The cognitive and hedonic costs of dwelling on achievement-related negative experiences: Implications for enduring happiness and unhappiness.

Increasing evidence suggests that multiple cognitive and motivational processes underlie individual differences in happiness (Lyubomirsky, 2001, 2008). One behavior that is associated with (un)happiness is self-reflection or dwelling. We hypothesized that unhappy individuals would be inclined to dwell about themselves, and that this behavior would have a variety of adverse consequences. Three studies tested the prediction that, unlike their happier peers, unhappy participants would be sensitive to unfavorable achievement feedback, likely to dwell about its implications and, hence, show impaired attention during important academic tasks. The results of Studies 1 and 2 showed that unhappy participants who had “failed” relative to peers subsequently displayed increased interfering thoughts; spent the most time performing a portion of the graduate record examination; and later demonstrated impaired reading comprehension. Study 3 experimentally induced versus inhibiting dwelling and found that the manipulation only impacted unhappy students. Implications of our results for the consequences of dwelling for work and social functioning, as well as for detracting from enduring happiness, are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happiness and Chance: A Reappraisal of the Psychoanalytic Conception of Suffering.

Freud's allusion to the goal of analysis as that of transforming neurotic misery into common unhappiness implies that the outcome of treatment is not concerned with happiness but with the reduction of suffering. In fact, there is no single standard for happiness but many, some of which bear Freud's thesis out whereas others contradict it. The author examines Freud's views about happiness and compares them with other conceptions of it from antiquity that influenced Freud's distinction between pathological and ordinary suffering. It is argued that psychoanalysis is indeed concerned with the pursuit of happiness but is obliged to treat it in Zen-like fashion because of the typical analysand's resistance to enduring the sacrifices that the pursuit of happiness entails. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happiness versus sadness as a determinant of thought confidence in persuasion: A self-validation analysis.

The present research introduces a new mechanism by which emotion can affect evaluation. On the basis of the self-validation hypothesis (R. E. Petty, P. Bri?ol, & Z. L. Tormala, see record 2002-12575-003), the authors predicted and found that emotion can influence evaluative judgments by affecting the confidence people have in their thoughts to a persuasive message. In each study, participants first read a strong or weak persuasive communication. After listing their thoughts about the message, participants were induced to feel happy or sad. Relative to sad participants, those put in a happy state reported more thought confidence. As a consequence, the effect of argument quality on attitudes was greater for happy than for sad participants. These self-validation effects generalized across different emotion inductions, different persuasion topics, and different measures of thought confidence. In one study, happy and sad conditions each differed from a neutral affect control. Most important, these metacognitive effects of emotion only occurred under high elaboration conditions. In contrast, individuals with relatively low motivation to think showed a main effect of emotion on attitudes, regardless of argument quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Always look on the broad side of life: Happiness increases the breadth of sensory memory.

Research has shown that positive affect increases the breadth of information processing at several higher stages of information processing, such as attentional selection or knowledge activation. In the present study, we examined whether these affective influences are already present at the level of transiently storing incoming information in sensory memory, before attentional selection takes place. After inducing neutral, happy, or sad affect, participants performed an iconic memory task which measures visual sensory memory. In all conditions, iconic memory performance rapidly decreased with increasing delay between stimulus presentation and test, indicating that affect did not influence the decay of iconic memory. However, positive affect increased the amount of incoming information stored in iconic memory. In particular, our results showed that this occurs due to an elimination of the spatial bias typically observed in iconic memory. Whereas performance did not differ at positions where observers in the neutral and negative conditions showed the highest performance, positive affect enhanced performance at all positions where observers in the neutral and negative conditions were relatively “blind.” These findings demonstrate that affect influences the breadth of information processing already at earliest processing stages, suggesting that affect may produce an even more fundamental shift in information processing than previously believed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Interpersonal Effects of Anger and Happiness in Negotiations.

Three experiments investigated the interpersonal effects of anger and happiness in negotiations. In the course of a computer-mediated negotiation, participants received information about the emotional state (anger, happiness, or none) of their opponent. Consistent with a strategic-choice perspective, Experiment 1 showed that participants conceded more to an angry opponent than to a happy one. Experiment 2 showed that this effect was caused by tracking--participants used the emotion information to infer the other's limit, and they adjusted their demands accordingly. However, this effect was absent when the other made large concessions. Experiment 3 examined the interplay between experienced and communicated emotion and showed that angry communications (unlike happy ones) induced fear and thereby mitigated the effect of the opponent's experienced emotion. These results suggest that negotiators are especially influenced by their opponent's emotions when they are motivated and able to consider them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pessimism and depression east and west.

Criticizes the comparative study of depression and pessimism in East and West Germany by H. M. Zullow et al (see record 1989-04985-001). The study used concepts cross-culturally whose meanings may be culturally determined and which may differ between these societies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happiness and memory: Affective significance of endowment and contrast.

