Extremely valuing happiness often predicts worse well-being and mental health

The paradox of pursuing happiness. Felicia KZerwas, Brett Q Ford. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 39, June 2021, Pages 106-112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.03.006

Highlights

• Extremely valuing happiness often predicts worse well-being and mental health.

• A cybernetic model can articulate the process of happiness pursuit.

• Each core component of the pursuit of happiness can go awry in multiple ways.

• People also hold happiness-related traits that influence the pursuit of happiness.

• Trait-level concern about happiness may especially hinder the happiness pursuit.

Abstract: Most people want to feel happy; however, some evidence suggests that the more people value happiness, the less happy they are. To make sense of this paradox, we leverage existing models of goal pursuit to identify core components of the process of pursuing happiness, highlighting how each of these components may go awry. Then, we introduce two fundamental traits that put pressure on the core components of the process and in turn further influence the outcome of pursuing happiness. Together, this nuanced approach to the pursuit of happiness across levels of analysis helps us organize existing literature and make better predictions about when, why, and for whom the pursuit of happiness may backfire and when it is likely to succeed.