Two thousand years and counting, pleasure, a basic good emotion, has had a bad reputation. Disowning it has been applauded and appreciated. It is not a good way to go. Pleasure is the foundation of a normal, healthy life. Deprivation of the ability to feel pleasure, known as anhedonia, is a key symptom of all affective disorders.
It has been proven that pleasure makes us better to others, more creative and healthier. It has become a subject of research and the crucial element of “affective neuroscience”. Moreover, neuroscience has found no fundamental difference between so-called lower and higher pleasures. All good things, from the simplest sensations, through social relationships, to abstract delights – intellectual or aesthetic, activate the same cerebral reward system. What is more, pursuing your values can be pleasant as well, while “to find the meaning” is the highest of pleasures.
Mechanisms of feeling positive emotions in relationships with objects are complex and diverse – from sentiments (hominess, nostalgy, tenderness), through snobbisms (brand loyalty, expression of values, ideas, identity), to satisfactions (sense of agency, flow, appreciation for creator’s intelligence).
Contemporary holistic ergonomics seeks to recognise and satisfy the recipients’ needs on three levels: security, comfort and hedonic experience (sometimes wrongly simplified and described as experiencing aesthetic). We dare say that if a design fails to account for the user’s pleasure, it cannot be called ergonomic.
Keywords: hedonic experience, anhedonia, cerebral reward system, pleasure, hedonomy
