Examples of interactionism
In this section we illustrate interactionist themes through examples spanning several domains generally considered to be important for happiness: values (religion), work (employment), material conditions (money), and relationships (caregiving). The examples are not meant to be particularly striking; they are merely illustrative, indicating that interactionism is not a radical new approach. More intricate examples, less apt for brief illustrations, will doubtless grow more prominent as our understanding of felicitation improves.
5.1 Religion
In a meta-analysis of research linking religion to happiness, Hackney and Sanders (2003) found consistent modest positive correlations between religion and life satisfaction. This finding held across both behavioral aspects of religion (e.g. church attendance) and psychological aspects
(e.g. personal devotion). Interestingly, the psychological benefits of religiosity appear to be affected by an interaction of both internal and external factors. In a series of studies employing nearly half a million respondents conducted by Diener, Tay and Myers (2011) the researchers found that the happiness associated with religiosity is, in part, a function of the match between the individual and the larger culture in which they live. Specifically, religious individuals living in highly religious nations appear to enjoy substantially more positive emotions than their non-religious counterparts if they are living in a country with difficult life circumstances. In addition, the researchers found that people appear to be happier if they live in a nation in which aggregate societal religiosity matches their own. This is consistent with other research that suggests that person-culture match is important to happiness (Fulmer et al., 2010). In this case the researchers discovered that correlations between personality traits such as extroversion and happiness variables were amplified if a given trait was reflected in aggregate societal personality norms for that trait. Where intervention is concerned this indicates it is worth exploring the possibility that individuals can increase their happiness by finding a fit between their internal states and preferences and social interactions that validate these. For example, it may be more important than people realize to live in environments where the prevailing culture matches their own values. The example is interactionist in that it illustrates how the impact of external variables, like prevailing social mores, mediates the happiness impact of internal variables like religious belief.
5.2 Employment
Labor has commonly been understood as an involuntary hardship that is tolerated as a route to the provisioning of external goods. But meaningful employment is increasingly understood as a key source of happiness (Thin, 2012). Happiness research on unemployment has confirmed the stark facts about this pathology: the effects of unemployment are, in general, devastating and the costs go well beyond the effects of lost income to include anger, loss of self-esteem, damage to social relations, and loss of a meaningful life narrative (McKee-Ryan, Song, Wanberg, & Kinicki, 2005). Externalist common sense demands that we do everything we can to minimize involuntary unemployment, yet there are few instances of nations succeeding at this over long periods. So we also need strategies for coping more effectively with this adversity. These need to be supported by research that goes beyond mere confirmation of the generally adverse effects, to explore the many interacting mental, social, and environmental factors that influence responses to unemployment as well as those related to employment.
Hopes for the development of better coping strategies are offered by research showing highly varied responses to unemployment even among people of very similar socio-economic backgrounds, ranging from psychosocial devastation to surprising forms of life enhancement depending on various psychological, social, and ecological factors (Havitz, Morden, & Samdahl, 2004; Tay & Kuykendall 2013, pp. 169-171). The way unemployed people think about this situation has crucial influence on its effects: survey research has shown that the adverse effects of unemployment among both the unemployed and the employed vary significantly according to the degree of importance individuals attach to the event (Dolan & Powdthavee 2012; Tay & Kuykendall, 2013).
For many unemployed people it is the psychosocial rather than financial effects that really bite, and it is here that we have considerable leeway for positive psychosocial interventions. Unemployed people wishing to optimize their responses to this situation have to seek optimal combinations in their efforts to redress this specific external fact (by finding another job); changing their outlook on the situation (by finding less depressing things to think about, or by
revising priorities, say through voluntary simplification and slowdown); changing their activities (e.g. adopting new engaging and rewarding leisure activities or voluntary work); changing their social relationships (finding new social engagements to replace the loss of workplace friends); and changing their material circumstances by changing their behavior (e.g. altering consumption patterns to get by comfortably with less money) (Havitz, Morden, & Samdahl, 2004; Knabe, Rätzel, Schöb, & Weimann, 2010).
Understood through an externalist lens, jobs and unemployment are things that happen to us, causal factors largely beyond our control that influence our wellbeing. An interactionist approach, by contrast, recognizes that jobs and unemployment are not only external life circumstances but are also highly dynamic processes that achieve their influence via identities, roles, activities, relationships, experiences, and reinterpretations of experiences over time. Jobs and joblessness involve both mental and environmental processes; action as well as reflection; personal situations and relationships. Individuals can passively accept their jobs or their joblessness, or they can modify either situation to something more conducive to happiness. Active engagement either with a job or with joblessness modifies it into something very different than it first appeared, and this in turn influences our mental states, our capabilities, and our self-esteem or sense of purpose.
5.3 Money
Because money can provide a wide variety of benefits including pleasurable experiences, social status, education, medical care, and if needed, even highly skilled lawyers, a person’s income can be used as a summary measure for many desirable external conditions. For people living in poverty, the data tell a rather straightforward externalist story in which increased income allows people to meet their basic needs, and thus dependably leads to increased happiness (Ahuvia, 2012).
