Psychology Of Happiness

that can be breathed

playing with a child

or looking at the wide sea.

It is only those moments

that you may remember

when you become overwhelmed

and cannot rest.

Happiness is that

what cannot be touched

a smile, a kiss

an “I love you, truly!”

It is always thinking about the other

selfishness forget

make an effort to smile

and think of others.

Dedicated to my parents

Index

CHAPTER 1. THE EMOTION OF HAPPINESS (#ulink_f7b392fc-edf0-55c5-b016-1c77da544a3e)

CHAPTER 2. DISCOVERING HAPPINESS (#ulink_2e7887dc-02e9-505e-8157-77a743bb4fd2)

CHAPTER 3. NEURONAL BASIS OF HAPPINESS (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 4. SEARCHING FOR HAPPINESS (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 5. THE BENEFITS OF HAPPINESS (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 6. WHEN HAPPINESS DOES NOT ARRIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CONCLUSIONS (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 1. THE EMOTION OF HAPPINESS

The first thing we need to know about happiness is that it is an emotion. Emotions are part of life, whether we are aware of it or not. They are present in each and every action and decision taken, hence the importance of studying them.

Among emotion theorists there are two perspectives: those who consider emotion as a univocal and inseparable concept that includes both positive and negative affect in a continuum; and those who consider it to be a multidimensional concept, composed of cognitive, behavioral and physiological elements.

Emotion can be considered as a particular state experienced by a subject, which allows him to perceive and respond to the environment (as a kind of arousal).

Simplifying, one could consider three possible states: the positive (joy or happiness), the neutral (indifference), and the negative (sadness, displeasure or unhappiness). Therefore, emotion would be a way of perceiving and responding to the environment.

When a state becomes chronic, it is considered to be a “trait” of personality, that is, the individual turns it into their usual way of responding to internal or external stimulation.

When chronic emotional states “get out of adjustment”, abnormal deviations of emotional processing appear, ranging from the accentuation of anxious or phobic traits, to pathologies such as generalized anxiety disorder or major depression disorder.

Another approach to emotion is to consider it as an adaptive procedure of cognitive, physiological and behavioral reaction to environmental or internal stimulation, which can be positive or negative. For those reasons, one can state that emotion has an impact in thoughts, as well as in the organism and in behavior.

The processing of emotion can be divided in two: emotional perception and emotional experience. The first one involves a low-level cognitive processing, where the emotional stimulus is perceived and evaluated; while the second involves a high-level cognitive processing where the perception is contextualized and interpreted according to previous experiences.

These processes appear to be independent; therefore, the processing of the emotional perception may or may not involve an emotional experience.

With regard to the relationship between cognition and emotion, there are three main stances:

- On the one hand, there are authors who defend that, in certain circumstances, the emotions block and nullify cognition, since the skills and abilities for affection are precisely the traits that characterize the human race in comparison with the simple mathematical and categorical processing of data that takes place in computers.

- The opposite posture defends that the superior cognitive processes define humans and differentiate them from animals. This posture relegates emotions to secondary, irrational and almost always equivocal processes, characteristic of animals.

- A third posture would be the one that considers both cognitive processes as independent, but working together in certain circumstances.

The existence of an emotional-perceptual-memory circuit in the human brain is widely accepted, with the amygdala playing a crucial role in registering the events of emotional stimuli. Thus, it is significantly more likely that the information with emotional content will be stored and retrieved better than the information with neutral content.

The extensive connection between the amygdala, the extrastriate visual regions and the hippocampus, allows the amygdala to modulate it’s functioning and facilitate perceptive and mnemic functions in these areas.

However, evidence shows that emotional learning associated with the amygdala is temporarily limited and that the subsequent effects on memory may be due to the participation of other brain regions, like the orbitofrontal cortex.

As previously mentioned, we would be facing an emotional processing circuit different from the specific cognitive processing path.

In the emotional circuit, the stimuli seem to be automatically analyzed in a rougher and faster way, following a strategy of configuration. It is a simplified communication, but with information of great relevance, necessary for survival and for an adequate development within an ecological niche.

As previously mentioned, this processing capacity in parallel represents a competitive advantage for surviving in the environment, since it allows the subject to avoid threats and dangers immediately, even before the information is consciously evaluated in the prefrontal cortex.

According to what can be verified, the emotional world is more complex than what can be seen on the surface. Talking about the components of emotion, depending on where the focus is placed, at first sight we can say that there are three expressions of emotion:

• The neurophysiological, which includes all the neural pathways and structures involved particularly in each emotion, as well as the vegetative responses of vasoconstriction, tachycardia and accelerated breathing, which accompany emotions.

• The behavioral one, in which the body becomes a “mirror” of emotions. They manifest themselves involuntarily through facial expression and through the rest of the body, tensing or relaxing certain muscles, which can expose what we feel, even when we try to “conceal” it. Likewise, this component shows what is going to be done or not if the emotion is followed, that is, how all those motivated actions will be expressed in behavior and in the way of relating to others.

• The cognitive, which has more to do with how one’s own and others’ emotion is perceived, and how it is interpreted, that is, the subjective experience of feelings. A problem in this area is found in alexithymia: due to an inadequate emotional education, the person is unable to correctly identify and interpret their own emotions and those of others.

Therefore, happiness will not only be something that involves a temporary state, but, being an emotion, it will have an impact on the way of thinking, feeling and behaving, that is, one will feel happy with all the organism.

It is also possible to talk about the components of emotion to refer to its qualities and characteristics, such as: