Horizontal-resource models of happiness

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Economic Sociology and Management Subdepartment, Faculty of Sociology, Moscow, Russia

^* Corresponding author: eksen@mail.ru

Abstract

“Happiness” is not even considered by many as a scientific term. Meanwhile, some practitioners are concerned with improving the quality of life and the objective reasons for people’s subjective satisfaction while others note the prevalence of problems related to “unhappiness”. Thus, in the best case, people turn to clergy, significant others, or psychotherapists to change either themselves or their lives for the better. However, theoretical interpretations of the phenomenon of happiness in many sciences that are based on the models of balance, the correspondence between the desired and the available, etc., use a fragmented and practically unstructured terminological apparatus. The goal of the study is to identify the conceptual models in all the diversity of interpretations and studies of happiness that allow uniting groups of researchers from different fields of knowledge, as well as to present the views of the authors of artworks on the mechanisms of experience and empathy with the processes of gaining and losing happiness. Methods: Comparative analysis of views on the phenomenon of happiness and the related states presented in works of art, spiritual and cultural life, and studies of the social and human sciences. The analyzed material allowed us to show the presence of a large number of models of interpretation of the state of happiness often associated with the assessment of resources available to the individual (horizontal-resource models of happiness). This distinguishes them from the vertical-level models that contrast the highest levels of happiness of special quality with the manifestation of different, lower-order states also referred to as happiness. It is important to note that in horizontal-resource interpretations, many models do not treat happiness simply as a significant share “of the total pie”. Resource-based approaches assess the available or absent potential (of varying nature), as well as the absence or presence of the possibility of approaching a subjectively meaningful state.