Personal Happiness, Social Unhappiness: Understanding the Complexity of Individual Happiness Accounts

Abstract

While concerted, inter-disciplinary efforts have been made to measure happiness and wellbeing at national and international levels, an over-reliance on quantitative data generated through numerical self-reports has meant that a limited, thin- sliced picture of happiness has emerged. This chapter explores 200 accounts of happiness, generated through a 2013 Mass Observation directive, that provide a nuanced picture of happiness in the UK. The research found that when individuals talk about their happiness they mainly talk about their personal lives: their relationships and social and cultural engagements. Conversely, when they talk about unhappiness they often focus on social and political factors. This more socially and politically engaged aspect to lay happiness accounts highlights problems with conceptualizing and measuring a country’s happiness as the aggregate of individual self-reports; it also underlines the importance of adopting a qualitative, interpretivist approach in capturing the complex ways in which individuals think about happiness in relation to themselves and their wider social context. The opportunities and challenges of utilising the Mass Observation Archive as a resource for happiness researchers are also addressed.