The (expanded) history of American happiness
December 2023 Issue
Bryce Fuemmeler, Research Associate, Leadership & Happiness Laboratory
America has a peculiar brand of happiness, ubiquitous to her citizens but bewildering to visitors. A month ago, I hosted two close friends from England, who upon our reunion, described their connecting flight from New York to Boston with grim humor.
Just before their evening takeoff, a chipper American pilot came over the intercom: “Good evening, everyone! Conditions are excellent this evening. We’ll have you in Chicago very soon.” A chorus of friendly laughter broke out among the passengers, tickled by the idea of the pilot unwittingly flying to the wrong city. At the laughter, my British friends looked around the cabin in astonishment.
“In Britain that joke would not have only fallen flat,” one of them told me, “but the pilot would have also been booed off the plane.”
This strange cultural phenomenon did not end on their connecting flight. Wait staff at New Hampshire diners (that is to say, complete strangers) struck up conversations about their vacation and eagerly inquired about the details behind our transatlantic friendship. While stuck in frustrating traffic on a two-lane road in the White Mountains, dozens of passerby American children hung out car windows, waving cheerfully to oncoming travelers. These instances, to a British eye, fulfilled a deep-seated stereotype about America: We act happier than is natural, and something about it cannot quite be trusted.
As it happens, this phenomenon has not occurred in a vacuum. In a 2012 Harvard Business Review article, Peter Stearns, emeritus Provost and Professor of History at George Mason University, briefly summarizes the history of happiness in America. He argues that by exploring its changing nature, “[we can illuminate] our own context for happiness but also…assess its advantages and downsides.”
In this spirit, I aim to chart the historical underpinnings of contemporary American happiness. And with a deeper dive on the history, it is the hope of the Leadership & Happiness Laboratory that we can learn how American society can chart a more meaningful ethos of national happiness.
Pre-Enlightenment happiness
The Western ideal of happiness is a relatively modern one. Before the Enlightenment, the prevailing wisdom of Christianity indicated that happiness, at least in an Earthly sense, ought not to be pursued. Although the Protestant Reformation brought about the validity of pursuing more earthly forms of happiness and prosperity as ways of serving God (e.g., building a career and family), explicit earthly happiness was eyed with suspicion. The Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven frames this perspective in Social Indicators Research:
“In the religious perspective happiness had existed in Paradise before the fall and would be bestowed on true believers in the afterlife, but was not to be found in earthly life. Earthly happiness was not only deemed to be impossible, but also undesirable. God had not expelled us from Paradise to enjoy life…we were born in sin and suffering was seen as a way to clean our souls from sin and thus to prepare for entrance to Heaven.”
The concept that suffering preceded happiness was both a philosophical and a religious idea. In commenting on the Aristotelian tradition, the historian Darrin McMahon writes that “happiness itself was not a function of feeling, but a function of virtue. And as such it frequently required denial, sacrifice, and even suffering.”
Put another way, “the good life” could not be merely achieved through worldly pleasures, but instead by resilience to, or outright acceptance of, life’s troubles. From ancient philosophers such as Epictetus or Cicero, to religious institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church, a cultural force toward individual happiness did not exist as it does today. Such a pursuit would have flown in the face of doctrine (in the religious sphere) or would have appeared unbecoming and superficial (in the philosophical sphere).
Yet as the Enlightenment took shape in 17th century Europe, a series of new ideas seeped into the public consciousness: the pursuit of knowledge, invention, freedom, and the rule of law carved a pathway for individuals to chart their own paths and to pursue answers never before sought out. Our readers will know this well-told history. The Industrial Revolution spread new technology across the globe. Advances in physics and astronomy led to deeper understanding and exploration of the universe. Political philosophers created a new way to govern, leading to the boom of democratic republics across the Western world.
