It's happened: There's a formula to determine happiness

Your parents might have told you that there’s no formula for happiness, but it seems like they were wrong. Science has done it again with researchers at the University College London coming up with an actual formula to represent happiness.

The study was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and you can read the whole thing here.

According to a post on the National Journal , the study shows some things we might have already known. One that we’re happy when we get rewarded or win (who doesn’t), two that our happiness is higher if our expectations were low, and three that happiness is temporary. The report adds that scientists were looking at momentary joy rather than overall satisfaction.

One of the authors of the study, Dr Robb Rutledg told BBC , “The brain is trying to figure out what you should be doing in the world to get rewards, so all the decisions, expectations and the outcomes are information it’s using to make sure you make good decisions in the future. All of the recent expectations and rewards combine to determine your current state of happiness.”

So how did the scientists come up with the formula? The research first used 26 participants who were asked to finish tasks where the choice was either a financial loss or gain and “then researchers used fMRI imaging to measure their brain activity, and asked them repeatedly, ‘How happy are you now?,’” says a report on Time . 

Then they used this data to create a model for happiness based on rewards. Then they used “this model on close to 18,420 people who had to play smartphone game called The Great Brain Experiment for points,” adds the report and notes that according to the researchers their equation was accurate when it came to predicting the happiness level of the gamers. This is the truly impressive part of the research.

Where happiness and  expectations are concerned, the link might not sound new, but the fact that the scientists were able to get an accurate formula to predict this level of happiness is amazing.

Tom Stafford a cognitive scientist at the University of Sheffield, told BBC it is all the more impressive, “especially given how unpredictable humans are”.

In short, the study proves that when it comes to momentary happiness it’s best to keep your expectations low.