research on what makes us happy

January 31, 2024

Here’s the Happiness Research that Stands Up to Scrutiny

From meditation to smiling, researchers take a second look at studies claiming to reveal what makes us happy

By Amber Dance & Knowable Magazine

Yagi Studio/Getty Images

We all want to be happy — and for decades, psychologists have tried to figure out how we might achieve that blissful state. The field’s many surveys and experiments have pointed to a variety of approaches, from giving stuff away to quitting Facebook to forcing one’s face into a toothy grin.

But psychology has undergone serious upheaval over the last decade, as researchers realized that many studies were unreliable and unrepeatable. That has led to a closer scrutiny of psychological research methods, with the study of happiness no exception. So — what  really  makes us happy? Under today’s more careful microscope, some routes to happiness seem to hold up, while others appear not to, or have yet to re-prove themselves. Here’s what we know so far, and what remains to be reassessed,  according to a new analysis  in the  Annual Review of Psychology .

Put on a happy face

On supporting science journalism.

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

One long-standing hypothesis is that smiling makes you feel happier. In a classic 1988 study, researchers asked 92 Illinois undergraduates to hold a felt tip pen in their mouth either with their teeth, forcing an unnatural grin, or with their lips, making them pout. The students then looked at four examples of  The Far Side  comics . On average, those with the forced smiles  found the one-panel comics slightly funnier  than those with the forced pouts.

But when 17 different research labs got together to retest the pen-clench smile’s effects on 1,894 new participants, the finding  failed to hold up , the researchers reported in 2016.

The repetition study was part of a broader effort to counter  psychology’s reproducibility crisis , which in part has been attributed to the variety of ways in which researchers could examine and reanalyze their data until they arrived at publishable results. “It’s kind of like shooting a bunch of arrows at the wall and drawing the bullseye on after,” says Elizabeth Dunn, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and coauthor of the new  Annual Review of Psychology  paper.

One solution has been for scientists to publicly declare, or preregister, their analysis plans before they conduct their experiments. In other words, they draw the bullseye first. Dunn and her graduate student, Dunigan Folk, homed in on such preregistered studies in their analysis, which narrowed the vast field of happiness research to just 48 published papers. Even that small number is encouraging, says Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and executive director of the Center for Open Science, which aims to improve research reproducibility. “I was actually surprised that there were as many papers that qualified,” he says. “That really demonstrates that this area of research has adopted a lot of these new rigor-enhancing practices.”

Preregistration alone doesn’t guarantee that results will be correct, nor does it solve all of psychology’s reproducibility problems. Quality studies also require sound methods and large and diverse sets of participants, for example. And indeed, most of the papers reviewed were high quality in those features beyond just preregistration, Dunn says. Even under the regimen of renewed scrutiny, some of the paths to happiness held up, the researchers found — including practicing gratitude, acting sociable and spending money on other people.

Take gratitude. In one of the recent studies, researchers asked hundreds of parents to either write about how they spent their week, or pen a gratitude letter to someone they knew. Expressing gratitude  resulted in more positive moods . In another recent study, scientists asked more than 900 undergraduates to express gratitude in letters, texts or social media, or to list their daily activities. Those in the gratitude group  scored as happier and more satisfied  with their lives the following day. In both cases, it’s unclear how long these effects would persist.

Three different preregistered studies pointed to sociability as beneficial. In one, scientists assigned 71 adults to act extroverted — “bold, talkative, outgoing, active and assertive” — for a week, and another 76 to be “unassuming, sensitive, calm, modest and quiet.” Participants in the extroverted condition  reported better moods  during the study week, though the benefits were less for those who were naturally introverted.

And surprise! Smiling to promote happiness was also supported by new, preregistered research — once scientists switched to more natural grins. About two dozen labs from 19 different countries worked together to test the instruction to grip a pen in the teeth or to mimic the expression of a smiling person in nearly 4,000 subjects. The pen clenching still didn’t work, but people who were told to copy a smile  did report better moods . Remarkably, this was true  even if the subjects didn’t believe it would work , another team reported in 2023.

Researchers have also found that external agencies can promote people’s happiness. Giving people cash promoted life satisfaction, as did workplace interventions such as naps.

Dunn cautions, however, that participation in preregistered studies tends to yield small effects on happiness overall, in part because scientists can’t massage the data to get bigger numbers. If the interventions were a diet program, she says, users might drop about four pounds.