But aside from economics, science, and politics, the Enlightenment spurred a separate cultural shift: individual happiness. In Ritchie Robinson’s 2021 book, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790, he argues that the largest inflection point of the period was the cultural commitment to self-reliant happiness. “The Enlightenment,” writes Robertson, “declared the conviction that the goal of life was happiness, and that if this goal could be attained at all, it was to be found in the here and now, despite the manifold imperfections of earthly life.”
Writers across the period—from Thomas Jefferson, to Voltaire, to Immanuel Kant—all accepted some version of this new mantra. In the American sense, see no further than our founding document, which coined the pursuit of happiness as an unalienable right. This view permeated deeply into American culture across the next two centuries.
However, as I will argue, this sentiment has not evolved into a more enlightened pursuit of “the good life.” Instead, it (at best) has evolved into a misguided sense of what happiness is, or (at worst) has maladapted into a pursuit that makes us miserable.
How did we get here? Let us turn to American history for an answer.
“I ought to be smiling”
The stereotype of the wildly cheerful American is about as accurate as any stereotype—which is to say, not very. The stress level of the average American, for example, is roughly on par with the global average. A recent Gallup poll found that most Americans are satisfied with their lives, but not at exorbitant levels or above pre-pandemic benchmarks. And while research has demonstrated that high arousal emotions are valued more in Western than Eastern cultures, a one-size-fits-all template for the cheerful American is hard to find on the ground. In fact, new research by Tim Lomas and colleagues shows that low-arousal emotions such as calmness might be more valued in the West than previously realized. Regardless, this much is true: any person living in the United States will have met their fair share of buoyant strangers and quiet curmudgeons. Yet a tempered version of this stereotype, the good-humored and oft-smiling American, is perhaps more accurate. It is also one steeped in historical fact.
In the Harvard Business Review, Prof. Stearns argues that “the smiling American was becoming a stereotype two centuries ago.” Stearns discusses Harriet Martineau, the first female sociologist, who in 1838 described perplexity in her first encounter with an American man: “This gentleman afforded me an early specimen of the humour which I think one of the chief characteristics of the Americans. In the few minutes during which we were waiting for tea, he dropped some drolleries so new to me, and so intense, that I was perplexed what to do with my laughter.” Obviously Martineau’s observation of her new friend was quite different from the temperament of the average Western European.
In Stearns’ estimation, the American impetus toward outward good humor was drawn from two eras—the first of which occurred in the 19th century. During the industrial era, Stearns notes that families “took on new emotional responsibilities” as the family unit played “a decreasing economic role” in daily life. Take, for instance, the 1846 marriage manual by the Yale physician William Alcott—The young wife, or, Duties of woman in the marriage relation—which devotes an entire chapter to wives’ duty to be cheerful: “The young wife owes it to her husband and to the world, to be cheerful. She is seldom aware of the amazing importance of this quality to her own happiness, as well as to that of others.”
How then should a wife develop her cheer? Alcott’s answer gives a revealing (albeit uncomfortable) prism into 19th century expectations: “I need only say that her countenance wear a smile, an unaffected one, too, when she meets [her husband]; and that her every word or action corresponds to the feelings indicated by her countenance.” In other words, it did not matter to marriage experts whether wives were intrinsically happy. Instead, the success of a wife’s marriage and child rearing depended upon whether she acted happy in both her appearance and action. Per the industrial era’s dictate, wives ought to be smiling—no matter how they truly felt.
The second era, to Stearns, that cemented America's version of outward happiness occurred in the 20th century. As the American economy became stronger, more men focused on showing outward happiness rather than finding inner fulfillment. According to Stearns, this era “promoted new efforts to associate work with happiness.” For example, Stearns describes how the Walt Disney Company became a hallmark of American culture, whose corporate motto was to “make people happy.” The great advertising executive Harvey Bell created the untrademarked yellow smiley face. Even the laugh track was an American invention in the 1950s, a tool that cued sitcom audiences when to smile and chuckle—whether the punchline was funny or not.
