Happiness 101: New UCL study shows that learning could boost happiness

In a surprising revelation, happiness might depend on learning and not on reward.

A new study suggests happiness depends on how we learn about our world, and not based on the rewards which we receive. Image Source: Priscilla du Perez on Unsplash

A new study conducted by UCL researchers sheds light on something that seems to be of way more importance for happiness than some people may think. The study, which was published in eLife, suggests that learning could play a big role in boosting happiness and well-being. 

According to Dr Robb Rutledge, a co-author of the aforementioned study and an honorary researcher at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, “many people think they would be happier if they had more money. However, we previously developed an equation for happiness showing that happiness depends not on how much reward you get, but whether you are doing better than expected.” 

The rewards ‘prediction error’, which is the difference between the expected and the actual reward, is a crucial component of adaptive behavior. Moreover, it plays a key role in learning, as it drives people to repeat the behaviours that produced the larger-than-expected rewards and challenges their beliefs about the world, which in and of itself is a gratifying experience, as this is a learning process. 

For the purpose of their study, Dr Blain and Dr Rutledge had participants decide between two cars of which one would win a race. In the first scenario, in the ‘stable’ situation, one of the cars had a higher chance of winning, while in the second scenario, the ‘volatile’ situation, the car that was most likely to win was switched after a certain number of trials. Participants could learn and improve their strategy to win more races. If the car that the participant chose ended up winning the race, the participant would get a reward. In this specific task, the probability of receiving a reward was not related to the size of that reward. 

The study found that the reward size and the level of happiness were not correlated. Instead, what increased the level of happiness was how surprised the participant was of winning, as well as learning which car would win. People were happier when winning and when they found themselves in predictive, unchanging environments, as opposed to changing environments, where people who presented symptoms of depression were actually said to experience a lower level of happiness. 

According to Dr Blain, “happiness depends on learning, but surprisingly, it doesn't depend on reward. Whether study participants got small or large rewards didn't matter for their happiness.” He goes further to say that the research “suggests that how we learn can be more important for how we feel than the rewards we receive. In uncertain environments, happiness relates not to money but to something more like growth.”

There do remain a lot of unknowns, such as the reason why uncertain environments decrease the level of happiness for participants with pre-existing symptoms of depression. However, the team of researchers continue to look for answers and have even developed a new app, launched just last month, called “The Happiness Project”, which makes it possible for people to play games with the scope of helping science evolve in understanding happiness.  

You can download the app here.

This article is published as part of the Happiness 101 series, written by Pi Media columnist Sorana Bucseneanu