Article summary of A dark side of happiness? How, when, and why happiness is not always good by Gruber et al. - Chapter

What is this article about?

There has been a lot of research that has proven why the pursuit of happiness is good. There is no doubt that happiness is often beneficial. On the basis of the robust benefits of happiness, it is tempting to conclude that happiness is always beneficial and that people should aim to enhance their happiness in any way possible. This article is a review of the other, "dark side" of happiness. Four questions will be answered in this article:

1. Is there a wrong degree of happiness?
2. Is there a wrong time for happiness?
3. Are there wrong ways to pursue happiness?
4. Are there wrong types of happiness?

Is there a wrong degree of happiness?

An excessive degree of happiness can lead to undesirable outcomes in healthy populations and is also associated with psychological dysfunction in clinical populations. Excessive happiness can either mean extreme heightened degree of positive emotion or the relative absence of negative emotion. Studies have found that that extreme happiness can lead to dysfunctions and mania. These observations are consistent with the ideas of early philosophers who also believed that extreme levels of any mental experience, even of happiness, could lead to undesirable outcomes.

Is there a wrong time for happiness?

The presence of positive emotions and the absence of negative emotions is beneficial in some circumstances, but not in all circumstances. When everything is going well, happiness can help people maintain and increase resources and form or strengthen social bonds. But negative emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness, also offer important benefits. People who are happy in all situations, don't get triggered to change their situation, like people would if they were scared, angry or sad.

Are there wrong ways to pursue happiness?

Pursuing happiness means trying to increase positive feelings and decrease negative feelings. This leads to positive outcomes if people are given the right tools to pursue happiness. These tools are flexible and adaptive emotion regulatory abilities, great awareness of what will make oneself happy, and engagement in happiness enhancing activities rather than directly pursuing happiness. These are successful ways of increasing happiness because they avoid the direct pursuit of happiness and instead lead people to make changes in their emotion regulation or in their activities. If people are too focused on the pursuit of direct happiness, they will not be able to gain lasting increases in happiness. This idea fits well with the self-determination theory. This theory holds that activities lead to greater happiness and well-being if they are engaged in for their own sake rather than for a reason extrinsic to the activity, even if this reason is as seemingly benevolent as gaining happiness.

Are there wrong types of happiness?

Research on the different types of happiness is relatively new and nothing is certain yet. But research does suggest that whether happiness has good outcomes can depend on the type of happiness. Types of happiness that engender negative social consequences or that are in conflict with a culture's norm do not appear to have exclusively positive long-term effects and they may even have negative effects.