Why Is Happiness So Elusive?

In 1937, Arlie Bock, then the director of the Harvard University Health Services, began what became known as the Harvard Study of Adult Development—one of the longest-running studies into human health and well-being. The original question that Bock hoped to answer was What factors lead to a good life? The study’s initial group of volunteers—numbering 268—was drawn from among the healthy young Harvard sophomores. In time, Bock’s study would join with another study that followed a group of teenagers from the poorest neighborhoods of Boston. Altogether, more than 700 men were studied for more than 70 years.

From the 1970s until 2005, the psychiatrist George Vaillant led the study. During Vaillant’s time leading the study, he concluded that the evidence was clear: The ability of the men to form and sustain enduring relationships was the most important factor in determining mental health, happiness, and life satisfaction. When asked at the conclusion of his career what he learned from the study, Vaillant offered this take: “The only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.” Vaillant’s successor, the Harvard psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, has summed things up in a very similar manner: “The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”

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At the same time, nature has wired us such that we are driven to seek achievement, whether in the form of status, wealth, or reputation. This sets up a tension in which, in Western culture, achievement is often favored at the expense of relationships. Francis Galton (an eminent psychologist of the 19th century) once famously said, “Whenever you can, count.” Our collective culture seems to have adopted this mantra with gusto.

Our jobs and professions are usually the most immediate way to measure whether we are succeeding at achieving. We publish a paper, we send a shipment, we land a contract or a sale. Each of these provides a very tangible and measurable sense of achievement. Each also provides a short-term emotional “high” that is quasi-addicting. Behaviors and outcomes that are easily measured tend to be reinforced.

But the strength of relationships is very hard to measure. And relationships, especially with our children and other family members, often take a long time to mature. As a result, many are drawn to allocate their most precious resources to those activities that produce the most immediate and measurable indications of achievement.

What’s more, nature has not equipped us with a gauge to know when we have achieved enough. Our psychologies were forged during a time when many resources were scarce. As such, intuitions often lead us to believe that more material possessions (which, at one point in our distant past, helped us survive) will make us happier. We are psychologically wired to believe that if we can just obtain more material goods or get that promotion with higher pay, then we will finally be happy. But nature hasn’t really prepared us to live in a time of relative abundance. We aren’t equipped with a psychological gauge that indicates when we have enough for our happiness.

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As Adam Smith once put it, “The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary.”

If we are not careful, this drive for status and material possessions can impair our personal and family relationships. While it is true that professional achievement can bring some measure of happiness and well-being, this pales in comparison to the level of satisfaction derived from warm and healthy personal relationships, especially with our family members. “Striving for individual status,” the late Harvard psychiatrist Armand Nicholi once wrote, “ultimately proves empty and frustrating if gained at the sacrifice of these relationships.”

Consider the following thought exercise: Imagine that you find yourself toward the end of the day with an unexpected extra few hours of time. How would you spend it? Would you catch up on a work assignment? Would you read a book to one of your children? Or would you write a love letter to your spouse? If you are like me, when you honestly conduct this exercise, the answers you start to come up with are somewhat disturbing and may not be leading you in the direction of enduring happiness and well-being.

This article is adapted from Dr. Wilkinson’s book, Purpose: What Evolution and Human Nature Imply About the Meaning of Our Existence.