“Is Life Nasty, Brutish, and Short? Philosophies of Life and Well-Being” (Aknin, Arikm, Dunn & Norton 2011) addresses how the general public supports Hobbes’s view that life is short and hard (Kant, 1983) impacting well-being and civic involvement of individuals. The authors based their research on the notion that civic organizations were necessary in protecting the people’s well-being given their brutish nature.
The article explores Hobbes’s view in association with lower happiness, the relationship of life philosophies to civic engagement and subjective life beliefs shape people’s participation in the world. The authors conducted surveys in testing out their hypothesis asking questions on participants’ outlook in life, philosophies and beliefs.
They recruited random people from different parts of the world with diverse life experiences and principles. In defining their key variables they asked different sets of questions for each study. The study proved that people who saw life as short and hard are least happy, have less engagement in civic duties and saw themselves experiencing bad events from the past recurring in the future.
The authors were able to solidify their claims through the results of their experiments. By conducting random surveys, the authors were able to create a platform of fairness by eradicating biases that may occur among their critics. The research indicates that human behaviour in general is relative to individual’s personal philosophy.
The study shows that a person’s well-being is closely associated with his personal outlook in life and how he lives it. Human behaviour is shaped by such philosophy resulting to his involvement in the society. In conducting the study since philosophies were discussed, why was religion not included in the survey?
References
Aknin L.B. , Dunn E.W. , Norton M.I. & Arikm L. (2011). Is Life Nasty, Brutish, and Short? Philosophies of Life and Well-Being. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Kant, I. (1795/1983). Perpetual peace and other essays on politics, history, and morals (Ted Humphrey, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing.