe, was carried in on a golden chair on a raised dais, waving to the crowd. Singing, incense, and wild applause mingled in the air as the new pope passed slowly up through the crowd. Swiss guards, musicians, and the chair-carriers all were dressed in colorful costumes. Finally, the time came for the pope to be crowned with an enormous beehive-shaped headpiece made of ten pounds of silver, and the crowd was electric with excitement. Hundreds of thousands spontaneously made the sign of the cross in unison. Even the crowning of kings does not match such splendor.

  Of course, there is more to Catholicism, or any religion, than mere pageantry. Nonetheless, rituals such as a papal coronation, in which huge crowds turn out, elegant clothes are worn, the music is beautiful, and rituals dating back centuries are performed, help make the religious experience profound. Eve
n though most religious ritual, music, and pageantry are on a much smaller scale than a papal coronation, they are present in most religious observances. What's more, these displays, whether they are bamboo and fabric pandhals erected in India during the puja season, or little boys and girls singing in the Sunday choir while dressed in their finest clothes, the physical trappings of organized religion can provide an experience set apart from everyday life, which translates to feelings of well-being. It is no accident that music is often an essential part of religion, from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to the religious masterpieces of Bach and Mozart. Even the "dry toast" religions, without icons or incense, have music, ministerial robes, and rousing sermons.

  Spirituality and Positive Emotions

  An important part of the overall religious experience, for people of any spiritual persuasion, is contact with the mystical, with something larger than themselves. People go to the gym, read books, take classes, and attend parties to develop their physical, intellectual, and social muscles. But they usually go to church to flex their spiritual muscles. The spiritual feeling, sometimes physical and sometime emotional, is difficult to define, but is universal. Some people arrive at it through prayer, while for others it comes in the form of dreams, charity work, or appreciating nature.

  Spiritual feelings can be such powerful experiences that most religious traditions have developed branches of mysticism and practices for achieving this feeling. Chasidic Jews consult the Zohar, dervishes whirl, Catholic monks fast and take vows of silence and celibacy. In fact, the spiritual experience can be so profound and enjoyable that even nonreligious people sometimes seek it out through nonreligious means. For instance, some folks take LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, or other psychedelic drugs to try to activate the spiritual experience.

  Recently, "spirituality" has become a buzzword for people who are uncomfortable with organized religion. On college campuses, in liberal circles, and among New Age believers, the idea of spirituality - the belief in some higher power that connects all things - is increasingly attractive to many people. Whether a person is a member of a bona fide religion or holds a private set of beliefs, spirituality is an important component of any experience of the divine. Whereas religion connotes institutionalized practices and doctrines, spirituality is usually concerned with personal growth and inspiration. The psychiatrist George Vaillant suggests that the fundamental core of spirituality is the experience of positive emotions such as love, gratitude, and awe that connect people to something larger than themselves. As we saw in chapter 4, positive emotions serve to facilitate relationships, and leave us feeling connected to other people.

  When people feel the spiritual emotions that connect them to others, to society, to nature, and to the universe, they are likely to behave in more positive ways, perhaps because they better appreciate the world around them. The psychologist Robert Emmons explored the beneficial effects of gratitude. According to his research, when people feel grateful, they not only focus on the positive aspects of their lives, but they also focus on how others have helped them, and thus the emotion of gratitude fosters a desire to reciprocate and help others. It's not surprising, then, that Emmons's studies show that research participants who practice gratefulness tend to be happier.

  One religion that is particularly well known for the open way in which it addresses happiness and other positive emotions is Buddhism. So integral is the understanding, acknowledgment, and maintenance of positive emotion in Buddhism that the religion's most public figure, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, wrote a book on happiness. In fact, it was the Dalai Lama who invited Richard Davidson, the distinguished neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin, to Dharamsala, India, to interview monks about their emotional and spiritual experiences. Davidson tells friends and colleagues that he himself experienced an exceptional sense of compassion when in the presence of the Dalai Lama.

