neil thin happiness friendship and intentional befriending
TRANSCRIPT
Investing in appreciative enquiry – where’s the value?
Practical wisdom and the intrinsic
value of learning
Concepts and definitions
Analysis and modeling –
causes, priorities
Motivational change e.g.
empathy Evidence – ‘hard’ (stats) and
‘soft’ (stories, observations,
images)
Normative guidance for aspirational policy and
practice
Living deliberately
Learning about happiness
Intentional befriending
Learning about
friendship and social support
Survey data are the dominant output of happiness research. But isn’t happiness too elusive to be represented in numbers?
Maybe eight, maybe two
I’m a nine
“All things considered, how happy are you with your life these days?”
You
How happy?All things
Your life these days
goodfeelings
liveswhole
Our sense of self is developed through relationships
Our life stories, life plans, and sense of coherence depends on other people’s support
A ‘happiness lens’ means adopting appreciative approaches to research, policy and practice:
good
feelings
whole
lives
How happy are you? How’s life?
How do the bits fit together?
How’s your life going? What’s the story?
Let’s assume that we all want to help people live better
Two ways of doing this:
Remedial: find trouble, sort it out
Appreciative: learn about how happiness happens, promote it
Minimally acceptable living
Clinical (remedial,
therapeutic, medical) policy
and practice
Appreciative (or ‘positive’)
policy and practice
Appreciative enquiry focused on strengths and enjoyments or
preventive maintenance
Pathological or clinical research
focused on sufferings and remedies
Preventive action
Aspirational/appreciative planning and learning
Appreciative empathy
Happiness research should shift us towards appreciative empathy, by exploring
subjective experience
Relationships are causes and effects of happiness, but aren’t they also a part of happiness?
Enjoyment, positive self-evaluation
Interpersonal happiness
But I was unable to say what these meant. …it was very difficult to decide which of the diagrams was most like the face they were making because people’s faces move very quickly.
Mark Haddon (2003) Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
Befriending and appreciative enquiry
both promote empathy
Autistic people can’t understand us
‘neurotypicals’ think we’re a
puzzle
Some research themes and findings• consensus that quality, quantity, and diversity of relationships
are essential for happiness
• Aspects/varieties of relationships need to defined/specified
• Relational influences on happiness vary by age and gender
• Relationships often have mixed influences – even highly ‘toxic’ relationships can have their upsides
• In happiness and friendship research, common theme is ‘authenticity’
Authenticity matters, but don’t we also benefit from ‘fake’ happiness
and ‘pretend’ friendship?• Lots of studies of emotional self-disclosure show transition
from ‘fake’ smiles and forced laughter to real pleasure
• Lots of studies of intentional befriending show transitions to ‘real’ friendship
‘Real happiness’ and ‘real friendship’ require coherence across
contexts and over time.
Real happiness is lifelong
Real friendships endure through thick and thin
Real happiness requires
harmony across life domains
Real friends are reliably available
in any context
Befriending: evidence of benefits• Most overall evaluative judgments are moderately optimistic
• Some evidence that ‘social cognition interventions’ are particularly effective (i.e. changing minds matters more than changing skills, relationships, and situations)
• Qualitative accounts are selective and don’t ‘prove’ anything, but vignettes, images, and stories are often both instructive and inspirational
Social trends worth watching• Political: ‘Co-production’, ‘big society’, austerity, changes in state ‘welfare’ provision
• Financial: rising income inequality; growing financial indebtedness and instability
• Demographic: Ageing populations and increases in solo living (Klinenberg 2012)
• Cultural: e.g. emotional openness (Brownlie 2011); crossgender/transgenerational/interethnic friendships (Monsour 2001); new Generation Y
work patterns
• Medical: inflationary pyschiatric diagnosis and medication
• Cybersociality: Social robotics, remote interaction, translocal relationships; online, on-tap entertainment
The future of befriending?Fiction: Robot and Frank, 2012
Fact: ‘Paro’ seal robot leads the field in therapeutic companion robot development
He’s better than Jeffrey Archer
Discussions: happiness and befriending
Examples: Share examples of befriending (inspiring or problematic), based on your work. [10mins]
Who benefits? How could those activities have improved the happiness of befrienders, befriendees, or others? [25mins]
Happiness lens: Would a more explicit and systematic emphasis on ‘happiness’ be beneficial to your work? [10mins]