Three studies (two conducted in Israel and one in the United States) examined associations between self-rated dispositional happiness and tendencies to treat memories of positive and negative events as sources of enhanced or attenuated happiness through the use of “endowment” and “contrast.” Although participants generally endorsed items describing happiness-enhancing tendencies more than happiness-diminishing ones, self-reported happiness was associated with greater endorsement of “positive endowment” items and less endorsement of “negative endowment” items, and also with less endorsement of items that involved contrasting the present with happier times in the past. Only in the American sample, however, was happiness associated with greater endorsement of items that involved contrasting the present with less happy times in the past. These data suggest that relatively unhappy people show somewhat conflicting memorial tendencies vis-à-vis happiness, whereas very happy people show simpler, and less conflicting, tendencies. These findings augment the existing literatures on the affective consequences of memory, which have been concerned more with mood than with temperament and/or have dealt only with a subset of the endowment and contrast tendencies explored in the present work. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The mindful way through depression: Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness.

Reviews the book The mindful way through depression: Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness by J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teasdale, Zindel V. Segal and Jon Kabat-Zinn (see record 2007-10791-000). This book is written as a lay companion piece to the therapist manual Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse by Zindel Segal, Mark Williams, and John Teasdale (2002). Part 1 begins with a discussion of mind, body, and emotion. In chapter 1, the authors present their theory on the recurrence of depression, illustrating patterns of thought and behaviour that will be very familiar to readers with a history of depression. Part 2 of the book explores specific techniques to begin cultivating the mindful "being mode" and incorporating it into everyday life and formal practice. Traditional practices such as mindfulness of taste, breathing, and bodily sensations, are introduced with detailed instructions that parallel the instructions on the accompanying CD. Part 3 explores the more difficult areas of mindfulness of feelings and thoughts. Finally, the "3-min breathing space" is introduced as a technique to help bring the formal practice into the everyday realm. This involves three steps and can be used at any time; most helpful may be during a crisis situation or shortly thereafter. The book ends with a detailed week-by-week schedule of chapter readings, practices to engage in and CD tracks for daily guided meditations. Overall, the reader is left feeling hopeful and excited about the possibility of being truly free from chronic unhappiness and fully alive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cultural affordances and emotional experience: Socially engaging and disengaging emotions in Japan and the United States.

The authors hypothesized that whereas Japanese culture encourages socially engaging emotions (e.g., friendly feelings and guilt), North American culture fosters socially disengaging emotions (e.g., pride and anger). In two cross-cultural studies, the authors measured engaging and disengaging emotions repeatedly over different social situations and found support for this hypothesis. As predicted, Japanese showed a pervasive tendency to reportedly experience engaging emotions more strongly than they experienced disengaging emotions, but Americans showed a reversed tendency. Moreover, as also predicted, Japanese subjective well-being (i.e., the experience of general positive feelings) was more closely associated with the experience of engaging positive emotions than with that of disengaging emotions. Americans tended to show the reversed pattern. The established cultural differences in the patterns of emotion suggest the consistent and systematic cultural shaping of emotion over time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related changes in detecting happiness: Discriminating between enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles.

The present study investigated age-related changes in the ability to discriminate between distinctions in the emotion underlying enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles, both when making explicit decisions about feelings of happiness and when making social judgments of approachability. No age differences were found in the ability to discriminate between these two types of smile. However, older adults demonstrated a greater bias toward reporting that any smiling individual was feeling happy. Older adults were also more likely to choose to approach an individual who was displaying a nonenjoyment smile. Implications of these findings for older adults’ interpersonal functioning are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experientialism, Materialism, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Previous research indicates that materialistic aspirations are negatively associated with happiness and psychological health. Recent research extends these findings by demonstrating that allocating discretionary resources toward life experiences makes people happier than allocating discretionary resources toward material possessions. Respondents to various surveys have indicated that purchases made with the intention of acquiring life experiences make them happier than purchases made with the intention of acquiring material possessions. Thinking about experiential purchases has also been shown to produce more positive feelings than thinking about material purchases. Other studies suggest that experiential purchases make people happier because they are more open to positive reinterpretations, are more resistant to disadvantageous comparisons, and foster successful social relationships more than material purchases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pursuing Happiness: The Architecture of Sustainable Change.

The pursuit of happiness is an important goal for many people. However, surprisingly little scientific research has focused on the question of how happiness can be increased and then sustained, probably because of pessimism engendered by the concepts of genetic determinism and hedonic adaptation. Nevertheless, emerging sources of optimism exist regarding the possibility of permanent increases in happiness. Drawing on the past well-being literature, the authors propose that a person's chronic happiness level is governed by 3 major factors: a genetically determined set point for happiness, happiness-relevant circumstantial factors, and happiness-relevant activities and practices. The authors then consider adaptation and dynamic processes to show why the activity category offers the best opportunities for sustainably increasing happiness. Finally, existing research is discussed in support of the model, including 2 preliminary happiness-increasing interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective forecasting and individual differences: Accuracy for relational events and anxious attachment.

