Marius Hogendoorn

This is about a word: ‘beauty’. Most of us use it daily and we hear others use it all the time. It is used in television debates, in art fora, in poetry classes, design agencies, fashion shows, cosmetics stores, nail salons, nature books, and even in churches. It has a vivid role in popular debates, which seems to suggest that it has a pervasive role in human life. Even when we ask people in our survey (n = 5600) how important it is with regard to their personal happiness, over 80% say it is definitely related. Some say beauty always leads to happiness (20%), some are less radical, but still feel on some occasions it might (60%). How come, when we search the 180 pages of the recently published World Happiness Report 2017, the word ‘beauty’ is not even mentioned once?

Last October, the German parliament (die Bundestag) released a 220 page report with the final results of a six months public debate on the quality of life in Germany, a project titled ‘Living Well in Germany’ (Gut Leben in Deutschland). A few participants in their contributions to the debate mentioned something that has to do with the role of beauty. But in the 240 page document that summarized the findings, the word ‘beauty’ is totally absent.

Looking at the frequency of the use of the word beauty ‘in real life’ and in the realm of policy supporting research, it strikes one to see that there seems to be a high impenetrable wall that beauty is not allowed to cross. The rigidity with which beauty is being denied access to policy circles almost cannot be accidental, which means, it looks like a classic case of “there is an elephant in the room”.

Somehow it looks like especially policy researchers deliberately avoid using the word ‘beauty’ in their analyses when writing about happiness and its causes. By doing this they neglect a phenomenon that for almost the entire world seems nothing less than obvious. The question is of course: why so?

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous proposition “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” seems to describe fairly well what is at hand. The unconscious conviction in policy circles seems to be that speaking and writing about beauty is difficult if not impossible, and therefore better to be avoided.

Happiness – as defined in the World Happiness report – is seen as influenced by six factors: 1. GDP per capita, 2. Healthy years of life expectancy, 3. Social support 4. Trust, 5. Freedom and 6. Generosity. On several places in the report it is mentioned that in some situations a considerable part of changes in levels of happiness cannot be explained by these criteria, meaning the cause has to be looked for elsewhere. Considering the blind spot in policy circles concerning beauty, and considering the outcome of our survey, we find that beauty should get more serious attention in theories about happiness.

Because, what holds true for most us, might also be useful for policy makers: dwelling on beauty does pay off.

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Additional information

A short video about how it all started: A Beautiful Journey
More info about Project Beauty is available on the website.
The questionnaire that is at the heart of the project can be found here. (US version)
Stay updated on Project Beauty: follow us on Facebook.
So far the core survey of Project Beauty has been used for national representative surveys in five European countries, the USA and Peru. Project Beauty now covers data about perceptions of beauty of over half a billion people worldwide.
Recently we also started offering an in-company version of this inspiring project. In case you are interested to learn more about applying Project Beauty within your organisation: please contact us.
Project Beauty was made possible by the generous support of various research agencies: @Dynata, @Blauw Research, @PanelBase @Datum Internacional) and numerous wonderful individuals.
To support Project Beauty you can purchase your country version (e-)book from the Seeking Beauty series.
Please contact us in case you are interested in a branded version of these books as a special value-based corporate gift.

Beauty is an intriguing and rather complex concept. Some people say ‘it’s all in the eye of the beholder’, meaning it is totally subjective and beyond definition. Others claim that real beauty standards really do exist. Some absolutely love to talk about this topic (often to the point of obsession), others are convinced it is unfit for discussion.

In contrast, happiness is less controversial and seems much easier to debate. Nowadays, it is even an accepted topic for academic research at universities. Especially within the field of positive psychology, happiness (or rather ‘subjective well-being’ as scientists prefer to call it) is the center of focus. Here, happiness is seen as a ‘state of mind’ that depends on heredity, behavior and random events.

While happiness seems to be so important nowadays, and even fashionable in modern social science, why is it that beauty mostly stays out of the academic spotlight? “Beauty is only a promise of happiness“, concluded the French poet Stendhal after he realized that the woman he dreamed of never would be his. Clearly for him beauty and happiness were intimately connected. More recently, the Swiss-British author Alain the Botton, founder of ‘The School of Life’, wrote: “A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.” So, at least according to popular opinion, happiness and beauty are connected, and that makes it interesting to find out more about how this connection takes shape. Because it seems, if we learn more about the way we deal with beauty, it even might contribute something to our level of happiness.

As part of Project Beauty, almost 6.000 people in three countries were asked how they feel about beauty. Among the questions posed, two specifically dealt with the connection between beauty and happiness. One focused directly on the respondents opinion about this relation, the other was a validated subjective well-being item: it asked people to rate their own level of happiness.

To discover more about the connection between beauty and happiness, we dove into the data to find out if the views we have on the connection actually relate to our level of happiness. Are people who feel there is a connection happier than those who think beauty and happiness have nothing to do with each other? Well, it turns out, they definitely are: some forms of beauty actually do make us happier.

The most surprising finding however, was a bit hidden. We also looked at the happiness scores of the people who didn’t know how to answer this question about a potential link between beauty and happiness. And then surprisingly it turned out: they scored by far the lowest happiness ratings, even lower than people gave themselves who see no connection between beauty and happiness at all.

There are of course a number of possible explanations for the links that seem to exist between perceptions of beauty and the feeling of happiness. However, for this moment, I just want to point out that paying attention to beauty could provide us with interesting insight in what so far are neglected determinators of happiness. In any case, it is clear that indifference might render a lower quality of life.

So at the end of the day whatever happens, dwelling on beauty does pay off.

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Additional information

A short video about how it all started: A Beautiful Journey
More info about Project Beauty is available on the website.
The questionnaire that is at the heart of the project can be found here. (US version)
Stay updated on Project Beauty: follow us on Facebook.
So far the core survey of Project Beauty has been used for national representative surveys in five European countries, the USA and Peru. Project Beauty now covers data about perceptions of beauty of over half a billion people worldwide.
Recently we also started offering an in-company version of this inspiring project. In case you are interested to learn more about applying Project Beauty within your organisation: please contact us.
Project Beauty was made possible by the generous support of various research agencies: @Dynata, @Blauw Research, @PanelBase @Datum Internacional) and numerous wonderful individuals.
To support Project Beauty you can purchase your country version (e-)book from the Seeking Beauty series.
Please contact us in case you are interested in a branded version of these books as a special value-based corporate gift.

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