Outward happiness also occurred in culture and business. The popular cereal Cheerios hit supermarket shelves in the 1940s, whose slogan—“He’s feeling his Cheery-oats!”—provided a strange (but now culturally ubiquitous) vision of folks thoroughly enjoying their breakfast. Harvey Bell’s yellow smiley face became the Wal-mart logo for the better part of two decades. And in 2000, Amazon recreated its logo to the “A to Z smile.” In the white collar world, dominated by men in the 20th century, the expression of outward happiness was thus a tactic designed to boost sales and the popularity of products. The unintended consequence of this corporate and cultural push was a rehashing of William Alcott’s advice to 19th century wives: You, the consumer and white collar worker, ought to be smiling.
As such, intrinsic happiness became a secondary concern in American society, and cause for a widespread perception of happiness that has become misguided. Unhappiness appeared unsightly—something to be suppressed.
The quest for influence
Quite separate from the above idea is another tied to U.S. happiness: The American Dream, the notion that anyone can become anything regardless of social class. For decades scholars have debated about whether the American Dream still exists, whether it ever existed, and how its truth or myth has shaped American culture. Yet for this essay’s purposes, its existence need not be debated. Rather, we should track how the idea of the American Dream—as a means by which to pursue happiness—has maladapted into what I will call a “quest for influence”. This quest promises happiness at every turn, but often has the unintended consequence of misery.
The United States was the first nation founded upon ideals that promised to transcend social class. Long before the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, the earliest European settlers to America were informed by the Puritan tradition, a philosophy that emphasized community, hard work, education, discipline, and frugality to succeed in life. These settlers left Britain in an effort to pursue greater freedoms, religious or otherwise, no matter one’s status in life.
Even the pursuit of happiness was a classless affair, as Benjamin Franklin believed. Dr. Arthur Brooks, Director of the Leadership & Happiness Laboratory, points out as much in his 2022 column in The Atlantic: “[Franklin] believed that ‘[the] pursuit [of happiness] was not the province of the upper classes,’ [filmmaker Ken Burns] told me, ‘but rather for everyone, from the wealthy to the masses.’ Burns hastened to add that this idea was nowhere near expansive enough in Franklin’s time—Franklin himself had slaves in his household, and equal rights for women were still far off—but this philosophy set the unique American aspiration in motion.”
Notwithstanding America’s failures to live up to its ideals, the point is that the idea of the American Dream was nested in the national consciousness. If one could only work hard enough, develop a strong community, and improve oneself, then happiness and success could be achieved by anyone. Those born on the margins could, in theory, rise to the highest ranks of business or government by following such prescriptions. The classless nature of this promise is perhaps the key reason that it became so deeply ingrained in American culture.
Such a promise had never existed on a national level, given the rigid European class systems that spanned many millennia. Ancient Rome serves as a poignant example, a society that was structured rigidly between the patricians, the upper class who controlled land via ancestry, and the plebeians, the lower class of farmers and laborers who worked the land owned by the patricians. The Centuriate Assembly, one of the three voting assemblies of the Roman constitution, explicitly divided Romans by class and thus controlled who could own land, serve in the military, and participate in politics. Fast forward to the Enlightenment and more examples persisted. France’s three estates led to a bloody 18th century revolution; Prussia’s aristocracy dominated until the mid-18th century; and the British class system of nobility kept the working class from any possibility of class-breaking progress.
In this context, America was truly a strange place. In his 1835 book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville frequently commented on its oddity. “In America,” he wrote, “most of the rich men were formerly poor…the aristocratic element has always been feeble from [America’s] birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at any rate so completely disabled that we can scarcely assign to it any degree of influence.” In this entrepreneurial culture undefined by class, de Tocqueville concluded the following:
“America, then, exhibits in her social state a most extraordinary phenomenon. Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in any age of which history has preserved the remembrance.”