Nice ideas, poor results

Other well-known happiness approaches haven’t measured up to Dunn and Folk’s standards — at least, not yet. The researchers didn’t find clear evidence of benefits for volunteering, performing random acts of kindness or meditation. For example, a recent, preregistered study asked participants to perform acts of kindness for others, or for themselves, or simply to list what they did each day. Being kind to others over a four-week period  made no difference to well-being .

Dunn and Folk didn’t find any preregistered studies at all on  exercising  or spending  time in nature , two  oft-recommended strategies . That doesn’t mean those strategies don’t or can’t work, Dunn says — just that as the preregistered landscape now stands, research hasn’t weighed in. The pair considered only two preregistered studies on meditation, and did not include meditation research on people with diagnosed mental health problems.

Such rigor is admirable, but it also means one can miss things, says Simon Goldberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He studies the effects of meditation, including research among people who have  psychological problems such as depression and anxiety . He noted that because of Dunn and Folk’s strict criteria, they omitted hundreds of studies on  meditation’s benefits . “It’s, in the spirit of rigor, throwing lots of babies out with the bathwater,” he says. “It’s really very obvious that meditation training reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.”

Dunn agrees that the review only covered the tip of the iceberg of happiness research. But that tip should expand as more psychologists preregister their science as part of  what some call a renaissance  in the field. As Dunn and Folk conclude, “happiness research stands on the brink of an exciting new era.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine , an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter .

The Science of Happiness

Reviewed by Psychology Today Staff

Although happiness can feel like an amorphous concept, science has explored key pieces of the experience, such as which choices, activities, and mindsets lead to fulfillment, common misunderstandings of happiness, and theories that may explain the origin and attainment of well-being.

On This Page

• What Makes People Happy?
• Myths About Happiness
• Theories of Happiness

Finding satisfaction and contentment is a continual process. Psychologists have now identified many of the tenets that help individuals along that journey.

Happiness incorporates curiosity, and the ability to tolerate risk and anxiety to discover new passions and facets of identity. It involves a balance between momentary pleasure and longer-term striving toward goals. It is abetted by friends and family who can both celebrate accomplishments and provide support after failures. Happiness includes the ability to acknowledge and embrace every emotion, even the unpleasant ones. It involves seeing the big picture, rather than getting stuck in the details. Overall, being happy is to live with mindfulness, meaning, and purpose.

The key to lifelong happiness is taking time to cultivate small tweaks on a regular basis. Incorporating habits into your daily life such as keeping a gratitude journal, practicing kindness, nurturing optimism, learning to forgive, investing in relationships, finding flow activities, avoiding overthinking, savoring life’s joys, and committing to goals can make happiness a permanent fixture.

Some people are naturally more optimistic, positive, and content. Although genetics is, in fact, a key determinant of happiness, people who gravitate toward pessimism are able to change their outlook (to an extent) by reframing negative thoughts and preventing self-criticism .

Our genes may be what influences happiness the most. Behavioral geneticists and psychologists attribute about 50 percent of happiness to genetics, 10 percent to life circumstances, and 40 percent to personal choices. Even if people aren’t born with a bright outlook, committing to improving their happiness on a regular basis can make a difference.

Children and teens today have higher expectations for their life, yet income inequality and other factors make achieving success more difficult. Additionally more people value wealth over relationships than did previously, which can lead to diminished happiness in adulthood. These reasons and others may be why adults are less happy than they used to be .

People often want to avoid difficult emotions, so they reach for quick fixes like tasty treats or luxurious purchases. Those indulgences provide happiness, but only momentarily. Yet pinning all hopes of happiness on milestones like getting married, gaining fame, or becoming wealthy is also misleading. Lasting happiness occurs when we invest in meaningful goals, relationships, and values and develop skills to overcome distress.

People often believe that accomplishments like marriage and wealth will bring lasting happiness, and adverse experiences such as divorce or disease will bring unremitting sadness. But research reveals that bursts of happiness or sadness tied to specific life events are fairly short. Thoughts like “I’ll be happy when I get married” or “I’ll never recover from this diagnosis” turn out to be misperceptions .

People are surprisingly bad at anticipating their future happiness . They tend to overestimate how joyous or upsetting events will be: A promotion will not provide unending fulfillment and a breakup will not be hopelessly tragic. People also recall experiences by the beginning, end, and intense or “peak” moments, rather than by the experience as a whole.

Not at all. A meaningful life encompasses disappointments and loss. Difficult experiences can reveal our core values, motivate us to make change, and render happy moments even more joyous and special.

It seems logical to believe that more choices would lead to better outcomes. But too many choices can lead people to stress about the decision and wonder about the lost alternatives. This is referred to as the paradox of choice, a term coined by psychologist Barry Schwartz.

