what is the study of happiness classified as?

[law12345]

i want to study how much of our daily interactions bring us happiness and whether happiness is situational or conventional and does the beholder have an internal or external locus of control over their happiness.

would this study be anthropology, psychology or sociology or something else?

i already have a BA in sociology so an add-on to that would be great

 

[Cyc]

philanthropy

 

[econ 2]

^ hahah

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics/

it's between behavioral psychology and ethics, so i'd say you have your work cut out for you..

 

[Transcendence]

psychopharmacology

 

[Crystal Antlers]

i want to study how much of our daily interactions bring us happiness and whether happiness is situational or conventional

This sounds like psychology, but i don't know what branch.....not sure its behavioral, if my memory from last semester is correct, behavioral is related to learning more than anything else.

and does the beholder have an internal or external locus of control over their happiness.

This sounds like philosophy. Actually- this is philosophy. I'm taking it right now.

But you could bypass both of those and just do something in theology. (study of religion?)

 

[SoulSeeker]

Positive Psychology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology

 

[Jabberwocky]

its probably in principle impossible to quantify happiness

I think you are confused. Nobody is a happiness scientist. In fact, you won't find the term happiness in any real science work. That is way too loaded a term and probably doesn't actually refer to anything in reality when you get right down to the brass tacks of the semantics of the term.

 

[toa$t]

philosophy. ethics and phil of mind.

 

[Jabberwocky]

^ noooo....why do you say that? happiness is a concept that we all share (partially at least).

Ethics is concerned with the principles that underpin the truth of moral statements.

Philosophy of mind is concerned with analyzing aspects of the mind, faculties, processes, relations, etc. Philosophers have done work on the happiness concept (to be sure since aristotle and before!), but to say they are attempting to quantify happiness would be misleading at best (and downright false most likely).

The only people trying to quantify happiness as far as I see are social workers who do welfare analysis on people to determine what level of aid they should receive.

 

[toa$t]

^ noooo....why do you say that? happiness is a concept that we all share (partially at least).

you said it yourself. that's exactly where philosophy of mind comes into play

Ethics is concerned with the principles that underpin the truth of moral statements.

lots of ethics (i daresay 1/3 of ethics) is concerned with the study of happiness. and how about meta-ethics?

Philosophy of mind is concerned with analyzing aspects of the mind, faculties, processes, relations, etc.

and happiness is none of these?

The only people trying to quantify happiness as far as I see are social workers who do welfare analysis on people to determine what level of aid they should receive.

there is a lot more to studying happiness than quantifying it though. in fact, without figuring out exactly what happiness is (which I propose is a philisophical question), how do you even know what you are quantifying?

anyway OP, if you want to learn how to 'quantify' happiness, I suggest you study statistics. if you want to know what happiness IS, on the other hand...