Individually, we all have something or someone that brings us happiness. Whether it’s a constant feeling or only comes in waves or in small doses, it exists in all of us. This raises the question of whether finding happiness is a matter of simply biology or the social circumstances. Someone with a better functioning serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) than another does not guarantee a more satisfying quality of life. Although it’s a key component in the serotonin metabolism process, this gene doesn’t define how happy or unhappy one will be. Happiness requires much more than just a chemical telling our brain we’re happy involuntarily. Our social environments are where we find what makes us feel fulfilled. Everyone has a different idea of what …show more content…
It is impossible to pin point what exactly the other two-thirds are, but as human beings being social creatures, it can be assumed that most of peoples happiness is due to social factors. Everything that humans do, the way they think about themselves, the way they look at others, all involves the concept of comparing themselves to the world around them. For example, pretend that you are the only person in the world. Would you be happy? If you were the only person the likelihood that you would know what happiness is, is slim. There are no people to compare yourself to in any sense. This can help provide us with insight on the fact that happiness is largely social constructed. Bartram's paper ‘Elements of a Sociological Contribution to Happiness Studies’ explains how objective and subjective happiness are both factors in which are affected by a sociological contribution. Subjective happiness is more of a personal evaluation while objective refers to living conditions. What we can see by looking at objective happiness factors such as health, wealth,work, etc is that they all contribute a persons happiness. Subjectively, people evaluate themselves and compare to the world around them from an objective point of view. Living in a world where constant comparison is part of what humans do naturally, it only makes sense that as social creatures, the majority of our happiness comes from a social aspect. People feel the way they do because of their constant comparison and evaluation to the world around them in so many