The Savanna Theory of Happiness
You are unhappy because you are doing positive activities that your ancestors considered negative.
The human brain changes to deal with novel environments. Fast enough to keep our species alive. But not quick enough to, for example, change the next generation's brains to deal with a problem of our current one. Our brains are in 2023, yet they are tuned for another time.
So, for example, if a situation had negative implications for 99% of our species’ time but it has positive implications in 2023, our brains will react to the situation as if it were negative.
Researchers Norman P. and Satoshi Kanazawa believe this has implications for our current happiness. They say our brain reacts to modern events not based on what they mean today but based on what they would have meant if we experienced them during the Pleistocene Epoch when we lived in the African Savanna. From their paper:
"Situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors’ happiness in the ancestral environment may still increase our happiness today, and those that would have decreased their happiness then may still decrease ours today."
Three aspects of the Savanna Theory of Happiness (STH) unsettle me. First, if it’s true, it can affect every form of happiness: hedonic, eudaimonic, spiritual, social, etc. It also implies we might be unhappy right now for reasons of the distant past that we might not know yet, rendering any method of happiness via self-exploration useless.
Finally, the fact that researchers found evidence supporting the STH.
Those living among ethnically diverse populations are unhappier
Humans have lived with people who looked, talked, and acted like them for most of their 300,000-year lifespan. So it was common to categorize “different” people as a potential enemies.
About 10,000 years ago, agriculture helped ethnicities expand. We could settle, live longer, and do activities other than getting food. This put us in contact with other ethnicities, allowing the birth of civilizations like Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians.
But while 10,000 years is a long time, it’s only 3,3% of the time humans have existed.
The STH suggests that because it’s new for us to live with people from other ethnicities, the event impacts our happiness levels because that’s what would happen in ancestral times. This happens even though many of us today know and feel ok living in heterogenous societies.
The scholars tested this hypothesis with data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (ADD Health). If their prediction was accurate, people from the most common ethnicities would be happier than minorities:
"Relative to the reference category of White Americans, all ethnic minorities had significantly lower life satisfaction," They say." Even when we controlled for sex, age, education, and marital status."
The scientists also found that when more people in a place are part of the same ethnicity, differences in how happy people feel get smaller. "Once we controlled for the proportion of the state population that was the same ethnicity as the respondent," they say. "African Americans and Native Americans no longer had lower life satisfaction than White Americans." It worked out differently for Asian Americans, though. Even controlling this variable, they were less happy than White Americans. So not every race was as happy. But they were happier when living among Asians, so living among people of the same ethnicity benefited every race.
Data from the 2021 World Happiness Report seems to back these findings. The happiest countries mostly have people from the same background: Finland, Denmark, and Switzerland. And the unhappiest countries, such as Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, have dozens of ethnic groups.
But the argument ignores that many of the least happy countries are also places with a lot of poverty, danger, and famine, which make people feel unhappy. And some of the happiest countries, like the United States, also have many different ethnic groups living together.
So either the scientist’s hypothesis isn’t true, or it only explains differences in happiness levels among ethnic groups from a smaller population. Think villages, neighborhoods, and towns over cities, countries, and continents.
For example, we could look at neighborhoods. Studying a sample of 47,000 English residents from 15,545 neighborhoods, researchers found that when there were more different ethnic groups living together in a neighborhood, people felt less happy at first. But happiness levels return to the baseline over time.
"Individuals adapt to diversity. If a neighbourhood’s increasing diversity is a stressor, people’s physiological response to diversity will gradually recover to baseline levels despite some potential increases resulting from changes in diversity.
The crux of this study is defining why happiness levels return to baseline. Is it because the brain stops seeing people from other ethnic groups as it would in the past, that is, as threats? Likely not, as someone people discriminate against people from other ethnicities throughout their lives.
Other research papers also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having people from different ethnic groups living together, which you can read here, here, and here. So the STH seems to apply in some smaller-scale circumstances.
To avoid misunderstandings, I will say that neither the researchers nor I am promoting discrimination, racism, or segregation. Even if the Savanna Theory of Happiness always applied, it states that we feel less happy because of a situation that was problematic but no longer is. Interacting with people from ethnicities comes with an immeasurable number of well-being, social, and economic benefits, which any non-race supremacist can come up with in five seconds.
But the theory still made me think of how most of us tend to feel better among kin. Only 3.6% of the world population lives outside of their birth country. Every long-time traveler I've met has either returned home or plans to. Heck, even I, who has claimed to hate his hometown, was craving to go back after a month of traveling across Mexico in 2023. On my layover from Panama to Cartagena, the airline offered me a 5-star hotel, transport, and a $200 gift card if I gave my seat to some random important guy. "No," I said. “I wanted to go home.”
It is common for even the most open people to feel slightly uncomfortable around people who are different from them. Think of the social events you’ve gone to. Haven’t you felt a little scared or like you don’t fit in when attendees are not like you? Sometimes I feel like that too. You might be braver than me and always try to establish a friendship still. But it can be harder than usual if people are part of an ethnic group, subculture, age, or experience level vastly different from yours.