In this way, American Dream was envisioned as a proxy for the pursuit of happiness and freedom. More importantly, it was imagined on intrinsic levels with other people. To achieve happiness, Protestant Christians cultivated virtue with fellow churchgoers; Benjamin Franklin vouched for self-improvement with loved ones; Alexis de Tocqueville observed the spirit of entrepreneurship in small towns and cities, wherein intellect via education was prized. Developing one’s intrinsic qualities with a community was thought to be the foundation of becoming something better.
Yet somewhere along the way, the pursuit became more extrinsic and lonelier—or so argues Merce Mur Effing, a Spanish historian who has written about how self-help literature formed American conceptions of happiness. In her 2009 paper, Effing argues that 18th and 19th century America had an inclination toward optimism and a belief in opportunity driven by Protestant Christianity, self-improvement ideas (from the likes of Benjamin Franklin), and an educational system designed around the cultivation of virtues. To Effing, an inflection point occurred in the postwar era during which consumerism, celebrity culture, and science-based self-help literature rose to prominence.
Effing argues that the first half of this era—from roughly 1945 to 1980—shifted dialogue on happiness from an old age dominated by ideas of perseverance and diligence, to one focused on the attainment of material rewards. Among her many examples, Effing describes the emerging celebrity culture as a seductive pedestal for everyday citizens, who equated celebrities’ outsized influence and wealth as the pinnacle of the American Dream.
Given the booming postwar economy, and everyone’s willingness to participate in it, Effing cites the prevalence of get-rich-quick schemes for the average citizen. She too points to famous works such as Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which argues that influence was the nucleus of getting ahead, and Normand Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, which argues that a purer version of positivity could supercharge one’s success. Such examples highlight the early conflations between happiness and power, wealth, and outright positivity.
Effing’s second era—1980 and beyond—is described as more or less a path dependency of the first. Celebrity culture ballooned. And in a new era of economic uncertainty, readers turned to more sophisticated self-help literature that used early neuroscience and new-age psychology to argue that the brain was an organ to scientifically optimize. Effing cites many books that “helped people face the painful realities of their daily lives in a contracting economy,” many of which charted how to craft a positive mindset into an extrinsically successful life.
Drawing from the whole of the postwar era, we can see two shifts. First, the pursuit of happiness shifted from an intrinsic aim to an extrinsic aim. Second, it revolved less around community and more around the individual. The quest for influence—broadly seen as a quest for wealth, power, or positivity—propagated the notion that individuals were solely responsible for their own happiness. Yet more troubling was the idea that failing on the quest, and thus becoming unhappy, represented a solely personal failure. To put it in more stinging language: if one was unhappy, it must be their fault.
It is perhaps no coincidence that in the last several decades, America has witnessed steady declines in markers of happiness. Over the last 15 years, all age groups report two to four percent more “not good mental health days” in any given month. Compared to 1990 levels, Americans consistently report that they have fewer close friendships, a trend that was first noticed in Robert Putnam’s prophetic 1995 essay “Bowling Alone”. Today, 27% of U.S. adults experience estrangement from a family member. In the 1970s, Americans reported a one-to-one split on whether they could trust each other; by 2010, that number had jumped to two-to-one majority against trusting others. Of course, it would be an oversimplification to wholly blame this data on America’s shifting idea of the pursuit of happiness. But exclusively blaming oneself for the inability to achieve high expectations is not only a heavy burden—it is a lonely one.
What can we take away from these broad patterns? The evidence points toward a trend in which Americans’ conception of happiness has become inextricably connected to an extrinsic quest for influence and meanwhile disconnected from social relationships. Yet amid this fog there is good news. Now that we have diagnosed the troubling patterns, there exists a great opportunity for cultural realignment. And the best happiness science will help pave the way.
Realignment
Many historians focus on two cultural shifts regarding happiness. First, the idea that we ought to be smiling has prioritized outward expression over inner happiness, giving credence to the notion that unhappiness is unsightly—something to be suppressed. Second, the pursuit of influence favors external rewards over internal ones, discouraging social connections. To realign, three principles can guide us.
