Happiness, we are told, is the most important thing in the world. But we’re pretty bad at knowing how to find it.
From avoiding talking to strangers to buying things to make ourselves feel better, we do all kinds of things to feel happier that don’t work. Even odder: Trying to feel happier might backfire. Here are some interesting scientific findings from the world of happiness research.
Note that this article isn’t intended to be any kind of mental health advice—it’s just a few interesting scientific findings that relate to happiness. If you suffer from depression, or even just struggle to feel happy sometimes, consulting with a mental health professional is never a bad idea.
You should talk to strangers, actually
Humans are social animals, but we’re bad at knowing that about ourselves. A 2014 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology by Nicholas Epley, from the University of Chicago, and Juliana Schroeder, from the University of California, found a curious gap between how people imagine their needs and what they actually want.
The researchers asked commuters on public transit to do one of three things: intentionally connect with a stranger during the trip, remain disconnected, or commute the way they normally would. Participants in the first group—that is, the ones who intentionally connected with someone—reported a more positive experience. What’s interesting is that participants predicted the opposite–that connecting with someone would make their commute worse.
A 2022 research review by those two researchers, among others, found the people consistently underestimate the benefit of social engagement, to their own detriment. People, it seems, believe talking to strangers will make their life worse, even though the opposite is true.
A 2020 meta-analysis published in Self and Identity tried to explain why people avoid talking to strangers, and found there are many reasons. “People’s worries about not enjoying the conversation, not liking their partner, and not being able to carry out the conversation, as well as their worries about their partner not enjoying the conversation, not liking them, and not being able to carry out the conversation were all inter-correlated, and related to actual talking behavior,” the study says. “A comparison of pre-conversation predictions to post-conversation experiences revealed that all of people’s fears were vastly overblown.”
Basically, if you want to feel just a little bit better, try striking up a conversation with someone you don’t know. Research suggests it will help.
Time is (more important than) money
Questions about money and happiness are cliche, of course, but most people imagine they’d be happier with more of it. But there’s another resource that, research suggests, has more to do with happiness: time.
In a 2019 study published in Science Advances, researchers asked around 1,000 university grads whether they valued time or money more, then followed up with them a year later. The results were clear: “Respondents who valued time over money chose more intrinsically rewarding activities and were happier one year after graduation.”
Constant focus on money, to the exclusion of other interests, doesn’t lead to happiness. That isn’t to say that money can’t make you happier—research suggests it can. It just does a better job when you spend it in the right ways. A 2018 research review by researchers at UCLA and Harvard Business School found buying physical objects, by and large, doesn’t increase happiness. What does? “Prosocial spending, experiential purchases, and buying time,” according to the study.
Prosocial spending refers to spending money to benefit others—buying a gift, say, or giving to charity. Experiential purchases refer to using money to experience something, like a vacation or attending a live event. And buying time refers to outsourcing tasks—hiring a cleaner, for example. “Taking just the four spending categories reviewed here, research suggests that while material purchases typically do not pay off in happiness, prosocial spending, experiential purchases, and buying time do,” the paper concludes.
Now, obviously, if you’re struggling to get by, this advice isn’t particularly relevant. If you have some spending money, though, and want to use it to feel happier, maybe forgo physical objects in favor or something prosocial, experiential, or time-saving.
Chasing happiness doesn’t work
It may sound tragic, but trying to be happier might backfire. Happiness, it turns out, isn’t something you can pursue (if that sounds unpatriotic, sorry—I’m Canadian.)
A 2011 paper published by researchers at the University of Denver and two other institutions found that valuing happiness “can be self-defeating.” The paper outlined two studies. In the first, the participants (all women) who stated they valued happiness “reported lower happiness when under conditions of low, but not high, life stress.” The researchers state this suggests “valuing happiness is not necessarily linked to greater happiness” and could even do the opposite.
The second experiment was a little sneakier. Participants in a lab were led to believe they were in a study about TV programming. Some read a paragraph beforehand about the importance of happiness; the control group was shown the same paragraph, but the word “happiness” was replaced with “making accurate judgments.” Participants were then shown a randomly selected, two-minute film clip, either happy or sad. The odd thing: “Participants who were led to value happiness more were in a less positive emotional state than participants in the control condition after the happy clip.” In other words, being told to value happiness made subjects less capable of valuing happiness. “These findings are consistent with the idea that valuing happiness leads to less happiness by setting people up for disappointment,” the study states.
What’s a happiness-pursuing person to do? “It may be advantageous to encourage people to follow John Stuart Mill’s suggestion not to have their mind fixed on their personal happiness,” the study concludes, stating that “decreased valuing of happiness might be one of the active ingredients of acceptance of negative emotional experiences.”
A 2017 paper published by researchers at the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley came to similar conclusions. The research, which found that “habitually accepting mental experiences broadly predicted psychological health,” concludes that “striving to control mental experiences, like emotion, can result in worse emotional experiences and worse psychological health.”
That’s not to say that you can’t do things to feel happier. But focusing on happiness, and trying to control your emotions, isn’t likely to work.
