Happy?

You probably already have a sense of what your happiness set point is -- are you a glass half-full or glass half-empty type? -- but to find out how you stack up against others in your age group, education level and Zip code, check out the "authentic happiness inventory" at Authentichappiness.com.

And what if it turns out you've lost what Haidt refers to as the "cortical lottery" and are stuck with a low happiness set point? Big bummer, right? Well, yes and no. Haidt advises thinking of biological happiness as a temperature range, rather than a fixed point; just like a thermostat, the life choices we make can push our happiness levels to the upper threshold of our individual set point. That's where the "C" and the "V" of the equation come into play.

CONDITIONS FOR HAPPINESS

You may not feel it when you pack into a crowded Metro car or battle rush-hour traffic on the Beltway, but studies indicate that other people really do make us happy.

"Good people . . . bring out the best in us," says Haidt, describing one of the important conditions for happiness.

Ruut Veenhoven, professor of sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands and director of the World Database of Happiness, studies happiness as if it were a social science -- which, come to think of it, it is.

His findings? National wealth matters, but on a personal level, "making very big money doesn't really make [the individual] very happy," says Veenhoven. "Investing in good social relationships is a safer bet."

Veenhoven estimates that a person's "social-emotional" relationships account for between 15 and 20 percent of his happiness level, and that married people are more satisfied with their lives than singles.

Enjoy meeting friends for a beer after work? Good news for you: Veenhoven's studies indicate that social drinkers tend to be happier than teetotalers, a fact that may speak more to the social aspect of sharing a drink with friends than to the drink itself.

Unfortunately, if you've ever had to cancel happy-hour plans because of work or traffic, you know that modern society can be a happiness buzz kill.

"Americans move too much, change jobs too much, change partners too much," says Haidt. "Life is not a competition to see who can produce the most stuff." Indeed, in the scramble of modern American life, we seem to ignore the fact that though individuals in the industrialized world have gotten richer and richer over the past 50 years, our happiness levels have remained steady, and incidences of depression have actually increased.

That may be because our transience and hectic schedules work against our basic need for lasting relationships and community. But short of moving back home to live with mom and dad (definitely not a happiness inducer in some people's books), how do we regain connection?