Book Review Reading Answers : IELTS Reading Practice Test

Book Review
The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being

By William Davies

A. ‘Happiness is the ultimate goal because it is self-evidently good. If we are asked why happiness matters we can give no further external reason. It just obviously does matter.’ This pronouncement by Richard Layard, an economist and advocate of ‘positive psychology’, summarises the beliefs of many people today. For Layard and others like him, it is obvious that the purpose of government is to promote a state of collective well-being. The only question is how to achieve it, and here positive psychology – a supposed science that not only identifies what makes people happy but also allows their happiness to be measured – can show the way. Equipped with this science, they say, governments can secure happiness in society in a way they never could in the past.

B. It is an astonishingly crude and simple-minded way of thinking, and for that very reason increasingly popular. Those who think in this way are oblivious to the vast philosophical literature in which the meaning and value of happiness have been explored and questioned, and  write as if nothing of any importance had been thought on the subject until it came to their attention. It was the philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) who was more than anyone else responsible for the development of this way of thinking. For Bentham it was obvious that the human good consists of pleasure and the absence of pain. The Greek philosopher Aristotle may have identified happiness with self-realisation in the 4th century BC, and thinkers throughout the ages may have struggled to reconcile the pursuit of happiness with other human values, but for Bentham all this was mere metaphysics or fiction. Without knowing anything much of him or the school of moral theory he established – since they are by education and intellectual conviction illiterate in the history of ideas – our advocates of positive psychology follow in his tracks in rejecting as outmoded and irrelevant pretty much the entirety of ethical reflection on human happiness to date.

C. But as William Davies notes in his recent book The Happiness Industry, the view that happiness is the only self-evident good is actually a way of limiting moral inquiry. One of the virtues of this rich, lucid and arresting book is that it places the current cult of happiness in a well-defined historical framework. Rightly, Davies his story with Bentham, noting that he was far more than a philosopher. Davies writes, ‘Bentham’s activities were those which we might now associate with a public sector management consultant’. In the 1790s, he wrote to the Home Office suggesting that the departments of government be linked together through a set of ‘conversation tubes’, and to the Bank of England with a design for a printing device that could produce unforgeable banknotes. He drew up plans for a ‘frigidarium’ to keep provisions such as meat, fish, fruit and vegetables fresh. His celebrated design for a prison to be known as a ‘Panopticon’, in which prisoners would be kept in solitary confinement while being visible at all times to the guards, was very nearly adopted. (Surprisingly, Davies does not discuss the fact that Bentham meant his Panopticon not just as a model prison but also as an instrument of control that could be applied to schools and factories.)

D. Bentham was also a pioneer of the ‘science of happiness’. If happiness is to be regarded as a science, it has to be measured, and Bentham suggested two ways in which this might be done. Viewing happiness as a complex of pleasurable sensations, he suggested that it might be quantified by measuring the human pulse rate. Alternatively, money could be used as the standard for quantification: if two different goods have the same price, it can be claimed that they produce the same quantity of pleasure in the consumer. Bentham was more attracted by the latter measure. By associating money so closely to inner experience, Davies writes, Bentham ‘set the stage for the entangling of psychological research and capitalism that would shape the business practices of the twentieth century’.

E. The Happiness Industry describes how the project of a science of happiness has become integral to capitalism. We learn much that is interesting about how economic problems are being redefined and treated as psychological maladies. In addition, Davies shows how the belief that inner of pleasure and displeasure can be objectively measured has informed management studies and advertising. The tendency of thinkers such as J B Watson, the founder of behaviourism*, was that human beings could be shaped, or manipulated, by policymakers and managers. Watson had no factual basis for his view of human action. When he became president of the American Psychological Association in 1915, he ‘had never even studied a single human being’: his research had been confined to experiments on white rats. Yet Watson’s reductive model is now widely applied, with ‘behaviour change’ becoming the goal of governments: in Britain, a ‘Behaviour Insights Team’ has been established by the government to study how people can be encouraged, at minimum cost to the public purse, to live in what are considered to be socially desirable ways.

Modern industrial societies appear to need the possibility of ever-increasing happiness to motivate them in their labours. But whatever its intellectual pedigree, the idea that governments should be responsible for promoting happiness is always a threat to human freedom.

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* ‘behaviourism’: a branch of psychology which is concerned with observable behaviour

Questions 27-31
The reading passage has five paragraphs: A – E
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below
Write the correct numbers, i –viii in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet. 
NB There are more headings than paragraphs so you will not use them all. 

List of headings 

1. Risks of government-driven happiness
2. Critique of simplistic happiness views.
3. Bentham’s influence on happiness theory.
4. Happiness and Individual Autonomy
5. Happiness as a government objective.
6. Happiness linked to capitalism and control.
7. Measuring Pleasure: The Currency of Happiness
8. Bentham’s methods for measuring happiness.

Questions 32-35
Choose the correct letter, A,B,C or D
32. What does Richard Layard believe about happiness?
A) It requires external validation to be considered important.
B) It is the government’s role to ensure collective well-being.
C) Positive psychology cannot accurately measure happiness.
D) Happiness should be achieved through economic policies.
33. What does the author suggest about those who promote positive psychology?
A) They reject previous philosophical thought on happiness.
B) They are highly educated in moral theory.
C) They rely on Aristotle’s definition of happiness.
D) They believe happiness is achieved through self-realization.
34. Based on William Davies's observations in The Happiness Industry, how does he characterize the contemporary understanding of happiness as promoted by figures like Bentham?
A) It encourages a deeper exploration of moral values and ethical considerations.
B) It simplifies complex philosophical ideas into measurable concepts.
C) It highlights the historical significance of happiness in ethical theory.
D) It rejects the importance of happiness as a topic of philosophical inquiry.

35. How did Bentham propose to measure happiness as a science?
A) By analyzing philosophical texts and historical perspectives on happiness.
B) By examining the correlation between happiness and social interactions.
C) By quantifying pleasurable sensations through pulse rate and monetary value.
D) By conducting experiments to determine the psychological impact of happiness.

Questions 36-40
Complete the summary below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answer in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet. 

Can money buy happiness?

Bentham proposed using money as a way to measure happiness, claiming that goods with the same price provide equal pleasure to 36. ______________. By linking money to inner experience, he influenced the relationship between psychological research and 37.______________. In The Happiness Industry, William Davies explains how happiness became central to capitalism, with economic issues being reframed as 38.___________________problems. Davies highlights how management studies and advertising adopted the idea of measuring pleasure. J.B. Watson, the founder of behaviorism, believed human behavior could be controlled by policymakers, leading to modern practices like the UK’s "Behaviour Insights Team" aimed at promoting 39._________________behavior. Modern societies rely on the idea of increasing happiness to drive work, yet government-promoted happiness, despite its 40. _______________, poses a risk to freedom.