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.
Highlights
Happiness and other emotional states play a central role in human existence by mediating the regulation of behavior [1,2,3,4]. While this construal of emotions was originally motivated by classical control theory [5], it fits well within the emerging integrative computational framework for understanding the brain/mind, which holds that minds are bundles of computational processes implemented by embodied and physically and socially situated brains [6]
The computational framework allows one to put forward and test very explicit functional models of emotions. We use such a model to investigate, in an evolutionary setting, a series of questions pertaining to happiness. These include (i) the role of balancing momentary well-being against longer-term contentment; (ii) the effects of drawing a contrast between oneself and one’s social circle; and (iii) the adaptive role of differential sensitivity to positive and negative turns in momentary well-being
Happiness and other emotions are experienced subjectively; it is the subjective wellbeing (SWB) that psychologists who study happiness require that the participants in their
Summary
Happiness and other emotional states play a central role in human existence by mediating the regulation of behavior [1,2,3,4]. To study happiness in simple computational models that are obviously devoid of any phenomenality or subjectivity [13, 14], we need an objective “handle” onto emotions, which would make explicit their role in behavior and evolution. For this purpose, it suffices to limit our consideration to the valuation aspects of emotions [12, 15]. We begin with a brief review of related work and of the literature that supports our working assumptions
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