There are levels to this. If you are from Italy, maybe you are, on average, more comfortable meeting Italians than, for example, Americans.
But if you are a stereotypical backpacker meeting a stereotypical consultant, you will probably get along with a stereotypical American backpacker faster.
Of course, each of us has things in common. But I believe the human brain doesn’t care as much about what’s familiar as it cares about what’s unfamiliar. An outsider can look at Republicans and Democrats, Jews and Islamic people, and metalheads and beauty influencers and point out similarities between these groups that are hidden from each other. Yet, conscious awareness of what makes them alike won’t eliminate what makes them different.
Without knowing, I had been testing the benefits of being around my ethnic group since the last quarter of 2022. I talked to my family daily, learned to dance salsa to an intermediate level, and studied my country’s history. Since then, I’ve felt happier in my hometown than ever. Maybe it’s because of the Savanna Theory of Happiness. Maybe it’s because of something else.
Those living among the most amount of people are unhappier.
Many studies have found that people living outside the city are happier than those who reside inside it. A 2021 study found that people living in rural areas of Canada were happier than those living in the city. Years before, researchers found the same phenomenon in Scotland. The caveat was that only people from rural areas far from the city had higher well-being. Those close to it were as happy as city dwellers.
The difference in happiness levels is usually attributed to urban stressors:
Crime
Air pollution
Men jerking off in NYC’s subway
The Savannah Theory of Happiness adds another variable: community size. Homo sapiens have lived in groups of 150 to 200 for most of their existence. Today's hunter-gatherers who follow a similar lifestyle to the ones we had 300,000 years ago maintain this group size. Part of the reason is that the larger the group, the more challenging it is to align everyone's beliefs, needs, and interests:
The major constraint on human group size is cognitive. [So] it is possible that as the population density becomes too high, the human brain feels uneasy and uncomfortable, and such unease and discomfort may translate into reduced happiness.
The STH theorists looked at some of the Add Health Data and found out that people who live in countries, states, or populations with a high density aren’t as happy as those who live in places with fewer people. This was true even while controlling for sex, age, ethnicity, education, and marital status.
In 1992, Orians and Heerwagen posited humans prefer areas with a lot of biodiversities or that make them feel safe.
The Savanna ticks this box. It has different plants and animals to eat and rivers for drinking and washing. There weren't many trees, so people see animals sneaking up on them.
Orians and Heerwagen’s theory and the STH bring light to biophilia, the idea that we have an innate connection to nature. Research and my own experience have shown that spending time in nature reduces stress and restores focus and physical health. We don't need research to know this on a physical level. It is why every rest-related trip is in nature. No matter the technology we use, urban life can't recharge us the way nature can.
Those living far from friends are unhappier.
Another benefit of small groups is that building and nurturing friendships was easier. Friendships were crucial for survival, social status, and kinship. The tight bonds from the Pleistocene Epoch also maintained a sense of safety as people lived among familiar faces to which they could entrust their life.
Kanazawa contrasts this with how much we truly need friends today:
"Survival and reproduction today depend increasingly more on one’s ability to navigate myriad evolutionarily novel entities such as the internet, governments, banks, corporations, trusts, and the legal system. Instead of relying on reciprocal cooperation with friends and allies for basic needs, modern-day individuals deal with strangers or faceless entities and have no way of identifying those involved in the procurement and processing of necessities such as food.”
We have lived among kin and friends for most of our human life. Because of globalization, cities, and the internet, today, we live further from our friends than before. Even if some live in the same city we live in, they are all unlikely to be a block away from you. Some might, but their chances of moving to another city or country are high.
Online communication is an option, but it can't replicate in-person interaction. As a result, they hypothesize (and found) that those who see their friends the least are unhappier than those who see them frequently:
"Once current marital status was controlled, frequency of socialization with friends had a significantly positive association with life satisfaction, and this did not change even when we further controlled for age, sex, ethnicity, and education. "
Today's world motivates us to meet new people, travel worldwide, and live abroad. To escape from sameness and maximize novelty. But, paradoxically, there are so many people to potentially meet that we often don’t end up understanding any on a comprehensive level.
My personal experience backs the Savanna Theory of Happiness.
I lived in six cities between 2022 and 2023. I met incredible people in each of those cities. Yet, because of everyone’s temporary agenda, I often said goodbye before I got to meet their inner self. And, to make it worse, the more I tried to build new relationships, the less time I spent nurturing old ones.
On the flip side, I’m happier among friends, people I’d set up a 300,000-year-old villa with. I've lived in cities in times when friends are there and when they are not, and I was happier on occasions when friends were there. This was true even when living in cities I disliked. If I had no deep friends, the experience was worse. It improved if they were there.
Move with your friends to a rural area in your home country
In common academic fashion, Kanazawa and P. say their research is not advice on how to live or seek happiness. But I think differently.
I'm not telling you to move to an unpleasant home country or only be with people like you.
But I think you should try doing things that your ancestors did, like visiting your family, walking in nature, and hanging out with friends. These activities can make us happy, and we don't need research to know that. Yet, for some reason, we sometimes have to read research like this to be like, "oh, maybe I should go out to nature more often, you know, that place where I always feel at peace."