Everyone seeks and aspires happiness. If only achieving happiness were that easy, much like a mathematical equation, where one variable plus another variable equals an outcome. The good news is that researchers from University College London have indeed found a mathematical "equation" for happiness.
The study involved over 18, 000 participants from around the world, with data gathered through a smartphone application. The participants were instructed to record their state and level of happiness depending on their experience during specific moments. They had to include how they felt, and what they were thinking about before the moment happiness.
With these information, the researchers formulated an equation that aims to determine the vital factors that lead to happiness. Analyses revealed that a key factor in feeling and thinking happy is expectation. The researchers concluded that the search for happiness all boils down to what we expect and how strongly we expect it.
Robb Rutledge, a cognitive and computational neuroscientist, further affirms this. Mr. Rutledge said that keeping expectations low, which can also be called the pessimist's maxim, can pave the way for higher levels of happiness since fulfilled expectations can be a genuinely happy moment, a moment of pleasant surprise.
"Lower expectations make it more likely that an outcome will exceed those expectations and have a positive impact on happiness," he said.
The study not only collected data from a smartphone app, it also attempted to find a relationship between happiness-resulting decisions and brain activity. Brain scans revealed a significant activity in two areas of the brain, which are the ventral striatum, and the insular cortex.
Overall, expectations can make or break a person's happiness. Psychology Today believes that setting and verbalizing expectations, along with actually achieving these expectations can trigger an abundant flow of dopamine, also known as the "reward neurotransmitter".