Leicester 3rd june 2015: Keynote Presentation at Befriending Network UK/VISTA conference/workshop

1. Happiness
and
befriending Neil Thin
University of Edinburgh

2. Jeffrey
Jeffrey
Archer
Geoffrey Howe
Jessie

3. Investing in appreciative
enquiry – where’s the value?

4. Living deliberately
Learning about happiness
Intentional
befriending
Learning
about
friendship and
social support

5. Survey data are the dominant output of
happiness research. But isn’t happiness
too elusive to be represented in
numbers?
Maybe eight, maybe
two
I’m a nine

6. “we mustn’t
expect more
precision than
the subject
matter allows”
Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics

7. “All things considered, how happy are
you with your life these days?”
You
How happy?
All
things

10. Our sense of self
is developed
through
relationships
Our life stories,
life plans, and
sense of
coherence
depends on other
people’s support

11. A ‘happiness lens’ means adopting appreciative
approaches to research, policy and practice:
good
feelings
whole
lives
How happy are
you? How’s life?
How’s your life going? What’s the story?

12. Let’s assume that we all want to
help people live better
Two ways of doing this:
Remedial: find trouble, sort it out
Appreciative: learn about how
happiness happens, promote it

13. Minimally acceptable living
Clinical
(remedial,
therapeutic,
medical) policy
and practice
Appreciative
(or ‘positive’)
policy and
practice
Appreciative enquiry
focused on strengths
and enjoyments or
preventive
maintenance
Pathological or
clinical research
focused on sufferings
and remedies
Preventive
action
Aspirational/appreciative planning and learning

14. Appreciative
empathy
Happiness research should shift us towards
appreciative empathy, by exploring
subjective experience

15. Relationships are causes and
effects of happiness, but aren’t
they also a part of happiness?
Enjoyment,
positive self-
evaluation
Interpersonal
happiness

16. Therapeutic techniques
Self-help
mind
training Talk therapy
Pharma
therapy

17. But I was unable to say what these meant. …it
was very difficult to decide which of the
diagrams was most like the face they were
making because people’s faces move very
quickly.
Mark Haddon (2003) Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

18. Befriending and
appreciative enquiry
both promote empathy
Autistic people can’t
understand us
‘neurotypicals’
think we’re a
puzzle

19. Which life is better?
h
a
p
p
i
n
e
s
s
Life course

20. Some research themes and findings
• consensus that quality, quantity, and diversity of relationships
are essential for happiness
• Aspects/varieties of relationships need to defined/specified
• Relational influences on happiness vary by age and gender
• Relationships often have mixed influences – even highly ‘toxic’
relationships can have their upsides
• In happiness and friendship research, common theme is
‘authenticity’

21. Authenticity matters, but don’t we
also benefit from ‘fake’ happiness
and ‘pretend’ friendship?
• Lots of studies of emotional self-disclosure show transition
from ‘fake’ smiles and forced laughter to real pleasure
• Lots of studies of intentional befriending show transitions
to ‘real’ friendship

22. ‘Real happiness’ and ‘real
friendship’ require
coherence across
contexts and over time.
Real happiness is lifelong
Real friendships endure through
thick and thin
Real happiness
requires
harmony across
life domains
Real friends are
reliably available
in any context

23. Befriending: evidence of benefits
• Most overall evaluative judgments are moderately optimistic
• Some evidence that ‘social cognition interventions’ are
particularly effective (i.e. changing minds matters more than
changing skills, relationships, and situations)
• Qualitative accounts are selective and don’t ‘prove’ anything,
but vignettes, images, and stories are often both instructive
and inspirational

24. Social trends worth watching
• Political: ‘Co-production’, ‘big society’, austerity, changes in state ‘welfare’ provision
• Financial: rising income inequality; growing financial indebtedness and instability
• Demographic: Ageing populations and increases in solo living (Klinenberg 2012)
• Cultural: e.g. emotional openness (Brownlie 2011);
crossgender/transgenerational/interethnic friendships (Monsour 2001); new Generation Y
work patterns
• Medical: inflationary pyschiatric diagnosis and medication
• Cybersociality: Social robotics, remote interaction, translocal relationships; online, on-
tap entertainment

25. The future of
befriending?
Fiction:
Robot and
Frank, 2012
Fact: ‘Paro’
seal robot
leads the
field in
therapeutic
companion
robot
development
He’s better
than Jeffrey
Archer

26. Discussions: happiness and befriending
Examples: Share examples of befriending (inspiring or
problematic), based on your work. [10mins]
Who benefits? How could those activities have improved the
happiness of befrienders, befriendees, or others? [25mins]
Happiness lens: Would a more explicit and systematic
emphasis on ‘happiness’ be beneficial to your work? [10mins]