So, how happy are ya? Happy as a box of fluffies? Can’t complain? Sorry, but that doesn’t help people who are interested in investigating happiness. We need something more formal. Scientific.

Some time ago, a fellow called Michael Argyle visited my department to talk about happiness. He said one of the better ways he had found to measure happiness was perhaps one of the simplest: five smiley faces, from very smiley to very unsmiley, and participants pick the one they think best suits them.

These days I use variations on questions developed by Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of ...

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