Review: Stability of Happiness: theories and evidence on whether happiness can change, by Kennon M. Sheldon and Richard E. Lucas eds.

Whether happiness can change might seem like an odd question to ask. Of course! I felt really good after the pizza last night, and when I missed the bus this morning I felt terrible. But wait, now that I think about it, this week has actually been pretty much the same as last week, so I guess my happiness doesn’t change. Although…come to think of it…I might actually be in a rut... I really should do something about the slow decline of my life satisfaction. These are the dimensions of happiness that Stability of Happiness explores, and it does an excellent job.

This book is perhaps the definitive text on the status of research into affective states and their dynamics. It makes a nice complement to the seminal Wellbeing: the foundations of hedonic psychology. The two books taken together are an ideal starting point for anyone looking to quickly get a handle on happiness research in psychology. As with its distinguished forebear, the present volume provides thorough but accessible updates as to where psychological inquiry into the nature of hedonia is at, a smattering of useful contextualising comments from economists and others non-psychologists, and some discussion of where research might go next.

Stability of happiness is mostly concerned with set-point theory. This is the notion that, perhaps because of heritable genetic factors, the environment, or both, human psychology is characterised by a tendency to converge back to a stable level of happiness. This may be high or low depending on whether you are a glass half full or half empty type, but it is apparent that it is hard to deviate from this set-point for long periods of time. Robert Cummins, for example, provides evidence in his chapter that mood is ‘homeostatically protected’, and will therefore always converge back to a set point in the absence of acute mental illness.

Read the full article here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-4932.12268/abstract