Happiness 1 Running Head: INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN HAPPINESS Happiness

Throughout the ages, many thinkers have regarded happiness as something of supreme value and observed that the pursuit of happiness underlies all sorts of other pursuits. French philosopher Blaise Pascal, for one, believed that happiness is “the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves ” (1995, p. 45). Darrin McMahon, a historian of happiness, similarly concluded that countless experiments in human engineering with dreadful consequences, from Marxism to Nazism, were all part of a struggle for happiness (2005). The inexhaustible self-help aisles of bookstores and the multibillion dollar industry revolving around psychotropic drugs are no doubt modern manifestations of the same ardent quest. In this chapter, we aim to shed some light on the all-important question of what makes people happy, relying upon the most recent research on the topic. We wish to focus not only on the question of what causes individuals to differ in their happiness levels, but also on what these differences are able to predict regarding success in various life domains, such as professional achievement, health, and social relationships. However, before delving into the questions of what leads to happiness and what happiness leads to in turn, we will first provide an overview of how the notion of happiness is conceptualized and measured in current social scientific research