Transcriber: Virginia Pes
Reviewer: P Hakenberg I wanted to start with a quotation, a definition of puritanism
by the writer H.L. Mencken, and it goes like this: "Puritanism, the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." (Laughter) Now, I'm no puritan, and in fact I'm on a mission, which is why it's so nice to be here. So I want to start with - I suppose it's the most important question
one could possibly ask - What should be our basic purpose
in the way that we live our lives? And closely related to that,
since we're social animals: What kind of society
would one most want to live in? Now, I'm an economist, and you know that many
of my colleagues would say that the best thing we can do
is to have a society as rich as possible. I completely disagree with that. I think we want a society in which people
are enjoying their lives the most, where there's the most happiness,
and of course, especially, the least possible misery. So you've got two visions there: which of them is best? Well, here's an extraordinary fact: In the United States, there has been
massive increase in income and wealth in all sectors of the
community since 1950, and what has happened to happiness? Flat, no change. Similar results on the evidence
for Britain and many other countries. So this is a huge challenge
to economists, isn't it? I experience it as a challenge,
it's what brought me into this subject. But it's a huge challenge to anybody,
politician or anybody else, who is claiming that
the right objective for our society is to simply become richer and richer,
and that will solve all our problems. So, suppose that you accept my opinion that the best thing we should do is to create a society
with the most happiness and the least misery. How would we go about it? Well, it would require, wouldn't it, that everyone of us -
you, me, everybody in this society - did in their own way,
attempt as far as they could to create as much happiness
in the world as they could and as little misery. That really is what is required. I think that's the answer
to my original question, what should be the purpose of our lives. Our purpose should be to try and create as much happiness in
the world as we can and as little misery. I find that a really inspiring ideal,
not easy to live up to. I don't know how many of you
think like that, but I hope that by the time we finish,
I will have persuaded you. So I suppose the first question
you might ask me is "What do you mean by happiness?" By happiness, I mean feeling good about your life, wanting to go on that way. And by unhappiness, I mean feeling bad about your life and wanting things to be different. We can measure how happy people are; we can ask them that question. Now you might say,
do the answers mean anything? We know that yes, they do. Because here's another
extraordinary fact, which is that if you measure the electrical activity
in the relevant areas of the brain - those are objective measurements - you will find
that they are well correlated with people's answers
to questions about how happy they are. So that's what persuaded me
that we really can know about happiness. It's something we really
can get to understand, get to grips with, and thereby we can,
of course, increase it. Now, fortunately, all over the world, there are more and more people
who are taking happiness seriously and are saying, "No, what we want is a society
which is happier and not just richer." In Britain, we've got leading
politicians in all our parties, who are saying that and thinking that way. Our government, for the last two years, has been measuring
the happiness of the population using methods which we suggested for them, and the OECD, the club of rich nations,
is now asking all countries to take standard measurements
on the happiness of their population. That is really important, because it's the OECD that's started
the measurement of the GDP 60 years ago, which you read about in the papers
and some people think it's the answer, and I'm saying, it's not the answer. So it's great to have
the OECD on our side, and the UN, too, has just held a recent
massive conference on happiness, where some of us produced
the first world happiness report. So there's a lot of interest
and support for this idea, worldwide, growing every year. But why? Well, I think there are two things: One is the disillusion
with economic growth, that it didn't bring
the Nirvana that people expected - that's the fact one that I mentioned. But the other thing, of course, is that we now know
so much more about happiness, the new science of happiness. We now have really quite a good account of what things cause happiness and misery, what things are more important
than which others, and that's what I want
to talk about today. The causes of happiness,
and then obviously from that, the implications about
how we should lead our lives. Okay. How does this science of happiness work? Well, if you looked around this room, you would find an extraordinary variation
in the amount of happiness in different people, in this room. And the same thing is true,
of course, in the whole population. We know now, from these surveys, that there's a huge variety in the
levels of happiness in the population. So what are the most important things
which explain that variety? What are the main causes? Well, obviously there are external causes,
things in our situation, and there are things inside ourselves. On the external side, what would you think
is the most important cause? Well, of course, my colleagues,
