The DOI matches its Crossref record; 85 of the 85 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Optimum Level of Well-Being: Can People Be Too Happy?
Abstract
Psychologists, self-help gurus, and parents all work to make their clients, friends, and children happier. Recent research indicates that happiness is functional and generally leads to success. However, most people are already above neutral in happiness, which raises the question of whether higher levels of happiness facilitate more effective functioning than do lower levels. Our analyses of large survey data and longitudinal data show that people who experience the highest levels of happiness are the most successful in terms of close relationships and volunteer work, but that those who experience slightly lower levels of happiness are the most successful in terms of income, education, and political participation. Once people are moderately happy, the most effective level of happiness appears to depend on the specific outcomes used to define success, as well as the resources that are available.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Fredrickson, B. L. (2001) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037//0003-066x.56.3.218 · Cited by 18,025
Happiness is everything, or is it? Explorations on the meaning of psychological well-being.
Ryff, C. D. (1989) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.57.6.1069 · Cited by 14,847
Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress.
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R. E., & Smith, H. L. (1999) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.125.2.276 · Cited by 12,910
Self-citationThe expression of the emotions in man and animals.
Darwin, C. (1872) · J. Murray eBooks · doi:10.1037/10001-000 · Cited by 11,657
On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141 · Cited by 11,567
(1994) · DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library) · Cited by 10,542
DESCARTES' ERROR: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
Marg, E. (1995) · Optometry and Vision Science · doi:10.1002/j.1538-9235.1995.tb03988.x · Cited by 8,118
Well-being : the foundations of hedonic psychology
Kahneman, D. J., Diener, E. F., & Schwarz, N. (1999) · Cited by 7,466
Self-citationThe benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success?
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.131.6.803 · Cited by 7,143
Self-citationSubjective well-being. The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index
Diener, E. (2000) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.34 · Cited by 7,121
Self-citation
Cited by
Advances in subjective well-being research
Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Tay, L. (2018) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0307-6 · Cited by 2,003
Self-citationHappiness unpacked: Positive emotions increase life satisfaction by building resilience.
Cohn, M. A., Fredrickson, B. L., Brown, S. L., Mikels, J. A., & Conway, A. M. (2009) · Emotion · doi:10.1037/a0015952 · Cited by 1,713
Subjective Well-Being: A General Overview
Diener, E., & Ryan, K. (2009) · South African Journal of Psychology · doi:10.1177/008124630903900402 · Cited by 1,381
Self-citationJingle, Jangle, and Conceptual Haziness: Evolution and Future Directions of the Engagement Construct
Reschly, A. L., & Christenson, S. L. (2012) · Handbook of Research on Student Engagement · doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7_1 · Cited by 980
Boehm, J. K., & Kubzansky, L. D. (2012) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/a0027448 · Cited by 909
Metadata
- Authors
- Oishi, S., Diener, E., & Lucas, R. E.
- Venue
- Perspectives on Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2007-12
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 346-360
- ISSN
- 1745-6916 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-6924
- OpenAlex
- W2152274216
- Cited by
- 417
- References
- 85
- FWCI
- 22.20
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Optimum Level of Well-Being: Can People Be Too Happy? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00048.x
- The paper
- Oishi, S., Diener, E., & Lucas, R. E. (2007). The Optimum Level of Well-Being: Can People Be Too Happy? Perspectives on Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00048.x
Data sources
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.
