By Brian J. Jones, author of The Pursuit of Happiness in America

Happiness advice is everywhere. From pop psychology to pop music, from Hallmark to hip-hop, from TED Talks to teddy bears, well-being wisdom abounds. But is it real wisdom? If so, what is its basis?

Psychology has a scientific basis, but popular books on the topic tend toward therapeutic tips. Philosophy offers abstract principles ranging from stoicism to hedonism. Poetry and prose give eloquent expression to deeply personal opinions.

Sociology promises an alternative path to happiness knowledge. The central concept of the discipline is social structure—the myriad ways people are connected to each other. To slightly rephrase, no psyche is an island. Every individual operates within workplaces, families, churches, friendships … social structures, all. How do they bear on personal happiness?

Just asking that question opens up a veritable panorama. Looking through a sociological lens, what appears are patterns of happiness—and unhappiness—stacked by social structure. Life satisfaction may be lodged deep in the soul, but those souls are arranged in a suspiciously orderly social manner. This is the architecture of happiness. By comparison, popular books on the matter seem overly personalized—more like interior decorating.

These are bold claims, but they are supported in my book The Pursuit of Happiness in America by massive empirical evidence. Its foundation is the General Social Survey, a gold-standard scientific sample of American society that has been conducted since 1972. In addition to the five decades of data this offers for quantitative analysis, I commissioned a qualitative interview study asking a fifty-person cross-section of Americans for their personal views on happiness. This quantitative-qualitative combination is known as mixed methods, highly recommended in modern social science.

So, what can this altered perspective and mountain of data tell us about the social side of happiness? One finding leaps to the fore: marriage matters. The primary question used in the General Social Survey is worded as follows:

Taken all together, how would you say things are these days—
would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?

With this simple, well-validated item I arrived at a startling revelation: marriage roughly doubles one’s chances of being “very happy.” Across nearly fifty years of data, about 40% of married Americans give the happiest response compared to only 20% of Americans who are never married, divorced, separated or widowed. This towering difference does not even require the sophisticated statistical methods I apply in the book. Compounding the surprise is the historical path of marriage in America—it is down, down, down. In the first year of the General Social Survey, 1972, 72% of Americans were in intact marriages. Now, it is barely over 40%. Down indeed.

Economic structures matter, too. Folks who are very satisfied with their jobs are twice as likely to be very happy than less happy workers. Jobs are ensconced in workplaces that are formally socially structured. Less formal but no less real is class structure. Americans who classify themselves as upper, middle, working, and lower class register happiness percentages in exactly that order. Both of these structures exert their happiness effects even when money is removed from the equation.

The most informal social structures of all are personal ones. The General Social Survey asks how often Americans “spend a social evening” with friends, relatives and neighbors. In every statistical test, more socializing is related to more personal happiness. These associations are especially powerful for older Americans.

As these findings pile up, it is worth reminding the reader that they are backed up with reams of sterling data. Underneath all the numbers, though, live real people with their own opinions. In the qualitative interviews people were asked,

What single event—an event, an experience or a person—
has had the greatest effect on your level of happiness?

One person said, “My marital experience…I have someone who supports me 24/7.” On the darker side of marital relations another responded that the key factor was “When I signed the divorce papers.” About one-third of the fifty mentioned work as the major happiness factor. Quite a few others extolled the benefits of just hanging out with friends and family: “Every time I get to socialize or go to some sort of event with those I love it significantly improves my happiness.”

Happiness is not a simple matter. It is a product of one’s psychology, personal history, philosophy of life … many factors. But to see it as disconnected from all the connections we have with each other is no longer tenable. Social structure is the architecture of happiness.

Brian J. Jones is Professor of Sociology at Villanova University, USA. He is the author of The Pursuit of Happiness in America (2024), Social Capital in America (2011), and Social Capital in American Life (2019) and co-author of Sociology: Micro, Macro, and Mega Structures (1995) and Social Problems: Issues, Opinions, and Solutions (1988).