Many lottery winners wind up no happier than their peers down the road—and some face a distinct downturn, squandering their wealth, dealing with litigation, or navigating life with people who demand a share of the winnings. Yet research suggests that when lottery winners spend their money on basic necessities or moderate consumption, they feel more secure, fortunate, and happy .

Positive psychology is a school of thought devoted to understanding what leads people and communities to flourish. Five agreed-upon factors boost well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Beyond those overarching principles, specific models and concepts have emerged as well.

Every individual is born with a particular “happiness set point” or a baseline level of happiness, research suggests. After experiencing triumphs or tragedies, people adapt to their new circumstances and their emotions generally return to this genetically-determined level of well-being.

Commitment to compassion and altruism may help reset your happiness set point, as the trait most connected to long-term increases in life satisfaction. Helping others leads a person to be happier—perhaps due to higher self-esteem, a sense of self-worth, or a deeper sense of purpose, feeling that lives are important.

When people reach a milestone such as buying a new car or securing a raise, they have a jolt of happiness, but eventually return to baseline. This fuels the so-called hedonic treadmill, in which people continually believe “the next change” will bring happiness. But variety and appreciation can help keep happiness from fading.

The happiness pie is a model for the factors in life that determine happiness. The happiness pie proposes that 50 percent of happiness is due to genes, 10 percent is due to life circumstances, and 40 percent is due to the personal choices we make and activities we engage in to cultivate happiness.

When tracking down my lost AirPods, I met an Uber driver who surprised me with unexpected generosity.

We all create dramas out of events in our lives but confuse what our real role in them is.

Is your self-care truly recharging you or is it just a quick escape? Learn to spot the difference and make choices that leave you feeling genuinely refreshed and uplifted.

New research reveals that chasing happiness as a goal might actually lower well-being. Discover why focusing on meaningful activities could be a better path to a fulfilling life.

Pets do more than keep us company. Here are four research-backed ways pets improve mental health, proving there's real power in the "science of snuggles."

An abundance of romantic options stops us from compromising in choosing a partner but requires more compromise in ongoing relationships.

Learn how to develop a "discipline of happiness" by making mindful choices and creating healthy habits. Happiness is about making conscious choices that support well-being.

Why looking at well-being through the lens of developmental psychology is the key to understanding when, why, and how each of us can boost our well-being.

A Personal Perspective: You seldom hear people say, "I love the bass guitar in that song." But the bass holds the whole darn thing together. That's what purpose in life is like.

In general, women like being single more than men do. Thinking about this from the perspective of single people rather than couples enhances our understanding.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

It’s increasingly common for someone to be diagnosed with a condition such as ADHD or autism as an adult. A diagnosis often brings relief, but it can also come with as many questions as answers.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

What the Longest Study on Human Happiness Found Is the Key to a Good Life

The Harvard Study of Adult Development has established a strong correlation between deep relationships and well-being. The question is, how does a person nurture those deep relationships?

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic , Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       

T urn your mind for a moment to a friend or family member you cherish but don’t spend as much time with as you would like. This needn’t be your most significant relationship, just someone who makes you feel energized when you’re with them, and whom you’d like to see more regularly.

How often do you see that person? Every day? Once a month? Once a year? Do the math and project how many hours annually you spend with them. Write this number down and hang on to it.

For us, Bob and Marc, though we work closely together and meet every week by phone or video call, we see each other in person for only a total of about two days (48 hours) every year.

How does this add up for the coming years? Bob is 71 years old. Marc is 60. Let’s be (very) generous and say we will both be around to celebrate Bob’s 100th birthday. At two days a year for 29 years, that’s 58 days that we have left to spend together in our lifetimes.

Fifty-eight out of 10,585 days.

Of course, this is assuming a lot of good fortune, and the real number is almost certainly going to be lower.

Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. After starting with 724 participants—boys from disadvantaged and troubled families in Boston, and Harvard undergraduates—the study incorporated the spouses of the original men and, more recently, more than 1,300 descendants of the initial group. Researchers periodically interview participants, ask them to fill out questionnaires, and collect information about their physical health. As the study’s director (Bob) and associate director (Marc), we’ve been able to watch participants fall in and out of relationships, find success and failure at their jobs, become mothers and fathers. It’s the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done, and it’s brought us to a simple and profound conclusion: Good relationships lead to health and happiness. The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured.

From the June 2009 issue: What makes us happy?

We don’t always put our relationships first. Consider the fact that the average American in 2018 spent 11 hours every day on solitary activities such as watching television and listening to the radio. Spending 58 days over 29 years with a friend is infinitesimal compared with the 4,851 days that Americans will spend interacting with media during that same time period. Distractions are hard to avoid.

