Khaberni - Happiness may seem to many to be associated with money or success or enjoyable moments, but a recent study puts another factor in the forefront of components that make a human more satisfied with his life: feeling that he has autonomy over it.
The findings suggest that the freedom to make choices and the feeling of control over one's life path may provide a sense of satisfaction that surpasses the impact of fleeting positive emotions, even when one's decisions lead to challenging experiences or require significant effort.
According to Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist specializing in the science of well-being at Yale University, true happiness could ultimately come from what one does with others, and from one's ability to build a broader good life.
The search for the components of a "good life" is not new; philosophers have pondered it for thousands of years, with the Greek philosopher Epicurus being among those who addressed the issue more than 2300 years ago, placing friendship among the three fundamental elements of a good life.
Is freedom the secret?
The new study, published in the "Journal of Positive Psychology," was conducted by psychological researchers Jason W. Paine and Ulrich Schimmack at the University of Toronto, focusing on the factors people use to judge the quality of their lives.
The researchers started from two different views of happiness; the first sees well-being as fundamentally linked to obtaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasant experiences.
The second view suggests that the good life cannot be reduced simply to the feeling of momentary happiness, and that people may find value and meaning in challenging or taxing experiences that do not necessarily provide an immediate sense of relief.
For example, caring for a sick family member; the experience can be emotionally and physically taxing, but at the same time, it can hold great value for the caretaker.
Three psychological needs
The researchers focused on three basic psychological needs outlined by "Self-Determination Theory," which are relatedness, competence, and autonomy.
Relatedness refers to a person having meaningful relationships with others, while competence means feeling capable and effective in managing one’s life and surroundings.
Autonomy, on the other hand, is about feeling that one’s decisions and actions stem from personal choice and are not imposed by others or surrounding circumstances.
The researchers sought to determine whether these needs influence how people assess their lives independently of their emotional state at the moment they are asked about their happiness.
A different factor from the rest
The findings showed that all three needs were associated with varying degrees of life satisfaction, but the researchers noted an important distinction between them.
Relatedness and competence were linked to life satisfaction largely through the positive emotions they generated in people, whereas autonomy had a different effect.
People who felt they had greater autonomy reported higher levels of life satisfaction, even after accounting for the positivity or negativity of their feelings toward other aspects of it.
Paine said that individuals who felt greater autonomy remained more satisfied with their lives even after considering their positive and negative emotions.
He added that autonomy was the only psychological need that provided something extra, which feelings alone could not explain.
Happiness is not just pleasure
The findings do not mean that pleasure and positive emotions are unimportant; the researchers found that positive and negative emotions indeed explained a significant part of how participants judged their satisfaction with their lives.
However, the study suggests that reducing happiness to just good feelings alone might not provide the whole picture, just as focusing solely on meaning is not enough to explain it.
According to the researchers, it seems that people rely on a mix of both when deciding whether they are satisfied with their lives or not.
