《英语周报》有声：快乐的源泉

　　VOICE TWO:

　　The journalist Eric Weiner recently wrote a book called “The Geography of Bliss." Mister Weiner traveled to countries such as Switzerland, Bhutan, Qatar and Thailand to investigate happiness in different parts of the world. He met with experts and talked with local people to try to understand what makes people in different societies happy.

　　For example, Eric Weiner learned that in Bhutan, the government measures “Gross Domestic Happiness” as a way to tell whether its citizens are happy. Mister Weiner also traveled to Moldova, a country he says is one of the least happy countries in the world. And he traveled to Iceland because studies show that it is one of the happiest nations in the world.

　　Mister Weiner at first could not understand why a country with so little sunlight in the winter and so many alcohol drinkers could be so happy. But, he decided that happiness in Iceland is linked to its close community, striking natural beauty and high levels of creativity. Denmark, another cold country, also has been listed as one of the happiest countries. Mister Weiner says the United States is the twenty-third happiest country in the world.

　　VOICE ONE:

　　Dan Gilbert teaches psychology at Harvard University in Massachusetts. He recently published “Stumbling on Happiness.” Mister Gilbert looks at the way the human mind is different from other animals because we can think about the future and use our imaginations. He also explains how our minds can trick us in a way that creates difficulties in making happy choices for the future.

　　For example, a person might think that buying a new car would make him or her happy even though the last car the person bought did not. So, events that we believe will bring us happiness bring us less than we think. And, events we fear will make us unhappy make us less unhappy than we believe. The book provides valuable information on the surprising ways in which our minds work. Here is a recording of Mister Gilbert talking about this “impact bias.” It was taken from the Big Think Web site.

　　DAN GILBERT:

　　"Most of the time when people are wrong about how they’ll feel about the future, they’re wrong in the direction of thinking that things will matter to them more than they really do. We are remarkable at our ability to adjust and adapt to almost any situation; but we seem not to know this about ourselves. And so we mistakenly predict that good things will make us happy . . . really happy for a really long time . Bad things, why they’ll just slay us. It turns out neither of these things is by and large true."

　　VOICE TWO:

　　Why is studying happiness important? There are many answers to this question. One has to do with understanding happiness in order to create better public policies. Richard Layard is a British economist and lawmaker who studies this subject. His research is influenced by the eighteenth century thinker Jeremy Bentham. Mister Bentham believed that the goal of public policy was to create the “greatest happiness for the greatest number.”

　　Richard Layard has looked at the relation between happiness and a country’s wealth. He questions why people in western countries are no happier than they were fifty years ago although they now earn more money.

　　Mister Layard believes that part of the problem is that economics and public policy tend to measure a country’s success by the amount of money it makes. He notes that happiness depends on more than the purchasing power of a person or a nation.

　　VOICE ONE:

　　Mister Layard says that public policy should also help people improve the things that lead to happiness such as job security and health. To help improve public health policies in Britain, Mister Layard has pressed the British government to spend more money on mental health treatment centers. He argues that by helping people recover from mental illness, the government can make a big step in the effort to increase happiness.

　　VOICE TWO:

　　Many people have also written songs about happiness. We leave you with this song by the Pointer Sisters about the happiness of being in love.

　　VOICE ONE:

　　This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Bob Doughty.

　　此部分内容由美国之音提供