Summary: Obsessing over personal happiness can actually decrease life satisfaction, according to new research. In three studies involving over 1,800 participants, individuals who judged their own happiness reported lower well-being, increased negativity, and more disappointment in positive events.
While the pursuit of happiness itself was not harmful, constant self-judgment about happiness levels was linked to greater depressive symptoms. The findings suggest embracing emotions with acceptance, rather than constantly evaluating happiness, may enhance well-being.
Key Facts:
- Impact on Well-being: People who constantly evaluate their happiness tend to experience lower life satisfaction and greater depressive symptoms.
- Negativity About Positivity: Participants who focused on judging their happiness felt more negative about positive events.
- Acceptance Over Judgment: Accepting emotions, rather than judging them, may lead to better psychological well-being.
Source: APA
Judging how happy you are could backfire and negatively impact life satisfaction and psychological well-being, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
In three experiments comprising more than 1,800 participants, researchers found that having concerns or judgments about one’s own level of happiness were associated with lower well-being, due in part to greater negativity and disappointment about positive events.
The research was published in the journal Emotion.
Thinking too much about one’s own level of happiness could be related to fears about not measuring up or not being as happy as other people, said lead researcher Felicia Zerwas, PhD, who was a doctoral student at the University of California-Berkeley during this research and is now a postdoctoral researcher at New York University.
“There are plenty of societal pressures, at least within the United States, which encourage the fallacy that people must feel happy all of the time to achieve greater well-being,” she said.
“Overall, allowing yourself to experience your emotions, whether they are positive or negative, with an accepting attitude could be a useful tool for pursuing happiness and increasing well-being.”
Contrary to some previous studies, the current research found that the pursuit of happiness, or viewing happiness as a very important goal, didn’t have any detrimental impacts on well-being.
However, judging one’s own level of happiness did. The research included various samples of participants, including Yale University students, community members from Denver and Berkeley, California, and online studies with participants from the United States and Canada.
The participants answered questions about their beliefs about happiness, as well as their psychological well-being and depressive symptoms.
Being concerned about one’s own happiness was associated with lower overall life satisfaction and psychological well-being, as well as greater depressive symptoms.
The research also found that having concerns about one’s own happiness was associated with greater negativity about positive events.
“Having high expectations for one’s happiness can be detrimental because it makes it more difficult to achieve the level of happiness that we are expecting from a positive event,” Zerwas said.
About this happiness and psychology research news
Author: James Sliwa
Source: APA
Contact: James Sliwa – APA
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
“Unpacking the Pursuit of Happiness: Being Concerned About Happiness but Not Aspiring to Happiness Is Linked With Negative Meta-Emotions and Worse Well-Being” by Felicia Zerwas et al. Emotion
Abstract
Unpacking the Pursuit of Happiness: Being Concerned About Happiness but Not Aspiring to Happiness Is Linked With Negative Meta-Emotions and Worse Well-Being
Previous work suggests that sometimes the more people value happiness, the less happy they are. For whom and why is this the case?
To answer these questions, we examined a model of happiness pursuit that disentangles two previously conflated individual differences related to valuing happiness.
The first individual difference operates at the strength of the value itself and involves viewing happiness as a very important goal (i.e., aspiring to happiness).
The second individual difference occurs later in the process of pursuing happiness and involves judging one’s levels of happiness (i.e., concern about happiness).
This model predicts that aspiring to happiness is relatively innocuous.
Conversely, being concerned about happiness leads people to judge their happiness, thereby infusing negativity (i.e., negative meta-emotions) into potentially positive events, which, in turn, interferes with well-being.
We tested these hypotheses using cross-sectional, daily-diary, and longitudinal methods in student and community samples, collected between 2009 and 2020, which are diverse in gender, ethnicity, age, and geographic location (Ntotal = 1,815).
In Studies 1a and 1b, aspiring to happiness and concern about happiness represented distinct individual differences.
In Study 2, concern about happiness (but not aspiring to happiness) was associated with lower well-being cross-sectionally and longitudinally.
In Study 3, these links between concern about happiness and worse well-being were partially accounted for by experiencing greater negative meta-emotions during daily positive events.
These findings suggest that highly valuing happiness is not inherently problematic; however, concern and judgment about one’s happiness can undermine it.
