In my last post I talked about mental health and workers compensation.  As a follow up, I wanted to comment on a recent article I read about the science of happiness.  According to the research, humans are not very good at evaluating what makes us happy or unhappy,

Given time, survivors of tragedies and traumas report themselves nearly as happy as they were before, and people who win the lottery or achieve lifelong dreams don’t see any long-term increase in happiness. By contrast, annoyances like noise or chronic pain bring down our happiness more than you’d think, and having friends or an extra hour of sleep every night can raise it dramatically.

The question posed by the article is whether this new body of data established by positive psychology should be utilized at the policy level?

A huge range of social systems, from tort law to urban planning to medical care, are built on assumptions about what makes people happy. Now, for the first time, researchers are claiming to be actually measuring happiness, to actually know what causes it.

Some argue that happiness should be used to determine damages  in lawsuits; that awards in personal injury lawsuits do not reflect accurate levels of pain and suffering.  Mental health and chronic pain, despite being more detrimental than physical disability to ones well-being, are often under-compensated because they are not visible, .

Others argue that the legal process may hinder an individuals ability to ability to cope naturally.  Samuel Bagenstos and Margo Schlanger, law professors at Washington University in St. Louis, co-wrote a law review article in 2007 that suggests people should be compensated for their “specific lost capabilities, and on mitigating their effects through rehabilitation.”