Science-Based Tools for Increasing Happiness

Facing the sun around sunset... for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes—or even less, even to 2-5 minutes—can adjust the sensitivity of neurons in your retina that communicate light information to the brain and make it such that, in the evening, when you use artificial lights, they aren't going to have as much of a detrimental effect on your dopamine system and for impairing your sleep.

Most people who have children report their overall levels of happiness as lower than that of people who opt not to have children.

Employees who devoted a greater fraction of their bonus to pro-social spending—that is, giving away money to others—experience greater happiness after receiving the bonus, and the manner in which they spent that bonus was a more important predictor of their happiness than the size of the bonus itself.

Allogrooming is known to stimulate a certain category of neurons called the C tactile fibers. These are a particular category of so-called sensory neurons that innervate our skin. So, these are literally like little endings of neurons, little wires that end up in the skin, that, when they are touched lightly, tend to create a feeling of well-being in the person that's being touched.

When we make a choice, if we are forced to stick to that choice, we tend to be far happier with that choice than if we maintain the option to change our mind.

While money truly cannot buy happiness, it absolutely can buffer stress. And, in particular, it can buffer stress in the form of the ability to purchase or pay for goods and services...

What they find consistently is that when people have an ongoing set of choices, it leads to reduced levels of happiness.

One of the major issues with getting bright light in your eyes between the hours of 10 PM and 4 AM is that it has a negative impact on the so-called dopaminergic or dopamine circuits of the brain and body, which can enhance depression—that is, lead to ongoing lower mood and affect.

It is true that for people that tend to have lower baseline levels of, for instance, dopamine, their levels of happiness, or we should say their self-reported levels of happiness, tend to be lower than those that have greatly elevated baseline levels of dopamine.

Regardless of whether or not people were engaging in activities that they enjoyed or not, the tendency for their mind to wander from an activity predicted lower levels of happiness than if they tended to be focused on the activity they were engaged in.

When we are not focused on what we are doing, we tend to be far less happy than when we are focused on what we are doing—even if what we're doing is something that we don't deem very pleasant.

It turns out, when we are listening very intently to somebody and trying to remember the information they're telling us, we will often close our eyes ... 40% of our brain is devoted to vision in some way or another. When we close our eyes, we can actually devote more attentional resources to remembering the specifics of what people are telling us.

Most people are using rather dim artificial lighting indoors during the day and then very bright artificial lighting indoors in the evening and at night. That's a problem. And if you think about it, logically you want to do the exact reverse.

At this point in human history, 2022, we don't really have a measurement, like body temperature or heart rate or heart rate variability or even a way to measure neurochemicals in the brain and body, that give us anything better than a crude correlate, or an estimate at best, of what happiness is.

Peer group has a tremendously powerful influence on whether or not we gauge the amount of money that we have as bringing us happiness or not.

People tend to report feeling lower levels of happiness, believe it or not, on their birthday.

People that are chronic smokers of nicotine and chronic consumers of alcohol... That is strongly anti-correlated with happiness.

Our anticipation of something positive, oftentimes, leads to greater increases in the sorts of neurochemicals that support a state of happiness and well-being than the actual acquisition of the thing that we're trying to obtain.

Our ability to create states of happiness is dependent on our environment but also requires effort from us.

Income, provided one's income meets a certain level of basic needs, indeed, has been shown to have only a weak effect on overall happiness.

Quality social connection is extremely powerful in terms of its ability to increase our levels of happiness.

When we see faces, especially faces in the morning and in the late afternoon, there is a positive impact on the emotional circuitry, or I should say, the circuitry of the brain that underlies emotional well-being.

The thing about eye contact is that most people assume that a lot of eye contact and, in fact, ongoing eye contact is critical to a sense of connection ... That's not the case.