[People Met Through Books] "Happiness Is Not Something to Show... Life Becomes Unhappy When It Turns Into a Show"

Happiness Is Not Just a State of Mind
Happiness, Optimistic Genetic Factors Are Significant
But That Is Not Necessarily a Superior Trait

This is an era in human history that shows the greatest interest in the ‘mind.’ Many people are immersing themselves in meditation or striving to change their attitudes to drive out negative emotions such as anxiety and depression from the mind. Although they try every effort believing that they can achieve results proportional to their efforts, maintaining mental health that cannot be grasped is not an easy task. Sometimes, self-blame for insufficient effort tightens the reality even more. Is happiness something that can be achieved through effort? Professor Seo Eun-guk of Yonsei University’s Department of Psychology, author of The Origin of Happiness, who has long been obsessed with happiness, expresses a negative opinion. Happiness is not a matter of simply deciding to be happy. He points out that modern people have many misunderstandings about happiness. We had a conversation with Professor Seo about those misunderstandings.

Professor Seunguk Seo, Department of Psychology, Yonsei University
Photo by Seomideum

- How have you been? Are you continuing your happiness research?

▲ I am always paying attention to happiness. The key point is that happiness is not something you can achieve just by deciding to be happy. These days, many self-help books make such claims. While they are not entirely ineffective, their impact is very limited when looking at the whole picture. It’s too hot; can you feel cool just by deciding to? Just as our body senses heat and cold, emotions are responses to external conditions. There are limits to the influence of changes in thinking. I continue to research this.

- You mentioned that the story that economically poor countries have higher happiness levels than affluent countries is a misconception.

▲ There was a time when a British research institute announced that Bangladesh’s happiness level was higher than that of developed countries, which became a hot topic. According to the criteria of that study, it might be possible, but science inherently produces exceptions once or twice out of ten measurements. Such exceptions make good news stories, but science must accept consistent results as conclusions. Generally, gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP) levels correlate with happiness. It’s not that money itself brings happiness, but economic development raises the level of social institutions, atmosphere, and cultural values necessary for happiness. Freedom and dignity are also much better structured in affluent countries.

- Many people thought, based on that result, that ‘comparison’ is a factor that hinders happiness. Is that a mistaken idea?

▲ Economists like Richard Easterlin have argued this, but the phenomenon is not caused by comparison alone. If I couldn’t eat three meals and my friend ate only one meal, I wouldn’t feel happiness. Absolute suffering is important in happiness, so interpreting it simply as relative advantage or disadvantage is too simplistic. Human life has always had competitive aspects. However, what’s important is understanding one’s position. It is very important to know where you stand.

- There is also an opinion that ‘excessive freedom’ blocks happiness.

▲ Books like Escape from Freedom from the 1970s and 1980s discuss this. The core idea is that people want to be free when constrained, but when given excessive freedom, they feel anxiety due to the responsibility of choice. Psychologist Erik Erikson suggested that the reason Hitler’s fascism worked in Germany might have been because people found it difficult to handle excessive freedom. However, the interpretation that unhappiness has increased with rising freedom is hard to consider solid because there are no precise measurements.

- So, are you saying that happiness is not something that can be obtained by changing one’s mind or thoughts?

▲ Emotions are responses to external stimuli. If it’s 39 degrees Celsius and you think “It’s cool, it’s cool” without drinking water, you will die. Humans feel fear when facing a lion to survive. That’s why they run away. Because of this programming, Homo sapiens have survived until now. It may seem good that emotions are easily controlled by reason, but that is like a malfunction in the mind’s software.

- But many people say they became happy through ‘gratitude journals,’ and some athletes have seen effects from ‘I can do it’ imagery training.

