Trying to be happy can sometimes have the opposite effect.
A new review of previous psychology research, titled “The pursuit of happiness: pitfalls and promises,” by Iris Mauss, a UC Berkeley psychology professor, and Brett Ford, a University of Toronto psychology professor and Berkeley psychology alumna, explores this happiness paradox. The researchers examined findings from 20 years of research on the pursuit of happiness and offered a new perspective on what makes the pursuit successful or self-defeating.
Past psychological research suggests that although happiness is one of the most universal human goals, actively striving for it does not always make people happier — and can sometimes even backfire. For Mauss and Ford, this raised the question: What can people do to become happier?
With that question in mind, they reviewed psychological studies on happiness, and their findings suggested that the effects of pursuing happiness depend less on whether people seek happiness at all, and more on how they go about pursuing it.
Rather than viewing happiness as a single goal, the researchers break it down into five steps: setting a goal to be happy; regulating your emotions to be consistent with your goal; monitoring your progress toward the goal; responding to discrepancy between where you are and where you want to be; and the broader context within which that goal pursuit takes place.
Each step, they argue, can either support happiness or quietly undermine it.
“It is possible to attain greater happiness, but we need to be mindful of the when and how,” Mauss said.
The review organizes these approaches into two categories: pitfalls, which can derail happiness, and promises, which are more likely to sustain it.
One common pitfall arises during the emotion regulation step of pursuing happiness. Trying to push negative emotions under the rug or not express them can be harmful, Mauss said. This is referred to as “expressive suppression.”
“It [expressive suppression] often makes us feel disconnected from the people around us and makes us feel inauthentic,” Mauss said. “It can also make it less likely that we receive social support.”
Instead, we should focus on increasing positive emotions such as strength, connection and gratitude without suppressing negative ones, she said.
“Some of the best ways to do this involve other people: going out with friends and leaning on others to feel more positive,” Mauss said. “That seems to be a sustainable approach.”
Another pitfall involves over-monitoring happiness. Constantly checking in on how you feel can interfere with happiness, she said. Instead, we should strive to reach “flow,” which is characterized by being unaware of how you’re feeling in the moment.
“That feeling of flow is one of the most pleasant experiences people have and is very conducive to well-being and happiness,” Mauss said. “If you’re constantly asking yourself how you are feeling, you’re interfering with being in states of flow and being truly present.”
More effective monitoring strategies include reflection, such as thinking about what makes you happy at the beginning or end of the day, and “prioritizing positivity,” or intentionally structuring your life around positive experiences.
How we respond to being less happy than we want to be can also become a pitfall, especially if we focus too much on “what is not there and what ought to be there,” Mauss said.
“It can create a rule-bound mindset about happiness, leading you to think, ‘Am I happy enough? Should I be more happy?’” she said. “This infuses negativity into positive moments.”
Past psychology research has shown that people with this mindset are more likely to feel disappointed even during happy moments, she added. Over time, that disappointment can accumulate and ultimately make people less happy overall.
Instead, we should practice “emotional acceptance,” or letting your emotions and experiences be without judgement.
“People who are more accepting of their emotions tend to experience fewer negative emotions because they are not fighting their experiences,” Mauss said.
Broader context is also crucial to increasing happiness, she added. Systemic and societal factors play a significant role in people’s ability to pursue happiness. Improvements in life conditions, financial stability and social connection can all raise the baseline for well-being.
Mauss and Ford’s continuing research on this topic examines how people define happiness. One idea is that when people understand happiness in terms of meaning and purpose, compared to feeling good, it might be more conducive to actually attaining it.
