A great short piece in the NY Times Magazine explores the darker side of happiness, as described in a recent journal article in Psychological Science (can’t link you there…sorry). Says the Times article:
The happier your mood, the more liable you are to make bigoted judgments — like deciding that someone is guilty of a crime simply because he’s a member of a minority group. Why? Nobody’s sure. One interesting hypothesis, though, is that happy people have an ”everything is fine” attitude that reduces the motivation for analytical thought. So they fall back on stereotypes — including malicious ones.
While the opinion piece is thin on evidence from the journal article and thick on historical exploration of ‘happiness,’ it offers a nice bundle of thoughts on what we mean by the term, and what we’ve come to expect from it.
Does it have anything to do with arts management? Beats me. But understanding ‘happiness’ and ‘joy’ seems a useful knowledge nugget for anyone in the business of creative and cultural experience (either the creation, distribution, preservation, stewardship, or consumption thereof). Are we in the business of helping people be happier? Or are we part of a toolkit our audiences use to construct a more complex set of feelings and self-awarenesses?
It recalls a quote by playwright/director/cultural maven Robert Lepage:
”Going to the theater is not about feeling good. It is about feeling.”
(Or, at least, that’s how Robert Fitzpatrick quoted him in this speech from way back when.)
