To investigate what exactly makes people giddy (besides sleeping with Zooey Deschanel, juice, and birthdays), I decided to do some research into the science and psychology of happiness. According to this article by Time about the New Science of Happiness, happiness and positive mental state has not been explored to nearly the depth that unhappiness and various mental illnesses have been investigated. Martin Siegelman, as president of the American Psychological Association in 1998, was one of the largest and first proponents of this kind of research. The article is especially interesting in that it doesn't just explain how happiness works in your brain (which I'll be getting into later), but what various studies have indicated correlates with happiness. For example, once your basic needs are met, additional wealth does not increase rates of happiness. Neither does high IQ, education, youth, or good weather. Religion, friendship, and marriage, however, were found to boost happiness rates. The article also brought up and questioned the very notion of happiness rates, which is something I had never done before. How do we measure happiness exactly? For that matter, how can we measure any type of emotion?



Now, onto the actual brain. The three so-called "happy chemicals", as described by the following site​ are serotonin, noradrenalin, and dopamine. In brief summary:



Serotonin allows you to have restful sleep and controls your body's internal clock. It also helps regulate your body temperature and your production of cortisol, which is a stress-fighting hormone. If you are stressed, you cannot attain a restful sleep.



Noradrenalin is a "cousin" of adrenalin and has many important functions in the nervous system. The most relevant here is that it helps control energy level. Without noradrenalin, one would feel tired, without energy, and just completely exhausted. Noradrenalin is essential to the level of energy associated with giddiness.



Lastly, the most well-known chemical that produces happiness in the brain is dopamine. Dopamine runs what is referred to as the body's "pleasure center", which is one of the chief areas able to allow an individual to enjoy life and feel pleasure.

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