Banish the self-help wizards and priests; the Happiness Enlightenment has arrived. It is, of course, an app. Happify, one of a relatively new class of mobile mood-boosters, isnt based on philosophy or religion but on the empirical science of positive psychology. Happify creates games and activities based on scientific research as a way to teach people how to be happier and more fulfilled, a representative said in an email. In the past year, the company says it has grown to more than 500,000 members. Given that happiness is a life-long pursuitor maybe longer, since philosophers from Aristotle to Michel de Montaigne dont believe you can call someone happy until after theyre deadand apps are synonymous with convenience and speed, I was skeptical. Theres just something so yuppie, so self-involved, so frivolous about seeking happiness as an end in and of itself, even though thats what Aristotle says were all doing anyway. Maybe its a Maslow Hierarchy/First World Problem thing, as if happiness is only something you can look for once youre fed and indoors. Maybe its just my Protestant upbringing, which valorized suffering, or philosophy classes, which made me a snob. For whatever reason, happiness is like the Sunnot to be faced dead on. For all of these reasons, the phrase positive psychology makes my skin crawl. It evokes late-night infomercials and giving yourself pep talks in the mirrorIm good enough, Im smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!but its nevertheless a real, if young, academic field. The name was coined in 1998 by then-president of the American Psychological Association, Martin Seligman. Given its spread across American universities, Seligman has been praised for his promotional talents as well as his brilliance as a psychologist. Happiness has both an emotional and a cognitive component, said Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at University of California, Riverside, and a full-time researcher studying happiness, well-being, and the science of happiness. You need to have both of those components: the sense that your life is going well and the relatively frequent experience of positive emotion, she told me. True to its stated scientific roots, Happify defines happiness the same way. Note that these are both self-reported metrics. Though science is the search for the objective and the repeatable, happiness is firmly subjective. Happify starts with a 13-question survey to determine who you are, whats keeping you from happiness, and what needs to be shorn up. It asks for your basic demographic information, how social you arewhich positive psychology has found is big indicator of happinesshow much you focus on the past, present, and future, stuff like that. After getting my info, it recommended Conquer Your Negative Thoughts by Derrick Carpenter, who holds a B.S. in Mathematics from MIT and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, where the fields founder, Seligman now directs the positive psychology department. The track description promised to tune me into the radio station in your mind thats playing negative music, so you can change the lyrics. In my first Activity, I clicked on hot air balloons that carried positive words Happify rewards you with Silver or Gold medals for finishing your track within 10 days, depending on how many Activities you complete. In my first Activity, I clicked on hot air balloons that carried positive words. I got 1280, because Im awesome at reading, pointing, and clicking. Feels good to win, I thought. My next activity was called Todays Victories. Its description told me to Get ready to do something that sounds like a clich, (I was) and asked me to identify positive moments in my day. Clich or not, the scientific literature, cited on Happify and elsewhere, supports it. I asked Lyubomirsky if maybe this was just cognitive happiness, since to be grateful youd have to think about good things in your life. She said there was more to it. Write a gratitude letter and you feel more connected, she said. You recall good memories, it makes you feel joyful. This is probably Happifys true potentialthe constant pestering to take stock of the positive things in your life. Just like with the news, the negative ones get most of my attention, which makes sense. We need to feel anger or rage sometimes because that might prompt us to do something about injustice in the world, Lyubomirsky said. And you need to feel anxious sometimes. Anxiety is necessary or else we wont ever buckle down and study for that test. Sometimes we need to feel sad because sadness is an indicator that something is wrong and theres a problem we need to focus and solve. But Kurt Vonnegut, or at least his Uncle Alex, nailed the problem with this. One of the things [Uncle Alex] found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy, Vonnegut said in a graduation address. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, If this isnt nice, what is? Interpreted most charitably, Happify, if you stick to its regimen, functions as a sort of Uncle Alex. Still, its hard for me to imagine taking stock of my life and thinking its going well, because this app told me it was, especially an app which is always trying to funnel you toward paying for the premium version. Ill be the first to admit Im a cynical asshole, but asking someone to pay $72 to See How You Compare Against Others & Get Personal Activity Recommendations when there is a track called Stop Comparing Yourself to Others & See the Good in Life on another page seems disingenuous at best. Thats the thing about science. Its very easily co-opted by commerce. I ended up with a silver medal in my track because there werent enough free activities to get me to Gold. Being runner-up in a one man race didnt feel great. By day two of Happify, I had gotten a 53 on my happiness evaluation. Youre Getting By it said, but you could be embracing life and living with more optimism, less stress, and more confidence on a regular basis. The happy face next to the evaluation that was a straight line. I stared back and tried to remind myself of how feeling better than stuff is really what makes me feel happy. But then I looked over the things that had made my day better. Chatting with my girlfriend, chilling with the dog, getting in some minutes of guitar before work. Perhaps in spite of myself, perhaps in spite of Happify, I asked myself, if thats not nice, what is?
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 13:05:00 +0000
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