What Role Does Pleasure Play in Happiness?

You are standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, its vast expanse stretching before you. The sun dips below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and pink. Beside you, your daughter gazes in awe, her hand slipping into yours. You recognize this as a good moment. It includes a bit of enjoyment, a dollop of awe, and a hint of love. You are happy, but you might be hard-pressed to explain to a researcher what type of happiness you are experiencing.

It’s been more than 50 years since social scientists have been using sophisticated, modern techniques to study well-being. Across those decades it has become de rigueur to parse happiness into two types:

• The eudemonic (also spelled eudaimonic) is based on the writings of Aristotle, in which he discusses the social, moral, and psychological conditions necessary to live “the good life.” In modern times, researchers have placed many topics under the eudaimonic banner, including meaning, personal growth, social connection, and personal expressiveness.
• The hedonic approach emphasizes that well-being is experienced subjectively by a person. Therefore, understanding happiness must—according to this line of reasoning—attend to a person’s satisfaction and emotional experience.

It makes sense to parse happiness into facets in the same way it makes sense to describe a sport in terms of offensive play and defensive play. Although the two are distinct, they are also related, and breaking down larger concepts into sub-categories can be useful for analysis and intervention.

The problem is that eudaimonia has often been construed as “real happiness” because people view it as prosocial and lasting. Hedonic approaches, by contrast, are occasionally dismissed as selfish, self-indulgent, shallow, and short-lasting.

In the real world, experiences such as viewing the Grand Canyon, discussing a great read with your book club, or throwing a surprise party feel difficult to parse neatly into one or the other type of happiness. It might be helpful to distinguish between personal growth and pure fun, but the two often go hand in hand.

In our collaborative work with Laura King, we have explored this intricate relationship. Our publications in The Journal of Positive Psychology (the target article and follow-up commentary) challenge the notion that one can separate the frequency of positive and negative experiences, as well as life satisfaction, from the so-called lofty states of eudaimonia. We argue that attempting to do so is not only impractical but overlooks the inherent interconnectedness of these aspects of well-being.

The subjective nature of pleasure

Ed Diener authored the seminal paper in the science of well-being. In his 1984 Psychological Bulletin article, Diener argued against imposing objective value judgments on others’ lives. Instead of saying, for instance, “I can tell that person is happy because they have good relationships,” he argued that subjective experience is the best metric for happiness. This perspective underscores that pleasure is inherently personal, varying widely across different individuals and cultures.

Hedonic well-being is the idea that people are emotional, and the pursuit of happiness is characterized by the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. At first glance, this might seem to endorse selfishness and debauchery. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consider these hedonic experiences: savoring a delicious meal prepared by a Michelin-starred chef, enjoying a moment of calm beside a creek, feeling proud of your child during their school play, and feeling safe after passing through airport security.

None of these examples seem particularly selfish or superficial. Nor do we need to foreclose on the idea that they are fundamentally about a deep sense of enduring meaning. They might have an element of connection or transcendence embedded within them, sure, but that might not be the primary way they are experienced. It is also true that they are fleeting, but life—and ultimately happiness—is made up of an accumulation of these moments. 

Social interactions blend hedonic and eudaimonic

There are many reasons why, when judging an experience, our intuitions skew toward eudaimonic well-being.

Within an experience, eudaimonic seems more worthwhile than hedonic happiness. Imagine sharing ice cream with your daughter. Let’s say that this moment is enjoyable and that it also strengthens familial bonds. What, in your opinion, makes this moment worthwhile? Is it the pleasure of eating ice cream or the deepening of the relationship? What if we said that it was pleasurable but did not improve or deepen the parental bond in any way? Do you still think it is as worthwhile? There is no escaping the fact that a parent-child bond feels more important than does a double scoop of mint chocolate chip. It is hard to sidestep the natural tendency to place greater importance on experiences that feel bigger, more meaningful, or longer-lasting. 

Between the two experiences, eudaimonia seems more worthwhile. Imagine hearing about a person who attended the orchestra and another who went to a soccer game. The concertgoer learns the biography of the composer, appreciates the place the symphony occupies in the annals of classical music, and feel transcendent during the performance. By contrast, the sports fan yells insults at the referee, bites their nails when the opposing team scores, and cheers when their side equalizes with a goal.  Again, it is hard to avoid feeling that the orchestra—with all its learning, appreciation, and transcendence—somehow matters more than the thrills of a game.

Not only are these illustrations of the way that eudaimonia calls out to us; these examples also highlight how multi-faceted our daily experiences are. We rarely, if ever, have a uniquely hedonic or eudaimonic experience. People at a soccer game might be experiencing a deep sense of belonging, and those at the symphony might suffer occasional boredom or mindlessness.

So, although the distinction between pleasure and meaning makes sense for researchers who want to pop the hood and take a look at the engine of well-being, it is less useful as a description of everyday experiences.

Indeed, pleasurable experiences are often amplified when shared with others. Consider the difference between witnessing a breathtaking sunset alone versus sharing that moment with a loved one. The shared experience can heighten the immediate pleasure but also fosters a sense of social connection. This social aspect of hedonics illustrates how it might be premature to claim that the category of experiences reflecting positive connections and relations with others belongs in the bin called eudaimonia and should be divorced from hedonia.

We argue that a better approach is to resist the categories of hedonics and eudaimonia. Not dismiss them, mind you, but think of them less as distinct categories and more as gears that turn together in the inner machinery of well-being.

In that context, we can consider social connection as a potential amplifier of wide-ranging well-being benefits that include both eudaimonic and hedonic aspects. Indeed, the research literature on happiness suggests that social connection is the strongest single predictor of well-being. Your relationships are implicated in your enjoyment, anxiety, enthusiasm, interest, compassion, and many other facets of happiness.

Rethinking hedonics and eudaimonia

For those who want to ponder the nature of happiness, it makes sense to consider the various aspects of well-being and their relation to one another.

In fact, Shige Oishi has recently offered the idea of psychological richness, the experience of novelty that is neither wholly pleasant nor necessarily meaningful. It is useful to inquire how these facets work together to make up that thing we call well-being. We recommend caution, however, to avoid these common traps:

• Eudaimonia is real happiness and hedonia is superficial.
• Pleasurable experiences are worthwhile only to the extent that they also include aspects of meaning, growth, or connection.
• There are, in fact, two types of happiness.

Rather than foreclose on these ideas, we encourage you to appreciate that well-being is a many-splendored thing—and that it is difficult to measure and define and understand precisely because it is so multifaceted. Each of these aspects is important. Each affects the other. Each is an ingredient that makes well-being such a delicious meal.

You would no more want a life devoid of pleasure than you would want a meaningless one. Fortunately, you don’t have to choose.