  Davidson and his colleagues tested the power of meditation scientifically. In one study, they attached electrodes to the scalp of a Frenchborn monk, Mathieu Ricard. Ricard has immersed himself in a life of spiritual reflection, logging more than ten thousand hours of meditation and spending years in silence. In their initial trial run, Davidson and his colleagues asked Ricard to voluntarily generate compassion, and then sat back to record the electrical activity of his brain. The activation was so pronounced that the researchers suspected their equipment was malfunctioning. They ran the study again, but with an additional sample of monks, and a sample of local students to act as a control group. In the second trial, not only were the monks' positive brainwave patterns about thirty times as strong as those of the students, but more areas of the brain also appeared to be activated. In particular, the left prefrontal cortex was highly active in the monks. This area of the brain, as it turns out, is also associated with the experience of positive emotions.

  It appears, then, that positive emotions and the experience of spiritual contact - of getting in touch with the divine, regardless of your definition - are intimately related. When people attend church services, sing hymns, pray, and engage in other religious activities, they often feel a surge of positive emotions. In fact, the experience of spirituality may be an emotional one, inseparable from good feelings.

  Conclusions

  In some studies, religious people are on average happier, but the difference is often small, and in some recent data we found that religious people are not happier in all nations. Furthermore, it appears that not all religions equally increase happiness. This led us to try to discover the active ingredients underlying religiosity that more reliably predict feelings of well-being. There are several broad lessons that apply to atheists, nonreligious spiritual individuals, and religious people alike, because the active ingredients that make religious people on average happier can be instructive to both agnostics and the devout. One conclusion is that the major religions of the world capture important ideas about living well, including not being overly selfish and acting morally. These ideas appear to be helpful in living a better, happier life whether one is religious or not.

  Second, there appears to be something about growing up religiously that aids happiness. Although we are not yet certain what this entails, it seems prudent for parents to give their children a stable and secure home, a belief system that gives meaning and purpose to life, and a desire to help others and society.

  Third, an important aspect of spirituality is the experience of positive emotions that connect us to a world larger than ourselves. A deep spirituality based on broadening positive emotions, such as love, awe, compassion, and transcendence, is an essential part of why religion and happiness are often associated, and is necessary for complete psychological wealth. But we also saw that in some cases people practice a religion that can make others unhappy, and these types of religions clearly are not based on the type of positive spirituality we describe. Religions that broadly condemn others and focus on the negative aspects of people outside of the religion do not have as a core element the idea of broadening positive emotions. Quite frequently, these religions are likely to make outsiders unhappy. Thus, these religions are likely to decrease the total amount of happiness in a society and the world and decrease the person's psychological wealth. In contrast, religions based on prosocial ideas, such as those reflected in the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, are built on broadening positive emotions, and are thus likely to increase the sum of happiness in the world.

  A few scholars have accused us of pushing religion, and of not being objective scientists. Our response is that whether people are religious or secular, they can learn something about how to practice happiness from the findings on religion and happiness. We have no wish to convert anyone. Some people find formal religion helpful and some do not, and religiosity is largely a matter of individual faith and practice. We recognize that some religious beliefs and practices have led to genocide, war, and intolerance. But there nonetheless are things we can all learn from what makes some religious people happy, including a sup
portive social group, meaning in something larger than oneself, and a secure upbringing.

  We all need to cultivate within ourselves and our families the emotions of love, compassion, and gratitude. Decentering oneself away from extreme selfishness in service to others and the world can make the individual happier, and also will likely make those around the person happier. For many people, religion can bring positive attitudes - meaning, love, gratitude, security, and hope. It is these attributes that religious and nonreligious individuals alike need to develop, and this is an important lesson that religions can teach us. If you develop a spiritual approach to life that includes positive emotions and not focusing exclusively on oneself, your psychological wealth will increase immeasurably.

  8

  The Happiest Places on Earth:

  Culture and Well-Being

  Twenty-five years ago, we experienced the adventure of traveling up the Amazon River from Leticia, Colombia, to visit a remote tribe untouched by the modern world. At that time, the region had rarely been visited by outsiders, and our interactions with the locals sparked in Robert, who was eight at the time, a life-long interest in culture. From the travel journal of Ed Diener, 1981:

  We spent the morning heading upriver in a wide-bottomed canoe. There was just enough room for our guide, me, Carol, and the kids if they packed close together. The Amazon was brown and we occasionally saw dolphins and lily pads as wide as the span of my arms. But we were afraid to swim because locals told us of tiny fish that go up your nose and eat your brain, as well as of the horrors of piranhas. Toward noon, we turned up a small tributary, and the river was hardly wider than the boat. We often had to duck under branches. At one o'clock we arrived at the "village."