Media release

From: Springer Nature

Reconsidering the effectiveness of happiness-increasing strategies

Some of the most commonly recommended happiness-increasing strategies in the media, such as mindfulness and exercise, have a weak basis of scientific evidence, suggests a systematic review published in Nature Human Behaviour.

Standards for high-quality scientific evidence in the field of psychology have changed over the past decade. Previously common research practices, such as selective reporting or exclusion of certain participants, could inflate the number of false positives in results. Now, many psychologists pre-register their studies, committing beforehand to specific methodological and analytical decisions, and increase the sample sizes of their studies, improving the statistical power of the research.

Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn examined the empirical evidence underlying some common strategies for increasing happiness. The authors conducted an internet-based media review and identified five of the most commonly recommended strategies to improve happiness: expressing gratitude, enhancing sociability, exercising, practicing mindfulness or meditation and increasing exposure to nature. The authors then searched the published scientific literature, identifying 494 papers, detailing 532 studies, that investigated the happiness benefits of one of the five strategies in a non-clinical sample. In almost 95% of experiments based on increasing exposure to nature, exercise, or engaging in mindfulness or meditation, the authors found that the studies lacked sufficient statistical power to detect notable benefits. They identified that only 57 of the studies were pre-registered or had well-powered experiments that tested the effects of these strategies on subjective well-being in healthy individuals.

The authors conclude that, while it’s unclear whether happiness strategies recommended by the mainstream media actually boost well-being, there is a need for more well-powered, pre-registered studies to investigate these strategies.