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1-Page Summary of The Happiness Industry

Overview

In Who Gets What – and Why (2015), Nobel Prize winner Alvin Roth explains how markets work with examples from his own research. He also shows what factors shape the market, as well as ways that people can make better decisions when they’re in a marketplace.

Have you ever asked yourself if you’re happy? You’re not the only one. There are many people who wonder about their happiness and want to know how they can be happier. It’s time for us to learn more about this topic by looking at e-commerce, neuroscience, and big data.

The Happiness Industry is full of valuable insights into a world in which happiness has become a commodity that can be quantified by an MRI or an algorithm. In these key points, you will discover Jeremy Bentham’s thoughts about happiness; how neuroscience, economics and happiness are interlinked; and what incentives your government might have to make you happy.

Big Idea #1: Some philosophers believe that happiness is real and objective.

Are you happy right now? How can you tell? Perhaps it’s the feeling that everything will turn out alright. Or maybe it’s just a constant smile on your face. Though everyone might answer this question differently, there is a way to measure happiness.

Neuroscience has allowed us to understand pleasure as a physiological event. It’s comprised of observable chemical processes and is computed in the orbitofrontal cortex.

Happiness is measurable. Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher who believed in the quantifiability of happiness, suggested that we can measure it by observing pulse rate and money.

The study found that people’s heart rates increase during happy times. This is a simple way to measure their happiness. The amount of money spent on an item also increases the happiness with that product, because it shows how useful the product is.

Politicians also have a vested interest in happiness. One of their responsibilities is, after all, to maximize the happiness of society. Governments strive to achieve this goal by rewarding and punishing.

Punishing is when a person suffers for doing something wrong. In contrast, rewarding someone with money is beneficial to them and therefore good. A government can theoretically direct people’s behavior by punishing and rewarding them in this manner.

Big Idea #2: People are constantly being persuaded that money is the main indicator of happiness.

Since the early 1990s, economists have been using research to study the relationship between money and happiness. Studies show that people with more money are happier than those without as much.

Research into the topic revealed that pleasurable activities correspond with an increase in dopamine levels.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that activates the brain’s reward and pleasure centers. One of these centers is the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain that also triggers decisions to purchase a product. In light of this, some neuroscientists have proposed that every buying decision is actually the result of specific neural pathways in the brain. Perhaps, then, when we spend $10 on a pizza or $500 on an expensive gadget, we receive an equivalent quantity of dopamine as a reward. Of course it’s important to consider who is carrying out such research and why they might be interested in proving their point: marketers would love to prove their products make people happy!