‘We are here today to set things straight when it comes to happiness’ — began Barnabás Szászi, who, having compared family wisdom, the false messages of social media, Freudian psychology and the ideas of ancient philosophers, concluded that, even using the kind of sophisticated computational capabilities employed by meteorologists, we can only with great difficulty predict an individual’s happiness. Whilst in the natural sciences we can determine which combination of parameters is required for a supernova to explode, a psychologist must consider numerous, partly uncharted factors if they wish to cheer up their partner on an ordinary Monday. 

Children openly express their desires and needs. We expect that in the morning they won’t like the trousers we laid out the night before, or that their momentary whims will dictate the journey to nursery or school — indeed, we may even have to turn back halfway to walk across that particular zebra in a different way. 

As adults, however, we learn to adapt to society’s expectations; we exercise self-control when we might otherwise throw a tantrum; and we use rationality to mask even those decisions that are influenced by cognitive biases. These biases, as well as the peculiar interplay of our habits, are examined by researchers who have dedicated their lives to science: some receive the Nobel Prize for their groundbreaking ideas and innovative theories, but most are driven to publish constantly by the demanding expectations imposed by their institutions. It is because of the latter that we see the emergence of studies analysing a country’s prosperity and its inhabitants’ kissing habits. 

Researchers at Harvard, for example, sought to answer the question of what makes women feel more confident. They dubbed their theory ‘power posing’ or the ‘superhero pose’, because they claimed that placing a hand on the hip, lifting the chin and standing with legs apart reduces cortisol levels, thereby increasing confidence. This questionable finding became so widely known because it offered a simple answer to a difficult problem, and that is what people crave: to solve seemingly impossible problems with minimal effort, be it global warming, our partner’s mood on a Monday morning, or the feelings of inferiority stemming from the historical oppression of women. 

Alongside all this, researchers are also preoccupied with the question of happiness, and so some are driven by the desire to uncover the truths hidden within our minds. They do not have an easy job: most modern scientific research has been carried out on ‘strange’ people – that is, the educated citizens of affluent, democratic Western countries. Yet this approach cannot yield findings applicable to humanity, since people in Chicago, Budapest and Mombasa are not necessarily made happy by the same things, given their different cultural contexts. 

Modern people today — at least the ‘stranger’ sort — are unwilling to give up their comforts. Consequently, it also fills us with momentary happiness when, amidst the information overload, we can work from the sofa instead of going into the office, bearing in mind the approach referred to by Szászi as the three ‘C’ principles: ‘comfortably, casually, confidently’. Yet the best things, though they may be hard to get started, are the ones we look back on with fond nostalgia, remembering just how much we’ve been through and that we’re still standing. Forgiveness, meanwhile, brings both pain and relief with it. Still, we do not yet know the ultimate recipe for happiness. 

The author of this article is Miron Martin Jurinka.