Pursuing Happiness as a Goal Often Fails to Make People Happier…

Do the outcomes of seeking happiness seem to make people more unhappy? If this is a question that has been on your mind, then this blog spot should be an excellent reading for you, as reliable scientific research may indeed support your thoughts.

Happiness is one of the greatest abstract concepts to consider, and this article in no way seeks to disprove that. Instead, what we hope to reveal is that placing it as the primary pursuit or goal most often leads to greater unhappiness.

An existing review supports this claim. Iris Mauss reviewed two studies on this issue (Mauss et al, 2011). In the first study, female participants who valued happiness more (than less) reported lower levels of happiness when experiencing low but not high levels of life stress. In the second, female participants who were experimentally induced to value happiness responded less positively to a happy emotion induction than a control group, but not to a sad emotion induction. The effect was mediated by disappointment over one’s own feelings.

Unlike previous studies that measured participants’ happiness at a single point in time, this study used a longitudinal design and thus allowed a much more dynamic analysis of changes in happiness and well-being over several years. The data collection for this study spanned the years from 2019 to 2023. In each year, participants were asked to indicate how important happiness was to them and to provide information on their life satisfaction and positive and negative emotional experiences.

The findings were intriguing because participants who consistently prioritized happiness reported greater well-being overall. However, when the researchers examined the impact of changes in the priority given to happiness on the life satisfaction dynamic over time, a more complex picture emerged. Specifically, Huang Kuan-Ju (Huang, 2024) found that an increase in focus on happiness from one year to the next did not predict an increase in life satisfaction in the following year. Rather, it was associated with mixed emotional experiences most often captured by simultaneous increases of positive and negative emotions.

Huang suggests this may result from the pressure that arises when happiness is placed as a significant life goal. When people focus significantly on achieving happiness, they possibly develop psychological stress and implicit pressure to succeed in this pursuit of happiness. This focus may lead to what Huang refers to as “happiness concern,” which is a form of anxiety and self-doubt associated with one’s ability to attain happiness. Ironically, such concern over achieving happiness might have reverse effects by lowering one’s well-being due to the sense of failure or discontent derived from not being able to achieve expected happiness.

As happiness seems to act like our shadow, the farther away we run from it, the faster we chase it; perhaps it is not worth chasing happiness. Instead, one should pursue activities highly engaging, connected to a purpose, and yield satisfying results for some people around us. In the process of doing this, you can turn around and be surprised to find happiness right there by your side.

No, different people have their perspectives and views on happiness. What is hell for one person might be heaven for another. Everyone has to find their unique niche in which they can grow and bloom.

No, you are not. Nobody is happy all the time. Just like the tide, there is an ebb and flow to happiness. Expecting to be happy at every point in time is unrealistic.

References

Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? [corrected] Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 11(4), 807–815. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022010

Huang K. J. (2024). Does Valuing Happiness Lead to Well-Being? Psychological science, 35(10), 1155–1163. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976241263784