[Good Brain 2023] Professor Seo Eunguk: "Eating with Good People and Delicious Food is the Greatest Happiness"

Professor Seoeun Guk of Yonsei University’s Department of Psychology is giving a special lecture titled "Happiness is the Brain's 'GO' Signal" at the 'Good Brain 2023 Conference' held on the 20th at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

"Happiness is not something grand. Eating delicious food with good people is the most certain switch to happiness."

Professor Seo Eun-guk of Yonsei University’s Department of Psychology attended the 'Good Brain 2023 Conference' hosted by Asia Economy at the Westin Chosun Hotel Seoul in Jung-gu on the 20th. In a special lecture titled "Happiness is the Brain's GO Signal," he said, "Happiness is not an abstract concept but a sum of concrete experiences like pleasure."

The logic that humans engage in specific actions such as working or earning money for some mental experience like happiness has been a long-standing perspective dominating human psychology for the past 2,000 years. This formed the foundation of the discourse "the ultimate purpose of life is happiness," discussed from ancient Greece to the present day. However, with recent advances in neuroscience and psychology, this paradigm is changing. Professor Seo explained, "The recent view is not that we act to feel something like happiness, but rather the opposite?that specific emotions trigger actions. For example, humans feel fear to escape danger."

In this paradigm shift, how is happiness defined? Many people today mistakenly believe that happiness is embedded in famous apartments in Gangnam or luxury cars and are busy collecting these. However, this is far from the essence of happiness. Professor Seo said, "Happiness is not something embedded in objects in the world but a show created by our brain," adding, "To understand happiness, we must first understand why our brain creates this show."

From an evolutionary perspective, the human brain is only interested in survival and reproduction, not happiness. If it cared about happiness, we would always feel happy just by walking or looking at the sky, but that is not the case, according to Professor Seo. Instead, the human brain uses a tool called the mind to aid survival. The mind is broadly divided into reason and emotion. Professor Seo said, "Happiness lies not in reason but in emotion, that is, the realm of experience," comparing it to "feeling joy by listening to music rather than being moved by reading sheet music."

In the realm of emotion and experience, the two stimuli humans feel?'pleasure' and 'displeasure'?are a kind of traffic light toward happiness. Pleasure is the green light meaning progress, while displeasure is the red light meaning retreat or stop. Based on long-standing psychological research, Professor Seo concluded that the two things that make humans feel the highest level of pleasure are 'food' and 'others.' These two elements are directly linked to survival. He said, "Happiness may seem grand, but it is actually a bundle of pleasurable experiences," and added, "I hope you often eat delicious food with good people and become happy."