Happiness in the New Unified Theory of Sociobehavioral Processes

This paper explores more deeply the part played by happiness in the recent attempt to unify justice, status, and power theories.  Specifically, the paper does three things:  First, it strengthens the foundation from Plato and Aristotle for the theory's premise that different people seek happiness in different ways and by different means.  Second, it connects those diffrent ways and different means to the attributes and possessions that people care about, as well as to the basic outcome -- justice, status, or power -- that is activated.  Third, the paper analyzes a new set of situations in justice theory, in which individuals may compare themselves to everyone who outranks them (on the salient attribute or possession), everyone whom they outrank, or everyone in general.  These situations lead to different outcomes both for individuals and for societies.  Further, the paper shows vividly the implied effects of inequality in the distributions of attributes and possessions on average happiness and inequality in happiness.