What the science of happiness says about the self and others | Aeon Essays

“If I wanted to predict your happiness, and I could know only one thing about you, I wouldn’t want to know your gender, religion, health, or income. I’d want to know about your social network—about your friends and family, and the strength of your bonds with them.”

We’ve been drilling deep into social dynamics, and we finally get to that one deeply human quality that makes all this possible. It’s called empathy. The ability to feel what another human being is feeling. All this complicated social psychology does not need to be explicitly understood. For high-empathy people, all this is natural. By participatin

The “other people” part is more important than you might realize. That’s because the brain is innately –⁠ that is, neurochemically –⁠ motivated to care for and connect to other people. When you have a purpose, you satiate that innate desire –⁠ and your brain rewards you for it. The reactivity decreases in various regions of the brain, like the amyg

But our culture drives us precisely in the wrong direction. We go to great lengths to promote individuality. We’re encouraged to adopt an independent view of ourselves. Not only do we view the individual as the fundamental unit of humanity, but we evaluate individuals at every turn and set people against one another with relentless competition. In