The role of desired emotions and pleasant emotions inHappiness

Abstract

Most psychologists believe that happiness is to have too much of pleasant emotions and too less of unpleasant ones, but according to Aristotle, humans are happy if they have the emotions that they want to have, even if those emotions are unpleasant. With the purpose of examining this theory of Aristotle, the present study tested the hypothesis that the discrepancy between the emotions that an individual has and the emotions that he wants to have, has a positive correlation with depression and a negative correlation with well-being. In a correlational design, a call for participation in this study was sent to 30,000 subscribers of the Hamrahe Avval and Irancell in Tehran, and 1410 (564 men) people with an average age of 26 years old participated in the study. The research tools were a researcher-made questionnaire for measuring desired and experienced emotions, the Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, and the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Correlation and regression analyses showed that the absolute discrepancy between desired and experienced emotions (which showed that how much each participant has experienced his/her desired emotions) can predict more depression and less well-being, even in participants that experienced more pleasant and less unpleasant emotions than they desired, and even after statistically controlling experienced emotions. Therefore, happiness is not just the pleasant emotions, but any emotion, if desired, can increase our happiness.

Keywords

• keywords: happiness
• emotion
• depression
• well-being
• culture