1. Don’t suppress unhappiness
In recent years, the “as if” principle has gained traction in the well-being literature, which suggests that if you want a certain quality, you should act as if you have it—and therefore will attain it. Often it is assumed that our emotions have disproportionate power over our actions, but modern research, summarized well in the psychologist Richard Wieman’s 2013 book, suggests the opposite. When feeling fear, for example, if we act as if we feel fear’s opposite emotion, love, then we can actually mitigate our fear. One might think that the American inclination to smile through anything might satisfy the “as if” principle, but it does not because of the difference between intentionality and suppression.
The “as if” principle relies on intentionality, a metacognitive decision to act out the opposite emotion that one is feeling. Yet, generally speaking, Americans’ urge to express positivity is not a conscious decision to practice the “as if” principle—it is merely suppression of negative emotions. This is not to suggest that we ought to wallow in misery. It is to say that in the worst cases, emotional suppression can lead to worse coping skills for children, long-term marital problems, and correlations to stress, anxiety, and burnout. To achieve a more authentic sense of happiness, we must be willing to grapple with our unhappiness. Research demonstrates that becoming more comfortable with our suffering is a boon for meaning, which in turn is associated with higher levels of subjective well-being. What is more, a growing body of literature indicates that holistic human flourishing requires a balance of both positive and negative experiences.
2. Focus on the intrinsic
In the postwar years, the quest for influence prioritized extrinsic rewards over intrinsic rewards. Importantly, this essay is not arguing that extrinsic rewards should not be pursued or that they are morally wrong. However, to pursue happiness with extrinsic rewards as the goal is a recipe for misery. Pursuing worldly idols for their own sake—be it money, power, pleasure, or the admiration of others—is only a temporary measure for satisfaction, as Saint Thomas Aquinas argues in Summa Theologiae. Most research indicates that intrinsic rewards lead to more long-lasting happiness, so a good rule of thumb is not to give up on extrinsic rewards entirely. Rather, we should use extrinsic means to achieve intrinsic ends. For example, grow wealth not simply for a second home, but for your children’s future success. Become influential in your field not for the power of the position, but for the societal good you can do through it. This will lead to a more satisfying pursuit of happiness.
3. Pursue happiness together
Perhaps the most important lesson from the history of American happiness is the community-to-individual shift. Make no mistake: a hallmark of the American project is the freedom of the individual to create new ideas and products that make society better. Yet as we have seen, community ideals in 18th and 19th century America were more robust than today. On the whole, the individual was not solely responsible for his or her own (un)happiness. One’s pursuit of happiness was a task for the community to handle together.
Today, we should reaffirm that the pursuit should be done in communion with others. In his 2020 book A Time to Build, Yuval Levin argues that greater participation in community institutions might be the answer. He writes, “To participate in meaningful institutions at the level of the interpersonal—the civic and communal level, the level of the school, the church, and the union hall—is to understand ourselves as embedded in relationships of commitment, obligation, and responsibility and to grasp the privileges that such embeddedness provides. Seeing that, and thinking this way, is itself part of the answer to the social crisis our society confronts.”
Pursuing happiness together will strip away the illusion of the individual—that all our success, or failures, are uniquely our fault. It will also, as Levin suggests, provide us with a shared commitment to one another, by which the quest for influence will appear much less of a zero-sum game.
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By charting the history of happiness in America, we can see where we have gone culturally awry. And in diagnosing the problem, we can pinpoint salient prescriptions for a cure. It is the hope of the Leadership & Happiness Laboratory that by not suppressing unhappiness, focusing on the intrinsic, and pursuing happiness together, American culture can chart a more meaningful ethos of national happiness.
Contributing editors: Dr. Timothy Lomas, Alexis Sargent, Brendan Chan