Eight fascinating facts about happiness

1. The world’s first toddler lab is allowing us to study the minds of little people like never before

Until recently, it’s been difficult to measure brain activity in tiny children (who aren’t prone to sitting still!). Now, the world’s first toddler lab – a new five-story building equipped with cameras and wireless headcaps – is making it possible.

Each floor in the toddler lab at The Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development mirrors a different environment, explains Director Denis Mareschal. “It comes straight into the home lab, designed to resemble a front room in a house.”

Using these natural settings, researchers are beginning to understand much more about the explosive experience of being a toddler.

2. Scientists used to believe that childhood didn’t exist

“Historically, the view of young children has changed a lot,” explains Denis from the toddler lab. “Hundreds of years ago, there was a belief in Europe that actually childhood didn't really exist. They were just adults with less knowledge and experience.”

“But we've realised that a lot is going on,” he adds. “Small children are experiencing the world and thinking about the world in dramatically different ways from the ways that adults do.”

3. A toddler’s brain synapses far outnumber those of an adult

In the toddler brain, learning is happening at a pace unlike any other time of life.

“If we just look at the number of cells, and the number of connections or synapses that those cells are making, a young infant way outnumbers an older individual,” states Nim Tottenham, a professor of psychology at Columbia University who studies how human emotions develop.

“What happens early in life is that the brain overproduces cells and overproduces synapses – you can imagine an untamed rose bush in your backyard – and then systematically throughout childhood, the brain is pruning back some of those connections.”

This constant moulding and adapting to the environment is called brain plasticity. “The brain is highly plastic early in life,” says Nim.

4. Caregivers play a crucial role in a child’s future happiness

This plasticity is not just about learning to play an instrument or tie your laces. “It's also about the tools for surviving our encounters with the rest of our incredibly social species,” says India. “It's about our emotions.”

Parents and caregivers play a crucial role. The relationship a child has to their caregivers is integral to their future and, arguably, their happiness.

“We can think about caregivers as really providing this external scaffolding to the human infant's brain during a time when it's busy learning about the environment, but still really in need of that mature structure to ensure that the system is developing in a way that makes sense for the environment that we're bringing it up in,” explains Nim.

5. Happiness was written into the American Declaration of Independence

“In 1776, the American colony sat down and wrote the Declaration of Independence,” states Thomas Dixon, a historian with expertise in the history of emotions. “They said that everyone had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

However, although happiness was foundational to one of the great documents of Western history, it actually meant something quite different at the time.

“The kind of happiness that the founding fathers of the United States had in mind was what we might call flourishing or good fortune,” Thomas explains. “It's about doing well in life; it's not very emotional at all.”

6. Some countries have government departments dedicated to happiness

Today, governments around the world are still zoning in on the word happiness.

In 2013, amidst economic turmoil, the then-president of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, launched a Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness with the aim of reducing poverty.

In the United Arab Emirates, they have the Ministry of Happiness.

7. Toddlers aren’t “moody” – they just don’t know how to process emotion yet

“Sometimes people say toddlers are moody,” says Tovah Klein, aka “The Toddler Whisperer” and the author of How Toddlers Thrive. “The reason that they're moody is because those emotions are new and their brain is new at it and not good at it yet,” she explains.

“Really what makes a toddler happy is comfort, safety,” says the expert. “It’s a sense of trust.” If they mess up (which toddlers do all the time, because they don’t really know how to live in our world yet), that it’s OK. “It’s our role to help children through the hard parts; through the negative feelings,” she says.

Ultimately, they need to feel secure. “Loads of research has shown that this can have a very protective effect for children going through difficult times or experiencing trauma,” says India.

8. There’s a “parenting happiness gap” – and more support for caregivers could close it

A decade ago, the World Happiness Report – an annual publication ranking countries by their measures of wellbeing – dedicated a chapter to parental happiness.

“Of the hundred or so countries surveyed, about two-thirds of them have this gap, wherein parents tend to score a little bit lower in terms of happiness than people who aren't parents,” explains Camilla Michalski, from the Happiness Research Institute.

The additional financial stress – plus loss of time, sleep and sense of self – could all be contributing to this “parenting happiness gap.” The strain on parents is huge.

“The gap is smallest or non-existent in countries where they have really supportive parental leave policies,” says Camilla. “And we know that if people are supported – whether that's institutionally or socially because of multigenerational households or cultures where neighbours help out with childcare a lot – that gap isn’t there.”