High-level happiness talk

Had a very interesting talk about happiness and policy with a bunch of public policy students from Harvard yesterday (far more willing to tackle the big issues than the MBAs!). There were some very insightful comments, and a lot of interesting research. But there seemed to be a consistent problem running throughout the discussion; nobody could come to an agreement (either in our group, or amongst the researchers) about what the correct definition of happiness is.

Is it the sum of fleeting positive emotions? Is it the subjective self-evaluation of a person's life satisfaction? Is it a measure of smiles per period? Or the levels of serotonin/oxytocin/dopamine in a person's brain at a given moment?

I personally think we don't talk about happiness enough, and fail to distinguish between the different types of "positive life experiences." This gives us a poor toolset to communicate about happiness. And moreover, given that the objective is ostensibly to raise happiness for large numbers of people, not enough of the people taking part in the discussion have tried and succeeded at improving their own happiness to a point that would give them an understanding of what types of happiness matter, and what types are irrelevant. (Whew, long sentence). Most of the people who want to drive the change have been successful and happy all their lives! (myself included, although there was a long period of questioning and doubt a few years back)