I have been following with great interest the new government initiative to measure happiness. As I work in a company called Happy it’s a subject that interests me vastly, we spend huge amounts of time ensuring that our customers are happy. Happiness impacts our business in three ways. Firstly as a business philosophy, secondly it’s what makes our customers happy and finally it’s what makes us happy.
In this blog I will explore some of the ways Happiness has been defined, measured and gathered. Further blogs will explore what makes people happy and how happiness can effect your business.
We all know what happy is, but let’s define it. Wikipedia defines it as such. Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterised by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.[1] A variety ofbiological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources.
Philosophers and religious thinkers often define happiness in terms of living a good life, or flourishing, rather than simply as an emotion. Happiness in this older sense was used to translate the Greek Eudaimonia, and is still used in virtue ethics.
Happiness economics suggests that measures of public happiness should be used to supplement more traditional economic measures when evaluating the success of public policy.
Which all makes sense. We all know what makes us happy… or do we? Happiness is very subjective. What makes you happy could be very similar to my own definition of happiness or could be completely different. At the moment, my definition of happiness is my Nespresso coffee machine.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been asking with people across the UK to find out what makes them happy?
The ONS is consulting with people, organisations and business across the UK in an effort to develop measures of the nation’s well-being.
Previous studies have linked happiness with our income. But does rich mean happy? If it does not, is it really better to be unhappy and rich than unhappy and poor? And can such generalisations be applied.
The UK, for example. The country’s gross domestic product – the value of the goods and services it produces every year – has grown almost without interruption since the 1948. Most recent indicators place the UK sixth in the list of wealthiest nations measured by GDP.
The fact is, though, that GDP relies on a model of production and consumption. To believe that wealth and ownership equals happiness is to assume that money can indeed buy love. The Beatles sang about it and also the late Robert Kennedy, who dismissed gross national product as something which “measures everything, except that which makes life worthwhile”.
In recent years the trend has been away from an exclusive reliance on GDP and towards a more balanced approach to the measure of happiness. David Cameron announced in 2006 that “It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and it’s time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB – general well-being.”
The idea of GWB is not a new term. In 1972, Bhutan coined the term “gross national happiness” to define its population’s general level of well-being. Canada is also exploring measurements derived from Bhutan’s model to apply to its own people. And Thailand has established a happiness index which incorporates educational, family, work and health data.
In acknowledgement of the fact that there is more to life than money, the Office for National Statistics has devised new questions for its large household surveys that would assess people’s satisfaction with life.
An interesting attempt to measure happiness I have come across is a project called Mappiness, a project run by the London School of Economics, which offers a phone app that prompts you to record your mood and situation.
The Mappiness website says: “We’re particularly interested in how people’s happiness is affected by their local environment – air pollution, noise, green spaces, and so on – which the data from Mappiness will be absolutely great for investigating.”
You get mappiness from the App Store, open it, and sign up
They beep you once (or more) a day to ask how you’re feeling, and a few basic things to control for: who you’re with, where you are, what you’re doing (if you’re outdoors, you can also take a photo)
The data gets sent back — anonymously and securely — to their data store, along with your approximate location from the iPhone’s GPS, and a noise-level measure.
What you do with this data, how it effects you and how happiness can be applied. I will explore in my next blog posting.
James Chantler is Creative Director at Happy Creative, a full service marketing and creative agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact us please go to www.happy-creative.co.uk
