The Spoils of Happiness

After reading the opinionater section of the New York times, I found many interesting details concerning the audience this article was directed at. First off, I concluded that anyone reading this article must have some desire or interest in obtaining happiness--for the article was entirely about how to obtain happiness. After digging deeper into the article, I found that more specifically this article was about moods and whether or not happiness can be artificially decided by the brain. This helped narrow the audience once again; for the audience must be educated, as well as have some interest in the role of psychology. Also, after looking up statistics on readership of the New York Times, I found that average readership age has gone up 6 years in the past few years(http://www.businessinsider.com/the-average-newspaper-reader-is-now-older-than-ever-2009-5); this helped me conclude that most likely many of the people reading the times, as well as interested in the article, are most likely older than young adults on average. The tone of the issue was intellectual and optimistic, allowing the reader to feel good towards the claims made about the issue. Whether or not the reader agrees is less influenced by emotion in this sense, for the writer did a good job in leaving emotion out of the argument. Lastly, I concluded that, on average, people reading this article--and that are truly interested in the issue--most likely aren't satisfied with their own personnel happiness level. The fact that the audience is reading the article suggests that possibly the average reader is looking for advice on obtaining happiness.