or some of them, would say the person's income. But what fraction
of the variation of happiness do you think is accounted for
by the variation in income? Well, this is pretty amazing: in Britain, it's under 1%
that the variation of happiness is due to the variation of income, and I think there's no country
in the world where it's as much as 2%. So, actually in every country in the world the main external factor
determining our happiness is the quality of our human relationships. In every country, the most important ones
are the close personal ones. Then, there's work. Work is of course a relationship, so that if you become unemployed, the surveys show this causes
as much pain as if your spouse dies. But of course, even if you have a job, the relationships at work are important. What do you think is the most
miserable time, on average, for a person during the day? It's time spent with the boss. This is a terrible reflection -
isn't it? - on management and some of the excessively macho
management philosophies in our society. But then of course,
also not just personal, at work, but relationships in the community matter, our neighbours, people in the streets,
on the buses, in the shops - So, here's a very interesting question - this has been asked
in many countries, over many years - Do you think - listen hard - do you think that most other
people can be trusted? Or that you can't be too careful? Now, maybe we can have a vote,
I can hardly see you, but we can have a vote,
that would be interesting. Who thinks that most other people
can be trusted? Raise. Who thinks most other people
can't be trusted? Well, you see, this is fascinating. It shows what lovely people you are. Or it shows what sheltered lives you have. (Laughter) I'll tell you the answer
for our population. In Britain, today, the proportion who think that
most other people can be trusted is 30%. And the same is true in America. That is particularly depressing
because it used to be 60%, half a century ago,
in both Britain and America. It was 60%. That has collapsed; that's a profound cultural change. I think it's due to a much more
individualistic culture, much more stress,
competition relative to cooperation, and there's much more of a feeling that other people
are just a bit of a threat to you. Interestingly, there are some countries
in which it's well over 60% still, guess which? Well, Scandinavian countries. You probably did guess. These are countries which put
more emphasis on cooperation and more emphasis on mutual respect, and that's why
they have higher levels of trust. So, our external situation
of course matters for our happiness. But happiness comes from within
as well as from without. And what's inside us
is extraordinarily important, so, what's there? Well, obviously the genes are there,
but nothing we can do about them. There's also a lottery of life,
which I want to come back to, and then there's our health. Now in all these surveys, it's found that mental health problems cause more of the misery in our society than physical illness. That's found in many countries;
I think it's extraordinarily important. You probably all know somebody
who has a mental health problem. It's very pervasive, and common. One in five of adults would be diagnosed
as having a mental illness. The really shocking thing is that only a quarter of them are
in treatment in most advanced countries, as compared with most people
who have physical illnesses, who are in treatment. We used to have a Chancellor
of the Exchequer in Britain, called Nigel Lawson, and he was visiting
an old people's home once, and he was talking to a lady, and he said, "Oh, by the way, do you know who I am?" And she replied, "No dear, but I'm sure if you asked the nurse,
she could tell you." (Laughter) So, dementia is one problem, but by far the biggest problems
of mental illness are either depression or anxiety disorders,
like panic attacks, OCD, PTSD and so on. The really good news is that
we have effective psychological treatments which will help at least half the people to recover in less than
16 sessions of treatment. And that is a real step forward. I've spent an awful lot of my time
trying to help our national program for delivering these therapies
to people who need them to be expanded to the level necessary. We've still got a way to go, but this is something, actually,
which is being looked at - our program's actually being looked at from all over the world
as a possible example to follow because this is a worldwide problem. I just want to mention
one other point about our inner selves. Obviously, our childhood plays a massive
role in determining our personality. If you ask which factors about childhood
are the best predictors of whether an adult will be someone
who is satisfied with their lives, I wonder what you think is most important. If we just take
three aspects of childhood: the academic development
and achievement of a child, the social behaviour of a child, and the emotional health of a child. Which of those would most likely
have the biggest influence in predicting whether the person
will become a satisfied adult? You probably know already
what the answer is. The emotional health
is the best predictor, I'm sorry to say that academic
performance is the worst predictor - sorry about that. (Laughter) So that's sort of a thumbnail sketch
of the causes of happiness and misery. So, taking that into account, I suppose it's not so difficult to understand why happiness
has been flat, the way it has. You've had income up, that's a positive feature,