Thinking about these numbers can help us put our own relationships in perspective. Try figuring out how much time you spend with a good friend or family member. We don’t have to spend every hour with our friends, and some relationships work because they’re exercised sparingly. But nearly all of us have people in our lives whom we’d like to see more. Are you spending time with the people you most care about? Is there a relationship in your life that would benefit both of you if you could spend more time together? Many of these are untapped resources, waiting for us to put them to use. And, enriching these relationships can in turn nourish our minds and bodies.

Y ou don’t have to examine scientific findings to recognize that relationships affect you physically. All you have to do is notice the invigoration you feel when you believe that someone has really understood you during a good conversation, or the tension and distress you feel after an argument, or how little sleep you get during a period of romantic strife.

In this sense, having healthy, fulfilling relationships is its own kind of fitness—social fitness—and like physical fitness, it takes work to maintain. Unlike stepping on the scale, taking a quick look in the mirror, or getting readouts for blood pressure and cholesterol, assessing our social fitness requires a bit more sustained self-reflection. It requires stepping back from the crush of modern life, taking stock of our relationships, and being honest with ourselves about where we’re devoting our time and whether we are tending to the connections that help us thrive. Finding the time for this type of reflection can be hard, and sometimes it’s uncomfortable. But it can yield enormous benefits.

Many of our Harvard Study participants have told us that filling out questionnaires every two years and being interviewed regularly have given them a welcome perspective on their life and relationships. We ask them to really think about themselves and the people they love, and that process of self-reflection helps some of them.

Read: 10 practical ways to improve happiness

This is a practice that could help anyone. Looking in the mirror and thinking honestly about where your life stands is a first step in trying to live a good life. Noticing where you are can help put into relief where you would like to be. Having some reservations about this kind of self-reflection is understandable. Our study participants were not always keen on filling out our questionnaires, or eager to consider the larger picture of their life. Some would skip difficult questions or leave entire pages blank, and some would just not return certain surveys. Some even wrote comments in the margins of their questionnaires about what they thought of our requests. “What kinds of questions are these!?” is a response we received occasionally, often from participants who preferred not to think about difficulties in their life. The experiences of the people who skipped questions or entire questionnaires were also important, though—they were just as crucial in understanding adult development as the experiences of people eager to share. A lot of useful data and gems of experience were buried in the shadowed corners of their lives. We just had to go through a little extra effort to excavate them.

One of these people was a man we’ll call Sterling Ainsley. (We are using a pseudonym to protect his confidentiality as a study participant.)

S terling Ainsley was a hopeful guy. He graduated from Harvard in the 1940s and then served in World War II. After he left the service, he got a job as a scientist and retired in his 60s. When asked to describe his philosophy for getting through hard times, he said, “You try not to let life get to you. You remember your victories and take a positive attitude.”

The year was 1986. George Vaillant, the then-director of the study, was on a long interview trek, driving through the Rocky Mountains to visit the study’s participants who lived in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. Sterling had not returned the most recent survey, and there was some catching up to do. He met Vaillant at a hotel to give him a ride to the diner where Sterling wanted to do his scheduled interview. When Vaillant buckled himself into the passenger seat of Sterling’s car, the seat belt left a stripe of dust across his chest. “I was left to wonder,” he wrote, “the last time somebody had used it.”

Sterling was technically married, but his wife lived far away, and they hadn’t slept in the same room in years. They spoke only every few months.

Read: The six forces that fuel friendship

When asked why they had not gotten a divorce, he said, “I wouldn’t want to do that to the children,” even though his kids were grown and had children of their own. Sterling was proud of his kids and beamed when he spoke of them, saying they were the most important thing in his life. But he rarely saw them and seemed to prefer to keep his relationships with them thriving mostly in his imagination. Vaillant noted that Sterling seemed to be using optimism to push away some of his fears and avoid challenges in his life. Putting a positive spin on every matter and then pushing it out of his mind made it possible for him to believe that nothing was wrong, he was fine, he was happy, his kids didn’t need him.

He didn’t travel to see his son’s new home abroad, because he didn’t “want to be a burden”—even though he’d been learning a new language to prepare for the trip. He had another child who lived closer, but he hadn’t visited in more than a year. He didn’t have a relationship with his grandchildren, and he wasn’t in contact with any friends.

When asked about his older sister, Sterling seemed startled. “My sister?” he said.

Yes, the sister he had told the study so much about when he was younger.

