Was uns glücklich macht
Contentment, joy, happiness, well-being: All of these terms express a feeling that people long for. But why do we feel this way, and what factors contribute to it?
Feeling of happiness – just a physical reaction?
Who doesn’t want to be happy and experience joy in their life? When we ask ourselves this question, we tend to overlook the fact that it is by no means a given that humans are capable of feeling joy or happiness at all. We owe this special feeling to our physiology. From a purely biochemical perspective, the feeling of happiness is nothing more than a physical reaction triggered by the release of certain hormones. Receiving good news, a pleasant encounter, or an unexpected win in a game leads to the release of the «happiness hormone» dopamine. People who exercise promote the release of endorphins. These hormones make people feel happy and content. When you eat chocolate, you also consume the happiness hormones serotonin and phenethylamine. Whether this dose is sufficient to trigger a feeling of happiness is not proven, but it would explain the satisfaction we feel when we snack.
Occasional and lasting joy
Such examples explain how the feeling of happiness or joy can arise at specific points. Understanding a persistent feeling requires further explanation. People can’t jog or eat chocolate all the time just to be constantly happy. What leads to a lasting feeling of happiness, to lasting contentment and joy? This is where happiness research comes in. This branch of research seeks to understand the conditions under which people feel happy and the factors that contribute to this.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network regularly publishes theWorld Happiness ReportIt compares life satisfaction in different countries. The following factors are assessed: income, social support, expected healthy years of life, trust, generosity, and the perceived freedom in life decisions. It is striking in this report that the Scandinavian countries are consistently represented in the top rankings; Switzerland ranks sixth in the 2019 report. This can be explained by good insurance, a very good education and healthcare system, relatively short working hours, a salary sufficient to live on, sufficient free time for relaxation, little corruption, political transparency, the feeling that the government is responsive to the needs of the population, and sufficient freedom for personal development.
Friends and relationships
Harvard Medical School has published aLong-term studyexamined factors of happiness over a period of 75 years. The clear result: happy relationships and friendships. These even have physical effects. Subjects with particularly intense relationships were measurably happier and physically fitter. They were less affected by declining brain function at age 80 and lived longer. The study concludes: If you want to live a long and happy life, you need friends and relationships to promote mental and physical well-being.
Happiness research shows that there are empirically verifiable factors that promote long-term happiness and lasting joy. The Harvard study, in particular, should make us Christians sit up and take notice. If interpersonal communication and relationships are the strongest drivers of personal happiness, then we as the Christian church have an attractive offer: joy and fulfillment in communication and relationships with one another, and beyond that, with God.
This column first appeared in "Insist," the background magazine of the Swiss Evangelical Alliance. Further information is available at:www.insist.ch