Happiness and Meaningfulness Flashcards
What is the difference between the traditional Christgian definition of happiness and the contemporary definition.
Christian: transcedent, in the future, when Christ returns, elsewhere, in heaven, or in the golden past, the garden of Eden. The contempary definition is immanent: it is a right that applies now, to everyone,a and everyone can develop skills to be happy.
What does the etymological origin of happiness tell us?
That it was seen as a matter of luck, happenstance. Same in other languages: Glück, geluk.
What changed in the thinking of happiness in the 17th/18th centuries?
Happiness was no longer a divine favour, or luck, but a right.
What is the utilitarian view on happiness?
It is abour maximising pleasure, minimising pain, yielding the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
What are the five major differences between a happy life and a meaningful life?
- Happy people satisfy their wants and needs, but that seems largely irrelevant to a meaningful life.
- Happiness involves being focused on the present, whereas meaningfulness involves thinking more about the past, present, and future—and the relationship between them.
- Meaningfulness is derived from giving to other people; happiness comes from what they give to you.
- Meaningful lives involve stress and challenges.
- Self-expression is important to meaning but not happiness.
How does Baumeister explain the finsing that happiness is related to taking form people and meaning is related with giving to others?
Though many researchers have found a connection between giving and happiness, Baumeister argues that this connection is due to how one assigns meaning to the act of giving. In other words, happiness can be related to giving, but if you study each withour the other, happiness purely comes from meaningfulness when it comes to giving.
What is the problem with differences in definitions of happiness?
They lead to confusing, sometimes even contradictory findings.
What is Lyobomirsky’s point about happiness and being a parent?
Being a parent leads to all of these good things: It gives you meaning in life, it gives you goals to pursue, it can make you feel more connected in your relationships,” says Lyubomirsky. “You can’t really talk about happiness without including all of them.
Lyubomirsky feels that researchers who try to separate meaning and happiness may be on the wrong track, because meaning and happiness are inseparably intertwined.
What is the part of happiness that involves feeling good without the part that involves deeper life satisfaction called?
Hedonic pleasure, happiness when it is not related to meaningfulness.
What is the difference between eudaimonic happiness and hedonic happiness?
The first refers to happiness that comes from meaningful pursuits, the other to the happiness that comes from pleasure or goal fulfillment.
How does Elizabeth Dunn think about eudaimonic and hedonci happiness?
I think my own work really supports the idea that eudaimonic and hedonic well-being are surprisingly similar and aren’t as different as one might expect,” says Dunn. “To say that there’s one pathway to meaning, and that it’s different than the pathway to pleasure, is false.