Sterling thought about it for a long time, and then told Vaillant that it must have been decades since he last spoke with her. A frightened expression came over his face. “Would she still be living?” he said.

Sterling tried not to think about his relationships, and he was even less inclined to talk about them. This is a common experience. We don’t always know why we do things or why we don’t do things, and we may not understand what is holding us at a distance from the people in our life. Taking some time to look in the mirror can help. Sometimes there are needs inside of us that are looking for a voice, a way to get out. They might be things that we have never seen or articulated to ourselves.

This seemed to be the case with Sterling. Asked how he spent his evenings, he said he spent time with an elderly woman who lived in a nearby trailer. Each night he would walk over, and they’d watch TV and talk. Eventually she would fall asleep, and he would help her into bed and wash her dishes and close the shades before walking home. She was the closest thing he had to a confidant.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if she dies,” he said.

Listen to Robert Waldinger in conversation with Arthur Brooks and Rebecca Rashid on "How to Build a Happy Life":

L oneliness has a physical effect on the body. It can render people more sensitive to pain, suppress their immune system, diminish brain function, and disrupt sleep, which in turn can make an already lonely person even more tired and irritable. Research has found that, for older adults, loneliness is far more dangerous than obesity. Ongoing loneliness raises a person’s odds of death by 26 percent in any given year. A study in the U.K., the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, recently reported on the connections between loneliness and poorer health and self-care in young adults. This ongoing study includes more than 2,200 people born in England and Wales in 1994 and 1995. When they were 18, the researchers asked them how lonely they were. Those who reported being lonelier had a greater chance of facing mental-health issues, partaking in unsafe physical-health behaviors, and coping with stress in negative ways. Add to this the fact that a tide of loneliness is flooding through modern societies, and we have a serious problem. Recent stats should make us take notice.

In a study conducted online that sampled 55,000 respondents from across the world, one out of every three people of all ages reported that they often feel lonely. Among these, the loneliest group were 16-to-24-year-olds, 40 percent of whom reported feeling lonely “often or very often.” In the U.K., the economic cost of this loneliness—because lonely people are less productive and more prone to employment turnover—is estimated at more than £2.5 billion (about $3.1 billion) annually and helped lead to the establishment of a U.K. Ministry of Loneliness.

Read: Why do we look down on lonely people?

In Japan, 32 percent of adults expected to feel lonely most of the time during 2020. In the United States, a 2019 study suggested that three out of four adults felt moderate to high levels of loneliness. As of this writing, the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which separated us from one another on a massive scale and left many feeling more isolated than ever, are still being studied.

Alleviating this epidemic of loneliness is difficult because what makes one person feel lonely might have no effect on someone else. We can’t rely entirely on easily observed indicators such as whether or not one lives alone, because loneliness is a subjective experience. One person might have a significant other and too many friends to count and yet feel lonely, while another person might live alone and have a few close contacts and yet feel very connected. The objective facts of a person’s life are not enough to explain why someone is lonely. Regardless of your race or class or gender, the feeling resides in the difference between the kind of social contact you want and the social contact you actually have.

I t never hurts —especially if you’ve been feeling low—to take a minute to reflect on how your relationships are faring and what you wish could be different about them. If you’re the scheduling type, you could make it a regular thing; perhaps every year on New Year’s Day or the morning of your birthday, take a few moments to draw up your current social universe, and consider what you’re receiving, what you’re giving, and where you would like to be in another year. You could keep your chart or relationships assessment in a special place, so you know where to look the next time you want to peek at it to see how things have changed.

If nothing else, doing this reminds us of what’s most important. Repeatedly, when the participants in our study reached old age, they would make a point to say that what they treasured most were their relationships. Sterling Ainsley himself made that point. He loved his older sister deeply—but he lost touch with her. Some of his fondest memories were of his friends—whom he never contacted. There was nothing he cared more about than his children—whom he rarely saw. From the outside it might look like he didn’t care. That was not the case. Sterling was quite emotional in his recounting of his most cherished relationships, and his reluctance to answer certain study questions was clearly connected to the pain that keeping his distance had caused him over the years. Sterling never sat down to really think about how he might conduct his relationships or what he might do to properly care for the people he loved most.

Sterling’s life reminds us of the fragility of our connections, and it echoes the lessons of science: Relationships keep us happier and healthier throughout our life spans. We neglect our connections with others at our peril. Investing in our social fitness is possible each day, each week of our lives. Even small investments today in our relationships with others can create long-term ripples of well-being.

This article is adapted from Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz’s new book, The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness .

When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

About the Authors

TED is supported by ads and partners 00:00

What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness

• relationships
• work-life balance