Recipes for Happiness: a Proposal for Analysing the Moral Orientation of Actions and Emotions

Abstract

This paper draws up a proposal for analysing discourses on paths to happiness. Recipes promoted by the happiness industry are studied as moral guidelines for social action: imperative messages spread through the Internet seek to guide their recipients in their quest for happiness. In a field dominated by positive psychology, we approach happiness from a sociological perspective, which is to say as: an institutionalised social discourse; a form of social production; a socially-framed emotion. Research is based on systematic Internet observation and on quantitative and qualitative textual analysis procedures. We show how digital media in the ‘happiness’ field: (a) promotes recipes; (b) provides scientific legitimation for said recipes; (c) focuses on a generic individual as the recipient of the messages and as protagonist. A typology is proposed based on the meaning, nature and object of the actions that lead to happiness. Results show how recipes involve normative and moral orientations of actions and emotions: they indicate what to do and how to think and feel to be happy. Happiness as a moral obligation involves most concerns shaping the agenda of contemporary societies, with a strong emphasis on individualism and on a utilitarian understanding of social relations and the social environment.