M1959 - DUTT TEXT.indd

Is it possible to become a happier person? This is an enormously important issue for subjective well-being (SWB) researchers, as well as for the burgeoning fi eld of positive psychology (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Sheldon, 2004). Indeed, if happiness cannot be lastingly increased, then one of the basic premises of positive psychology is suspect – namely, that positive psychology is about more than curing disorders or ‘bringing people back to 0’, but is instead about helping to move people ‘beyond 0’, to new heights of fulfi llment and satisfaction (Seligman, 2002). The question of whether SWB can be sustainably improved naturally arises from the growing consensus that SWB is strongly infl uenced by genetics, with a heritability of around 0.50 according to twin studies (Diener et al., 1999). The behavioral genetics research implies that there may be a genetically-determined ‘set-point’ for SWB, to which people are bound to return over time (Lykken and Tellegen, 1996; Tellegen et al., 1988). In other words, SWB may be the result of a homeostatic process that resists deviations away from a pre-determined baseline (Cummins, 2003). If this is true, then trying to become happier may be as fruitless as ‘trying to become taller’ (Lykken and Tellegen, 1996, p. 189). A further implication is that developing the strengths (Peterson and Seligman, 2004) and engaging in the practices (Emmons, 2007) emphasized by positive psychology researchers can have no lasting eff ect on peoples’ state of mind. Of course, such strengths and practices may provide other benefi ts besides permanently enhanced SWB, but elevating personal happiness is surely a predominant goal underlying many self-improvement eff orts (Myers, 1991). The empirical literature on longitudinal SWB provides further reason for pessimism regarding the feasibility of the goal of enhancing wellbeing. In a four-year panel study, Headey and Wearing (1989) showed