We examined whether accuracy of affective forecasting for significant life events was moderated by a theoretically relevant individual difference (anxious attachment), with different expected relations to predicted and actual happiness. In 3 studies (2 cross-sectional, 1 longitudinal), participants predicted what their happiness would be after entering or ending a romantic relationship. Consistent with previous research, people were generally inaccurate forecasters. However, inaccuracy for entering a relationship was significantly moderated by anxious attachment. Predictions were largely unrelated to anxious attachment, but actual happiness was negatively related to attachment anxiety. Moderation for breaking up showed a similar but less consistent pattern. These results suggest a failure to account for one's degree of anxious attachment when making affective forecasts and show how affective forecasting accuracy in important life domains may be moderated by a focally relevant individual difference, with systematically different associations between predicted and actual happiness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding and similarity in marriage.

The following conclusions appear to be justified: (1) There is no evidence that happiness in marriage is a function of understanding the mate or is related to the similarity of selves of the mates. (2) Evidence indicates that marital happiness is associated with similarity of self perceptions of the mates. (3) Husbands and wives are no more similar in self perceptions than randomly paired men and women. (4) Marital happiness is related to the conformity of men to self perceptions of their sex. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive psychology, happiness, and virtue: The troublesome conceptual issues.

This article subjects the recently prominent theory of positive psychology to critical conceptual scrutiny, with emphasis on its general take on happiness, virtue, and positive emotion. It is argued that positive psychology suffers from internal divisions (such as divergent views of its proponents on what happiness is), ambiguities (e.g., regarding the possibility of nonvirtuous happiness), ambivalence (concerning self-realism vs. anti-self-realism), and at least one serious misconception (the assumption that any view that makes overall evaluative judgments thereby prescribes). Nevertheless, many of the charges commonly urged against positive psychology, in particular by Aristotelian theorists, do not stick, and we may be well advised to give it the benefit of our doubt. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happiness unpacked: Positive emotions increase life satisfaction by building resilience.

Happiness—a composite of life satisfaction, coping resources, and positive emotions—predicts desirable life outcomes in many domains. The broaden-and-build theory suggests that this is because positive emotions help people build lasting resources. To test this hypothesis, the authors measured emotions daily for 1 month in a sample of students (N = 86) and assessed life satisfaction and trait resilience at the beginning and end of the month. Positive emotions predicted increases in both resilience and life satisfaction. Negative emotions had weak or null effects and did not interfere with the benefits of positive emotions. Positive emotions also mediated the relation between baseline and final resilience, but life satisfaction did not. This suggests that it is in-the-moment positive emotions, and not more general positive evaluations of one’s life, that form the link between happiness and desirable life outcomes. Change in resilience mediated the relation between positive emotions and increased life satisfaction, suggesting that happy people become more satisfied not simply because they feel better but because they develop resources for living well. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happiness in the face of adversity: Reformulating the dynamic and modular bases of subjective well-being.

Addressing diversity and apparent contradictions in manifestations of happiness, this article delineates subjective well-being (SWB) as a dynamic system in the face of possible adversity. SWB constitutes a favorable psychological environment that regulates the hostile-world scenario, defined as one's image of actual or potential threats to one's life or integrity. SWB operates in various modules: experiential, wherein private awareness of SWB dwells on relevant core themes; declarative, wherein public self-reports of SWB function as social behavior; differential, wherein synchronic dimensions of SWB form well-being types; and narrative, wherein diachronic valences of SWB construct trajectories along one's life story. By explicating the regulatory and configurational nature of SWB, the present conceptualization emphasizes the process, rather than the outcome, of pursuing happiness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 11(4) of Emotion (see record 2011-18271-002). There was an error in the title. The title of the article should read, “Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness.” All versions of this article have been corrected.] 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. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice.

Can people feel worse off as the options they face increase? The present studies suggest that some people--maximizers--can. Study 1 reported a Maximization Scale, which measures individual differences in desire to maximize. Seven samples revealed negative correlations between maximization and happiness, optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, and positive correlations between maximization and depression, perfectionism, and regret. Study 2 found maximizers less satisfied than nonmaximizers (satisficers) with consumer decisions, and more likely to engage in social comparison. Study 3 found maximizers more adversely affected by upward social comparison. Study 4 found maximizers more sensitive to regret and less satisfied in an ultimatum bargaining game. The interaction between maximizing and choice is discussed in terms of regret, adaptation, and self-blame. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness": Correction to Mauss, Tamir, Anderson, and Savino (2011).

Reports an error in "Can seeking happiness make people happy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness" by Iris B. Mauss, Maya Tamir, Craig L. Anderson and Nicole S. Savino (Emotion, 2011, np). There was an error in the title. The title of the article should read, “Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness.” All versions of this article have been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2011-08397-001.) 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. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)