▲ We must not lose sight of the general picture. Some win by self-suggestion like ‘I can do it,’ but many others are eliminated that way. Extreme tension can reduce performance, but some win gold medals despite fear. People tend to hear what they want to hear. This is where self-help books err. Science measures overwhelmingly many cases probabilistically. We should not exaggerate some exceptions. Gratitude journals can have temporary effects, but recent studies show they are not long-lasting. Since some benefit, telling everyone to write them daily can be torture. It can make people more unhappy, feeling self-loathing, wondering why it doesn’t work for them. Actually, genetics plays the biggest role.

- Are you saying happiness is inherited?

▲ Eating lots of vitamins and drinking lots of milk may help you grow taller, but if you’re not going to grow, you won’t. Genetics is absolute. Even twins raised in different environments feel similar levels of happiness. Evolutionarily, humans are always somewhat happy. Very few people are continuously unhappy. The obsession that one must be happy is stress caused by so-called happiness marketing. Optimistic people just see everything in the world as good. It’s not because they read books or studied. One thing to note is that happiness is not necessarily a superior trait. There are pros and cons. In situations with many scorpions and external threats, being sensitive and anxious is advantageous for survival. If the COVID-19 situation lasted for hundreds of years, optimistic people might all die out. Personality traits have no absolute good or bad.

- Then what is happiness? In your book, you cited ‘eating with someone you like’ as an example.

▲ Happiness is not a competition. Many mistake success for happiness. They package the superiority gained from a Gangnam apartment or a fancy business card as happiness, but happiness is not that simple. The biggest source of pleasure for Homo sapiens is people. Satisfaction felt through others cannot compare to pleasure gained alone. No human has survived long by living like a lone wolf. Because survival chances increased when humans met the resource called love and formed deep relationships with others, the human brain reinforces the feeling of ‘good’ when experiencing quality social interactions. Among daily scenes, eating delicious food with someone you like is most likely to activate the brain’s happiness circuits. However, one must avoid embracing only their own people and making outsiders enemies. A rich social relationship is not judged by enjoying chicken and beer with friends but by how much one recognizes and considers others’ rights.

- How do you evaluate happiness in the current era? Will happiness levels continue to decline?

▲ People pursue success, but paradoxically, as income rises, the importance of people decreases. Even if you have money, there may be no one around. The idea that becoming rich makes you happy is contradictory. At first, people climb hand in hand, but beyond a certain point, as one rises, the other becomes impoverished. The richer you become, the less pleasure you feel through people in daily life. Korea is the most materialistic society in the world. Generally, happiness increases with economic level, but Korea and Japan are exceptions. They live well but their happiness does not reach that level. It’s a well-off hell. Especially, mutual distrust is too high. A society divided into ‘my side’ and ‘your side’ competing is hard to be happy. If this trend intensifies, happiness levels are very likely to plummet.

- What efforts should be made individually and socially to increase happiness?

▲ Happiness is not something to show off. There is no need for recognition from others. If life becomes a show, there is no chance of winning. Neither a nation nor an individual can directly increase happiness levels. However, they can reduce clearly unhappy situations. Since happiness and unhappiness ultimately go through people, efforts should be made to eliminate situations that sow seeds of discomfort. Above all, people must not see each other as enemies. For example, during COVID-19, rewarding people for reporting those who did not observe social distancing was a case of losing the forest for the trees. If necessary, everyone should feel they can give and receive help. A social environment full of prickly thorns, which people must constantly face in daily life, lowers happiness levels compared to objective life conditions. Personally, there is no need to seek happiness far away. Even small experiences like smiling and holding the door for the person behind you can increase each other’s happiness.

About Professor Seo Eun-guk

After graduating from Yonsei University, he earned a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois in the United States. He completed his doctoral studies under Ed Diener, a pioneering happiness researcher at the University of Illinois, and his papers received significant attention in the U.S. His research has been used as reference material in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) happiness measurement reports. Missing his favorite Pyongyang naengmyeon and friends, he returned to Korea in 2003 and has been serving as a professor at his alma mater, Yonsei University.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.