I do believe that, but you've had more family tension; you've had more work stress; you've had a fall in trust; and you've had
an increase in mental illness, particularly among young people, and I think that's particularly associated
with this very competitive ethos which has developed in our culture, where people are all the time
comparing themselves with other people. I think it's obvious - this is
a logical point I'm going to make - it's obvious that if your happiness depends entirely on how
you compare with other people, there's no way
that society can become happier, because if somebody
rises relatively to other people, someone else has to go down. That is what we call in our jargon
the zero-sum game. We've absolutely got to get away from this excessively competitive ethos if we want to move from that flat plain
onto a higher plateau of happiness. I firmly believe - that's really what I'm in this for - I firmly believe we can move
onto a higher plateau of happiness just using some of the knowledge
I have already deployed. Let's very quickly go through what the
government could do and what we could do. Government, obviously, should be
providing proper mental health services to people who need it. They should be ensuring that the schools are developing character,
resilience, not just academic competence - we can't have just exam factories. We have to give
much more support to parents, parents in conflict with each other,
a real national problem, domestic violence, and, of course, we have
to keep unemployment low, not take risks with it in the name
of faster long-term economic growth. So the state has got a major role, particularly in the reduction
and prevention of misery. But an awful lot of the work
has got to be done by all of us. So, what do we have to do? Well, I think there are two main areas that are our inner strength
and our outer relations with other people. I don't know how many of you
have read the great book by Viktor Frankl called "Man's Search for Meaning." He was an Auschwitz survivor, and this is why he says
he survived Auschwitz. Because of man's - and this I quote - "Man's ultimate freedom to choose your attitude
in any set of circumstances." To choose your attitude
in any set of circumstances, you have to develop a strong inner core
where you're able to relate to, whatever the positive features
are in your life, you have to develop a strong safe place
you can withdraw to if necessary, whatever is happening. And whatever has happened. There are many ways to do this. I know some of you do meditation,
others practice positive psychology, but one way or another, you have to develop
your own inner strength. And then, you also have to, of course,
get more of your happiness from helping other people. That's good for
the other people, obviously, but what neuroscience is now showing
is that it's also good for you. Because, to an important extent,
virtue is its own reward. If you help other people, your brain does light up
in the standard reward centers where it lights up
from other kinds of reward. So there is hope. If that weren't so, it wouldn't even be worth
all the preaching I'm doing. It's because you can get
a payoff from living better, there's some hope in the world
that we could get people to live better. So, what we need is really
a complete cultural change away from self-absorption to a world where people
have more inner strength and are more caring to each other. And that's why we've founded this movement
called Action for Happiness. I'm going to put up the flag. Action for Happiness. This is a movement, which, we hope,
will become worldwide, to promote the kind of ideas
that I've been talking about today. So, the first thing if you join
is that you make a pledge, and of course it's the pledge
I was talking about at the beginning, that we should try to create
as much happiness as we can in the world and as little misery. And then there's a wonderful website
that you can find there, which gives you the evidence
about how that could be done, suggestions about how it can be done, which include our ten keys
to a happier living. And then, increasingly - we've got 30,000 members,
so far, in the first three years - increasingly, members
have been gathering together in universities or in places
where they live or work, to support each other. Because, of course,
it's not easy to lead a good life without support from fellow selves who have the same objectives
as you do yourself. Now, to make it easy
for groups to get started, we have on our website what we call "Exploring What Matters." This is materials - videos, written materials,
topics for discussion, and so on - for eight sessions which cover the kind of issues
that we've been talking about today. So, I'm hoping that some of you
will go into our site, form a group of like-minded people, work through these topics, and then carry it forward
in whatever way makes sense to you. So we think that this could become
a worldwide movement that made an important contribution
to creating a better world. When we started it,
of course we had to have a director, and we interviewed many candidates, and one of them had gone into the web
to see if there was any other organization which had got
the word "happiness" in its title. Interesting question. And this is what came back on his screen: "Your search for happiness
has produced no results." (Laughter) Well, I think we can do better than that, and I hope we'll all do better than that, and I hope you'll all join our movement. Thank you very much. (Applause)
