If you don’t feel free, chances are you don’t feel happy either.

Both of these words, free and happy, are pretty loose in their official definitions. Scientific studies have used various metrics to measure happiness; self-reporting, brain waves, psychological evaluations, and family member surveys. As for freedom, the studies mainly use the self-reported metric, how free a person feels.

When people feel less restrained by outside forces, when people feel that their life is their own to do as they please, they are happier.