Predicting Human Happiness With Math? There’s an App for That
Oh science, must you boil even the most ephemeral and life-affirming things, including the very concept of human happiness, down to complex math? Yes, of course you must. And that’s why we have a new mathematical equation to predict happiness from researchers at University College of London, which they tested by building it into a mobile game. The researchers developed their equation using a study in which 26 people were tested on a decision-making task in which they could earn or lose money. Their happiness was measured using questions and an MRI to scan for brain activity. What they found was that self-reported happiness was based on how recent rewards matched up with expectations, not just about how much cash the players were earning. In other words, it’s not just how good things are going, but if they are going better than expected that has the strongest influence on happiness. The computational modeled developed from that experiment was put to the test on 18,420 people playing a mobile game called “What Makes Me Happy?”