My bolding. But that's precisely my point: They didn't separate the questions. They intertwined the two sets, by definition. I think if you really want to determine one or the other, you need to not stack the deck, so to speak, and honestly have people choose between one or the other.
Sunstone separated the questions. That's what I was referring to. The study demonstrated that they can be separated, because there are people that report happiness but no meaning, and people that report meaning but no happiness, and people that report both or neither. So Sunstone's OP was the question of if you had to choose one, which would you choose?
My bolding. That smells like a no true scotsman. The claim is that happiness is equatable to selfishness, but when you point out things that are unselfish that make people happy, suddenly, that shouldn't be considered happiness, but meaning.
The unselfish things in the study don't necessarily make people happy. Clearly there is something driving them to do it or they wouldn't, but for some people, they do indeed do things that they feel are meaningful, but if they are asked if they are happy, if they feel in a good mood, if they feel interested and satisfied in life, they answer no.
Examples of activities in the study that were shown to increase self-reported meaning but decrease self-reported happiness statistically within the group were:
-Giving gifts to others.
-Taking care of kids.
-Doing charity work.
-Thinking about the past or future.
-Feeling stress.
-Listening.
-Reflecting on struggles and challenges.
Now I know someone's going to say that they feel happiness when they give gifts or do charity. That's great. But that doesn't change the fact that in the study, those were the statistics of how those activities were correlated with people's answers to the happiness and meaning questions, on a statistical level.
Examples of activities in the study that were shown to increase self-reported happiness but decrease or have little effect on self-reported meaning statistically within the group were:
-Partying
-Focusing on the present
-Avoiding stress and worry and negative events
Positive and negative events impact the variables in different ways:
-Positive events were positively correlated with both happiness and meaning.
-Negative events were very negatively correlated with happiness, but still positively correlated with meaning.
Happiness as a whole in the study was easier to decrease- a lot of things decrease it. Meaning in the study was a bit more resilient- positive things generally increase it, and negative things tend to increase it.
I dunno. If they are equating spending money with a group of people as "virtuous", or simply linking those who give with those who self report as hanging out with groups of people, it still smells rigged to me.
They're not defining virtue as spending money with other people. They're linking virtue with that whole paragraph. It's giving gifts, doing charity work, etc.
That's the point: if you define something as unselfish, and then try to show that people who are unselfish fall into that category, then the game is rigged.
You need a non-biased definition. Personally, I would simply define those who have meaning in their life as those who have a sense of purpose. Purpose can be anything, selfish or unselfish.
Did you read the study?
There's nothing circular about it. Neither variable is wholly selfish. Some people have both meaning and happiness.
They wanted to measure two things, happiness and meaning. Happiness was defined as having good feelings, which meant asking people how often they feel happy, how often do you feel interested in life, how often do you feel satisfied? Meaning was defined as an orientation towards something bigger than the self, which meant asking people if they feel their life has a sense of direction or purpose to it, whether they feel they are contributing to society, how often they feel part of a community, etc. Now someone say that's not a good definition and can define meaning as drinking wine alone all day if they want, but then just focus on the actual categories of questions they asked.
Then, they analyzed what people spent time doing, and things they reported, to find which sorts of things are correlated with meaning and happiness. Taking care of kids, for example, tended to reduce the answers related to happiness and increase the answers related to meaning, as did doing charity work and giving gifts. Thinking about the past or future was also negatively correlated with happiness and positively reported with meaning. What we're doing right now, debating/arguing, in the study was positively associated with a sense of meaning but negatively correlated with happiness.
It's not rigged, because there were multiple possible outcomes. For example, they could have found that meaning and happiness were always reported together, or not at all. That would have been an interesting thing, that you can't really separate them. But that's not what they found.
They found that some people are capable of feeling good, having positive emotions, feeling happy, without contributing much to other people or feeling part of anything larger than themselves. They also found people that spend a lot of time on others, spend time in stressful environments, and report feeling part of something larger, report that their life has direction and purpose to it, and yet don't report feeling happy, don't report feeling positive emotions often, don't report feeling satisfied, etc. Some people fortunately report feeling both happy and meaningful, while unfortunately others report feeling neither.
So I think it's a fair OP: Given that each combination seems as though it does occur in practice (high levels of both meaning and happiness, meaning but less happiness, happiness but less meaning, low levels of both meaning and happiness), if you had to pick only one, which would you pick? Would you rather feel positive emotions, feel happy, feel satisfied, but not feel that you're part of anything larger, not feel that you have much to contribute to society, or would you rather feel that you're part of something larger than yourself and that you contribute to society, but not feel very happy or satisfied in general?