Between Pleasure and Contentment: Evolutionary Dynamics of Some Possible Parameters of Happiness

Yue Gao and Shimon Edelman

PLOS ONE, 2016, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-23

Abstract: We offer and test a simple operationalization of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being (“happiness”) as mediating variables that link outcomes to motivation. In six evolutionary agent-based simulation experiments, we compared the relative performance of agents endowed with different combinations of happiness-related traits (parameter values), under four types of environmental conditions. We found (i) that the effects of attaching more weight to longer-term than to momentary happiness and of extending the memory for past happiness are both stronger in an environment where food is scarce; (ii) that in such an environment “relative consumption,” in which the agent’s well-being is negatively affected by that of its neighbors, is more detrimental to survival when food is scarce; and (iii) that having a positive outlook, under which agents’ longer-term happiness is increased by positive events more than it is decreased by negative ones, is generally advantageous.

Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0153193

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0153193

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