The Promise of Sustainable Happiness

From ancient history to recent times, philosophers, writers, self-help gurus, and now scientists have taken up the challenge of how to foster greater happiness. This chapter discusses why some people are happier than others, focusing on the distinctive ways that happy and unhappy individuals construe themselves and others, respond to social comparisons, make decisions, and self-reflect. We suggest that, despite several barriers to increased well-being, less happy people can strive successfully to be happier by learning a variety of effortful strategies and practicing them with determination and commitment. The sustainable happiness model (Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005) provides a theoretical framework for experimental intervention research on how to increase and maintain happiness. According to this model, three factors contribute to an individual\u27s chronic happiness level: (a) the set point, (b) life circumstances, and (c) intentional activities, or effortful acts that are naturally variable and episodic. Such activities, which include committing acts of kindness, expressing gratitude or optimism, and savoring joyful life events, represent the most promising route to sustaining enhanced happiness. We describe a half-dozen randomized controlled interventions testing the efficacy of each of these activities in raising and maintaining well-being, as well as the mediators and moderators underlying their effects. Future researchers must endeavor not only to learn which particular practices make people happier, but how and why they do so.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/psychology_books/1010/thumbnail.jp

Why are some people happier than others? The role of cognitive and motivational processes in well-being.

Addressing the question of why some people are happier than others is important for both theoretical and practical reasons and should be a central goal of a comprehensive positive psychology. Following a construal theory of happiness, the author proposes that multiple cognitive and motivational processes moderate the impact of the objective environment on well-being. Thus, to understand why some people are happier than others, one must understand the cognitive and motivational processes that serve to maintain, and even enhance, enduring happiness and transient mood. The author's approach has been to explore hedonically relevant psychological processes, such as social comparison, dissonance reduction, self-reflection, self-evaluation, and person perception, in chronically happy and unhappy individuals. In support of a construal framework, self-rated happy and unhappy people have been shown to differ systematically in the particular cognitive and motivational strategies they use. Promising research directions for positive psychology in pursuit of the sources of happiness, as well as the implications of the construal approach for prescriptions for enhancing well-being, are discussed

The association between Extraversion and well-being is limited to one facet.

ObjectiveMõttus argues that effects should not be attributed to traits if they are driven by particular facets or items. We apply this reasoning to investigate the relationship between facets and items of Extraversion and well-being.MethodWe analyzed five cross-sectional datasets (total N = 1,879), with facet- and item-level correlations and SEM.ResultsWe found that the correlation between the energy level facet and well-being was solely responsible for the association between Extraversion and well-being. Neither sociability nor assertiveness were uniquely related to well-being when energy level was included as a predictor. Thus, the correlations between well-being and sociability and between well-being and assertiveness can be almost fully explained by these constructs' relationships with energy level.ConclusionsWe conclude that the link between Extraversion and well-being should be attributed to the energy level facet rather than generalized to the trait level

Enhancing Social Connectedness in Anxiety and Depression Through Amplification of Positivity: Preliminary Treatment Outcomes and Process of Change.

BackgroundAnxiety and depressive disorders are often characterized by perceived social disconnection, yet evidence-based treatments produce only modest improvements in this domain. The well-established link between positive affect (PA) and social connectedness suggests that directly targeting PA in treatment may be valuable.MethodA secondary analysis of a waitlist-controlled trial (N=29) was conducted to evaluate treatment response and process of change in social connectedness within a 10-session positive activity intervention protocol-Amplification of Positivity (AMP)-designed to increase PA in individuals seeking treatment for anxiety or depression (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02330627). Perceived social connectedness and PA/negative affect (NA) were assessed throughout treatment. Time-lagged multilevel mediation models examined the process of change in affect and connectedness throughout treatment.ResultsThe AMP group displayed significantly larger improvements in social connectedness from pre- to post-treatment compared to waitlist; improvements were maintained through 6-month follow-up. Within the AMP group, increases in PA and decreases in NA both uniquely predicted subsequent increases in connectedness throughout treatment. However, experiencing heightened NA throughout treatment attenuated the effect of changes in PA on connectedness. Improvements in connectedness predicted subsequent increases in PA, but not changes in NA.ConclusionsThese preliminary findings suggest that positive activity interventions may be valuable for enhancing social connectedness in individuals with clinically impairing anxiety or depression, possibly through both increasing positive emotions and decreasing negative emotions

Culture Matters When Designing a Successful Happiness-Increasing Activity: A Comparison of the United States and South Korea

Research shows that performing positive activities, such as expressing gratitude and doing acts of kindness, boosts happiness. But do specific positive activities work equally well across cultures? Our study examined the role of culture–activity fit by testing two positive activities across two cultures. Participants from the United States (n = 250) and South Korea (n = 270) were randomly assigned to express gratitude, perform kind acts, or engage in a neutral activity for the first half of a 6-week positive activity intervention. Multilevel growth modeling analyses revealed that the effect of practicing gratitude or kindness was moderated by culture: U.S. participants increased in well-being (WB) from both activities, γ11 = 0.19, SE = 0.06, t(511) = 3.04, p = .0006; γ12= 0.11, SE = 0.06, t(511) = 1.73, p = .03 (compared with the control group), but South Korean participants benefited significantly less from practicing gratitude than did U.S. participants, γ13 = −0.24, SE = 0.07, t(511) = −3.36, p = .002. South Korean participants, however, showed similar increases in WB as did U.S. participants when performing kind acts, γ14 = −0.06, SE = 0.07, t(511) = −0.82, ns. Finally, although greater self-reported effort yielded significantly larger increases in WB for U.S. participants, the effect of effort was not as strong for South Korean participants. We posit that, due to their dialectical philosophical tradition, South Koreans might have been more prone to feel mixed emotions (e.g., indebtedness and gratitude) while engaging in the gratitude letter activity than did U.S. participant

Becoming Happier Takes Both a Will and a Proper Way: An Experimental Longitudinal Intervention to Boost Well-Being

An 8-month-long experimental study examined the immediate and longer term effects of regularly practicing two assigned positive activities (expressing optimism and gratitude) on well-being. More important, this intervention allowed us to explore the impact of two metafactors that are likely to influence the success of any positive activity: whether one self-selects into the study knowing that it is about increasing happiness and whether one invests effort into the activity over time. Our results indicate that initial self-selection makes a difference, but only in the two positive activity conditions, not the control, and that continued effort also makes a difference, but, again, only in the treatment conditions. We conclude that happiness interventions are more than just placebos, but that they are most successful when participants know about, endorse, and commit to the intervention

Measuring eudaimonic and non-eudaimonic goods in the pursuit of the good life: The Riverside Eudaimonia Scale and the Rich & Sexy Well-Being Scale

Well-being science has largely focused on subjective well-being, defined in terms of life satisfaction and positive and negative emotions. However, some philosophical accounts of well-being, like “eudaimonia” accounts, emphasize the attainment of goods, such as having deep social relationships and achieving one’s creative potential. We supplement psychological measures of eudaimonia by developing two self-report measures of well-being informed by the philosophical literature. The Riverside Eudaimonia Scale (RES) was designed to measure people’s perceptions of their eudaimonic well-being along several dimensions emphasized in the philosophical literature on eudaimonia. The Rich & Sexy Well-Being Scale (RSWBS) was designed to measure people’s perceptions of their attainment of other commonly valued goods that have received less attention in the literature on eudaimonic well-being: sex life, wealth, personal physical beauty, and social status. In three studies, we develop and validate these scales