Studies of non-poor populations, however, tell a much more interactionist story. Higher levels of income generally lead to higher levels of satisfaction with one’s income, which in turn leads to higher overall life satisfaction. But while the connection between income satisfaction and overall life satisfaction is fairly strong (correlations around .40–.50; Ahuvia & Friedman 1998), one’s objective income has a weak connection to one’s subjective level of income satisfaction (correlations around .10-.30, Diener & Oishi, 2000; Fuentes & Rojas, 2001). This is because when people place a high value on money and the things it can buy, they also tend to be dissatisfied with their income even if it is quite high (Burchardt, 2005; Kasser, 2002; Richins & Rudmin, 1994; Ryan & Dziurawiec, 2001; Sirgy, Lee, Larsen, & Wright, 1998). Thus being financially satisfied results from an interaction between one’s external circumstances and one’s psychological disposition towards materialism. This interaction effect also works the other way round (although it is not logically necessary that it should). Materialism and other forms of high-income aspirations are associated with unhappiness (Kasser 2002; Sirgy, 1998; Stutzer & Frey 2004). But this relationship is moderated by income, such that the less income one has the greater the negative impact of materialism on happiness (Barbera & Gürhan-Canli, 1997; Nickerson, Schwarz, & Diener, 2007).
A broader moral is that the effect of money on happiness depends on a wide range of factors: values and priorities (do people have materialistic priorities?), cultural norms (is conspicuous consumption discouraged?), social arrangements (do people need cars to get around?), and so forth. As well, material attainments can themselves affect people’s outlooks, for instance reducing the ability of individuals to savor everyday experiences (Quoidbach, Dunn, Petrides, & Mikolajczak, 2010), or impeding prosocial behavior, perhaps to their own
(and certainly others’) detriment (Piff, Stancato, Côté, Mendoza-Denton, & Keltner, 2012). In short, the money-happiness connection is extremely complex, calling for an interactionist approach to explanation and practice.
5.4 Caregiving
Caregiving aims at improving the physical and mental situation of others in suffering. It turns out that the caregiver’s attitude and state of mind greatly influence both her own capacities to take care of others, the quality of her care and the satisfaction of the person she is caring for.
Empathic resonance with someone else’s feelings occurs with various positive mental states, such as joy, or negative ones such as suffering. Empathically resonating with the pain of others can lead to very different situations: experiencing empathic distress (Batson, 1991; Hoffman, 1981), distancing oneself emotionally from those that one is taking care of (Kash et al., 2000), or caring for them with loving-kindness without being overwhelmed by distress.
Dealing repeatedly with the pain of others often leads to emotional exhaustion. One study showed that, in the United States, 60% of caregivers suffer from burnout at one point in their career, and a third is affected to the point of having to pause their activities (Felton, 1998). This kind of burnout has also been called “compassion fatigue.”
The overall level of nurses’ burnout in hospital units also affects patients’ satisfaction and their perception of the quality of care (Leiter, Harvie, & Frizzell, 1998; Vahey, Aiken, Sloane, Clarke, & Vargas, 2004). Patients who stayed on units where nursing staff felt more exhausted or more frequently expressed the intention to quit because of burnout were less satisfied with the various components of their care. Conversely, no significant correlations were found between nurse professional efficacy and any of the patient satisfaction components measured.
One does see here two kinds of interactions that can lead to either an upward or to a downward spiral for all concerned: if a caregiver cultivates loving-kindness through meditation, she will be protected against burnout. She will consequently be able to provide better care to her patients and those patients will acknowledge the benefits of such care. Caregivers will thus be encouraged to continue caring for others as they observe the two-fold benefit, for others and for themselves, of their activities. In contrast, when caregivers suffer from empathic distress, they cannot take good care of the patients and may end up quitting their job, while their patients experience a significant degradation in the provision of care.
Caregiving illustrates a particularly central area of concern for interactionism, human relationships, which involve especially dense webs of causal interactions and feedbacks. A marriage can easily get into a rut, for instance, where mutually reinforcing negative interactions—a raised eyebrow begets a contemptuous tone of voice, and so on—can leave the individuals feeling trapped in a vicious equilibrium. The same sort of dynamic can arise between troubled children and school officials, where misconduct and punishment can be mutually reinforcing. A key area of interest for promoting happiness is understanding better how to break relationships out of vicious cycles, particularly by learning how to exploit felicitation feedbacks that, ideally, result in upward spirals to much more rewarding relationships.
5.5 Discussion
These examples are meant to give some sense of the varieties and promise of interactionist approaches to felicitation, both in research and in practice. Given that the mechanisms involved in these cases are perfectly ordinary and widely implicated in human psychology we hope it is clear that many more such examples exist. Indeed, our intensely social nature should make it
fairly clear that interactionist felicitation (the fostering of happiness in the self or in others) can occur in many settings. Now that we have some examples of interactionist felicitation in hand, it will be helpful to note three main types of interaction: psychosomatic, ecological, and psychosocial.