The second big difference between pleasure/displeasure and satisfaction concerns time frames. Pleasure and displeasure are rooted in the present: they are about how you feel now. Satisfaction is rooted in the past, as you look back on your life. A Greek scholar called Solon, who lived around 600 BC, expressed this retrospective aspect of satisfaction in a strong (if not wildly overstated) form when he wrote that no man could be described as happy until he was dead. The distinction between pleasure/displeasure and satisfaction means you can be happy without having to be one of those smiley people who appear to be permanently bubbling over with bliss. Some of us are just not very jolly most of the time, but that does not necessarily mean we are unhappy. Happiness comes in many forms, not all of which are built on immediate delight.
Happiness, then, depends both on feeling (pleasure and displeasure) and thinking (satisfaction); it involves both the heart and the head. This has important practical implications. It means, for example, that you can be satisfied, and therefore happy, without necessarily experiencing much immediate pleasure. We all have to put up with occasional bouts of displeasure in order to achieve satisfaction, because most satisfying activities involve effort and some entail outright pain. Most of us would feel satisfied (and therefore happy) about, say, comforting a crying baby or a sick relative, even though the experience might not be particularly pleasant at the time. Our happiness would derive from a deeper sense of satisfaction at having done something good. Similarly, I am told that training hard for a competitive sport can be highly satisfying despite at times being painful.
The eminent American scientist Martin Seligman, who is one of the founders of positive psychology, has neatly encapsulated the three elements of happiness into what he calls the Pleasant Life and the Good Life. As its name implies, the Pleasant Life is one built primarily on pleasure and the absence of displeasure. This is the materialistic vision of hedonism, fuelled by lashings of raunchy sex, prolific shopping, exquisite food, recreational drugs, designer clothes, or whatever presses your button.7 The underlying attitude is characterised by an overriding concern for the self, a drive for immediate gratification of physical needs, and a belief that material possessions produce happiness. The outward sign of someone living the Pleasant Life is a big smile.
In contrast, Seligman’s Good Life is one built mainly upon satisfaction. Someone living the Good Life derives much of their happiness from engaging in worthwhile activities like work, parenting or study, and attaining goals that mean something to them. They may not always be grinning with joy, because they sometimes do things that are difficult or unpleasant, but they nonetheless feel good about the life they are living.8 If all is going really well, you could have a life that is both Pleasant and Good. A Good Life rich in satisfaction may also be a Pleasant Life. Someone who has a loving partner, close friends, an interesting job and a stimulating social life may have experiences that are both satisfying and pleasurable. There is no rule against having both.
Equating happiness with pleasure has been a common error throughout history. Across the centuries, various sages, politicians and gurus have preached that the ultimate aim in life should be the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain.9
In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, for example, Jeremy Bentham and like-minded utilitarian philosophers championed a world view that made happiness synonymous with pleasure. Bentham, whose stuffed remains are still on display in University College, London, regarded pleasure as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, and argued that playing pub games was just as good as composing a symphony if it produced the same amount of pleasure. He famously asserted that ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’ should be the supreme criterion for morals and legislation. Bentham even tried to devise objective methods for measuring the greatest happiness of the greatest number using his ‘felicific calculus’, but the task was beyond him.
Twenty-first-century attitudes are not vastly different, in that many people are still inclined to focus on pleasure rather than satisfaction when thinking about happiness. This mindset, which evaluates happiness in terms of feelings rather than thoughts, lies at the heart of our consumerist ‘me’ culture, and it starts early in life. Young children readily discover the immediate fix that comes from a pleasurable experience like eating chocolate or watching TV. Satisfaction is more elusive, since it requires thinking, effort and a certain amount of patience. Children can all too easily develop a lifelong habit of relying on short-term pleasures rather than learning to attain satisfaction. As we shall see later, a child’s ability to resist the desire for instant gratification, in return for greater benefits at a later time, is a good predictor of subsequent happiness and success.
Now, there is certainly nothing wrong with pleasure: personally, I am in favour of having as much as I can get. One of the simplest and most reliable ways of making yourself feel better, at least for a while, is to do something you enjoy. For many people, listening to music is a reliable way of eliciting powerful sensations of pleasure and relaxation. Research using brain-scanning techniques has revealed that pleasurable responses to music are mediated by the same regions of the brain that respond to other pleasurable stimuli including sex, food and recreational drugs.10 Listening to music can also ease anxiety and induce a physiological relaxation response, which is why music therapy has been used successfully for many years to help patients suffering from painful medical conditions.
But, as I have said, there is more to happiness than pleasure. William James, who was one of the founders of modern psychology, put it like this: ‘If merely “feeling good” could decide, then drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.’ It’s good to feel – but it’s also good to think. After all, thinking is one of the hallmarks of being human. A life built on pleasure alone can be empty and one-dimensional – a life for grazing animals, as Aristotle scathingly described it. Taken to excess, the Pleasant Life can be self-destructive and unhappy. Elvis Presley and the Marquis de Sade reportedly lived lives rich in pleasurable sensations and the gratification of physical appetites, but not everyone would regard their later years as enviably happy in the broader sense. At the other end of the spectrum, saintly figures have lived lives rich in self-sacrifice and satisfaction but rather short on pleasure. There is something to be said for a happy life built on generous measures of both.
Throughout this book I will be referring to evidence drawn from published scientific research into the nature and causes of happiness. Some of this work is cited in the References section at the end. However, you might be wondering how scientists could possibly know all these things. After all, happiness is an essentially private experience. And if you ask someone how happy they are, can you trust their answer? Investigating happiness is not a trivial problem. Fortunately (or I could not have written this book) psychologists have devised an array of proven and reasonably reliable techniques for measuring happiness, which they have been studiously deploying for many years.
How, then, do psychologists go about measuring happiness? In most cases they do it simply by asking direct questions to suitably selected samples of people. A number of special questionnaires (or ‘scales’, as they are known in the trade) have been developed for this purpose. Some are designed specifically to assess pleasure, displeasure or satisfaction with life, while others are intended to assess happiness in the round. The simplest versions use a single question, such as ‘How satisfied are you with your life in general?’ The respondent answers on a scale of, say, one to ten. More sophisticated versions use