The DOI matches its Crossref record; 69 of the 69 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness.
Open accessAbstract
Happiness is a key ingredient of well-being. It is thus reasonable to expect that valuing happiness will have beneficial outcomes. We argue that this may not always be the case. Instead, valuing happiness could be self-defeating, because the more people value happiness, the more likely they will feel disappointed. This should apply particularly in positive situations, in which people have every reason to be happy. Two studies support this hypothesis. In Study 1, female participants who valued happiness more (vs. less) reported lower happiness when under conditions of low, but not high, life stress. In Study 2, compared to a control group, female participants who were experimentally induced to value happiness reacted less positively to a happy, but not a sad, emotion induction. This effect was mediated by participants' disappointment at their own feelings. Paradoxically, therefore, valuing happiness may lead people to be less happy just when happiness is within reach.
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Aldao, A. (2013) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691612459518 · Cited by 948
Personality, Well-Being, and Health*
Friedman, H. S., & Kern, M. L. (2014) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115123 · Cited by 530
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Metadata
- Authors
- Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S.
- Venue
- Emotion
- Published
- 2011-08
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 807-815
- ISSN
- 1528-3542 (ISSN-L)
- 1931-1516
- OpenAlex
- W2108766910
- Cited by
- 401
- References
- 69
- FWCI
- 23.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
