I think it was Ingrid Bergman who said that happiness is good health and a bad memory. Scientists studying the emerging research topic of happiness seem to agree.

The Science of Lasting Happiness

By Marina Krakovsky

Count your blessings every day? Not if you want to be really happy.

So Lyubomirsky had to lay some groundwork before she could go into the lab. Back then, happiness was "a fuzzy, unscientific topic," she says, and although no instrument yet exists for giving perfectly valid, reliable and precise readings of someone's happiness from session to session, Lyubomirsky has brought scientific rigor to the emerging field. From her firm belief that it is each person's self-reported happiness that matters, she developed a four-question Subjective Happiness Scale. Lyubomirsky's working definition of happiness--"a joyful, contented life"--gets at both the feelings and judgments necessary for overall happiness. (If a sleep-deprived new mom feels fulfilled but frazzled, and an aimless party girl feels empty despite loads of fun, neither would consider herself truly happy.) To this day, she rarely sees her studies' participants; they do most exercises out in the real world and answer detailed questionnaires on the computer, often from home. To assess subjects' efforts and honesty, she uses several cross-checks, such as timing them as they complete the questionnaires.

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