A recent article in the Atlantic by Emily Esfahani Smith entitled “Meaning Is Healthier Than Happiness” offers such evidence. The subject of happiness is all the rage. Esfahani Smith notes that Amazon listed 1,000 new titles on happiness in the preceding three months alone.
And among the claims made by celebrants of happiness is that it pays off all kinds of health benefits. A recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, suggests that all depends upon what you mean by happiness.
Steven Cole, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at UCLA, has researched the impact of chronic adversity — loneliness, financial stress, grief over the loss of a loved one — on a particular gene expression pattern. Such chronic adversity produces a stress-related pattern marked by an increase in activity of pro-inflammatory genes and a decrease in activity of genes involved in antiviral responses.
Cole and coresearcher, Barbara Frederickson ofUniversityofNorth Carolina, found to their great surprise that those who score high on what they call “hedonic wellbeing” — as measured by such questions as “How often do you feel happy?” “How often do you feel interested in life?” “How often do you feel satisfied?” — display the same gene expression patterns as people who are enduring chronic adversity.
What leads to a dramatic difference in gene expression is a state researchers term “eudaimonic predominance.” Here the crucial questions are: “How often do you feel that your life has a sense of direction or meaning to it?” “How often did you feel that you have something to contribute to society?” And “How often do you feel that you belong to a community/social group?”
Hedonic wellbeing and eudaimonic wellbeing are not mutually exclusive. Some people rank high on both scales. But where there is a strong predominance of hedonic wellbeing, then the gene expression is that of people suffering from chronic adversity. And where there is an eudaimonic predominance, even among those who express low levels of hedonic happiness, we find exactly the opposite.
Smith describes the essential difference between the two types of wellbeing as that between “giving” and “taking.” Hedonic happiness corresponds to selfish “taking” behavior. The happiness associated with meaning is associated with selfless “giving” behavior. The triggers for the former type of happiness tend to be self-centered and all about one feeling good — e.g., a good meal, the victory of one’s favorite sports team. “Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed, or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided,” write Cole and Frederickson. At the other end are those activities that involve helping others and contributing to their wellbeing. Such activities do not necessarily make a person happy, but they do make life meaningful.
