‘Happiness’ Dispenses Simple Advice

We have an idea for ABC’s roving reporter John Stossel. How about an hourlong special, titled, say, “The Mystery of Irony: Who Has It & How to Get It”? The report might include clips from Stossel’s latest lightweight special on a thought-provoking topic, titled “The Mystery of Happiness: Who Has It & How to Get It.”

And the capper would be noting that Stossel asks us to sit down in front of the tube for an hour to listen to psychologists and others tell us that sitting in front of the tube won’t bring happiness.

*

This makes us very unhappy.

Nothing better encapsulates the schizoid American approach to happiness than a TV program informing viewers that the way to happiness includes turning off the TV.

It’s right up there with Hollywood’s art of turning happiness into a formula, the expected rule of the happy ending--deserved or not. If we need to be told how and when to be happy, we have more to be unhappy about than we thought.

But as long as Stossel’s report sticks to what brain and behavior researchers have discovered, this is insightful stuff. Psychologist Thomas Bouchard’s intensive study of identical twins Barbara Herbert and Daphne Goodship reveals that despite being separated at birth and raised in very different homes, the twins are equally jolly. Nature dominates nurture.

Another psychologist, Richard Davidson, is shown mapping the brain areas most stimulated when a subject is happy. (His answer: the left frontal area.) Parents, he concludes, shouldn’t fret if their children are the grumpy ones in a play group. Many people--including, our host informs us, himself--are simply born with a less “happy” brain.

On the other hand, when it comes to things we can do to stimulate happiness, Stossel takes the Nike approach: Just do it. Examples here include the Amish, churchgoers and longtime married couples, suggesting that single, urban atheists must be unhappy. (Unhappy Woody Allen appears here from time to time.)

This simplistic approach extends to stating the obvious--that satisfying work and activity, plus a few good friends, produces lasting happiness.

With this kind of invaluable, never-before-heard advice, it’s awfully hard to resist the temptation to turn off the tube. But go ahead. Just do it.

* “The Mystery of Happiness: Who Has It & How to Get It” airs 10 p.m. tonight on KABC-TV Channel 7.