Happiness as Science: Unicamp Professor Argues Joy Can Be Taught and Learned

Campinas has earned a distinction that most cities never claim: it ranks seventh among Brazil's happiest places. The ranking, compiled by the magazine Bula using criteria adapted from the United Nations' World Happiness Report, reflects something measurable in the city's bones—a combination of technological innovation, economic diversity, solid infrastructure, and the kind of quality of life that allows people to breathe. On International Day of Happiness, March 20th, this recognition becomes more than a statistic. It becomes a question: what makes a place, and the people in it, genuinely content?

Leandro Manera, a professor in Unicamp's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has spent years wrestling with that question. In 2020, he and two colleagues did something unusual in a technical university: they created a course called Happiness. The timing mattered. Students were struggling. They reported feeling unhappy, searching for something to propel them forward. The course wasn't philosophy or self-help. It was structured, multidisciplinary, taught by faculty from psychology, humanities, and other fields across Unicamp and beyond. It ran for four hours each week across a semester, eventually drawing 150 students per cohort—far more than expected. The formal title was unwieldy: "Emotional Skills and Their Impact on Scientific Development in Engineering: Happiness." But the substance was clear: the course treated emotional and social knowledge as legitimate academic territory, as something that could be studied, taught, and learned.

The experiment worked. By 2023, the university expanded the model into a graduate program—an MBA called "Master Business Exponencial"—designed to develop behavioral competencies and projects aligned with sustainable development. The program had three modules: first, self-knowledge; second, using technology and engineering to solve everyday problems; third, building tools that could apply these concepts to social well-being. Manera discovered something in teaching it: happiness wasn't a formula to memorize. It emerged from understanding yourself, from a state of consciousness that focused outward, on others. "When you understand the whole and how you can impact the lives around you," he explained, "your purposes become clearer and more motivating. They create a significant impact on your own quality of life and on those near you." The course ran through 2024 and is scheduled to resume this year. One tangible result: students collected and distributed tons of food to underserved communities.

But not everyone agrees that happiness is something to chase directly. Karina de Carvalho Magalhães, a psychologist at PUC-Campinas, distinguishes between happiness and pleasure—a distinction that matters more than most people realize. Happiness is subjective, rooted in personal values, history, and social context. Pleasure is something else: a spike, a hit, a momentary rush. The problem, she argues, is that modern life offers too much of it. Food, games, shopping, social media—each delivers a burst of satisfaction. But the brain adapts. Each spike demands a higher dose the next time. The result is anxiety and depression, not contentment. The antidote is counterintuitive: seek activities that demand effort. Exercise. Reduce social media. Face challenges instead of avoiding them. Let discomfort restore balance. "A life soaked in pleasure or the constant pursuit of it creates imbalance and, as a result, a sense of emptiness," she said.

Karina Diniz, a psychiatrist at Unicamp's Faculty of Medical Sciences, pushes the argument further. Many people confuse happiness with consumption—with the dopamine hit of buying something new. That's dangerous. It can create emotional and chemical dependence. Real happiness, she suggests, lives elsewhere: in healthy relationships, in generosity, in hope and purpose. It lives in the small moments of lightness—the feeling of being welcomed, supported, understood. It requires self-knowledge, awareness of your own limits and emotions, and the capacity to do difficult things without being crushed by them. Resilience matters. So does hope. "Hope is essential," Diniz said, "because those who nurture it cultivate positive references. They can see the good even in chaos." Quality of life—safety, leisure, a balanced routine—creates the structure in which happiness can take root. Being happy, she concluded, means knowing where you're going and having somewhere to return to when you need it.

On the streets of Campinas, people offered their own definitions. An actress named Carmem Sampaio said aging itself is happiness, that making art makes joy inevitable. A psychologist named Elaine Brandão called happiness a utopia but said she feels joy every day—and that's enough. A poet named Sergio Vaz defined it as peace, as knowing who you are and why you're here. An educator named Fabriciana Silva Martins said she's driven by dreams, by genuine delight in living and family. None of them spoke in formulas. All of them spoke from somewhere real.