Article summary with Malleability and intentional activities by Layous

What is this article about?

There is much debate about whether someone is able to change their level of happiness in a sustainable way or not. This article reviews literature on the sources of happiness to decide if evidence points to happiness being stable and malleable or not.

Research suggests that happiness is stable over time, but changes in certain life circumstances and the effortful practice of intentional happiness increasing activities can shift happiness. Research also suggests that increases in happiness are valuable because they trigger successful outcomes in important life domains, so not just because they make life more pleasurable. There is also research on the potential downsides of over-valuing happiness, so this needs to be kept in mind.

At the end of this article, intentional happiness increasing activities, or Positive Psychological Interventions, are discussed in their mechanisms, moderators, and areas for future research. The research as a whole suggests that happiness change is possible and desirable, but not easy.

Can people become happier?

Some of the most important sources of happiness are genetics, life circumstances, hedonic adaptation, and intentional activities. Given the heritability estimates of happiness, so the fact that genetics play an important role in happiness, there is evidence to support the claim that some people are simply born happier than others. But genetics only give people a "set-point" of happiness.

There are other factors that also play an important role in happiness, so even though some people start of happier than others, everyone can become happier or less happy because of life circumstances, hedonic adaptation, and intentional activities.

Life circumstances can also not really be influenced by a person themselves, but researchers have noted that life circumstances play a relatively small role in happiness. This small role is due to hedonic adaptation.

Hedonic adaptation is the process by which people adapt to the emotionally salient events or circumstances in their lives, so that they do not feel the emotions as intensely over time as they did when the event or circumstance first occurred. Because people have this hedonic adaptation, both positive and negative life circumstances have a smaller effect on happiness than we would imagine. Adaptation varies across people and is often incomplete for negative events. This is why some people handle negative circumstances a lot better than others. There are intentional ways someone could use their adaptational skills and make them stronger.

Part of behavior is caused by someone's character traits and can not really be changed, but it is possible that people boost happiness with intentional activities. Intentional activities could also positively affect the degree to which life circumstances explains individual differences in happiness, helping people extract more positivity out of life. At least part of happiness can be alterable via intentional activities.

Should people intentionally pursue happiness?

Even if it is possible to pursue happiness, should we do that? Happiness has a lot of benefits, as it can help people in their work, psychical health, and social domains. But happiness has important downsides if people value it too highly. Organizing your life around increased happiness is not inherently bad, but if you take it too far, it could have detrimental outcomes.

Being too focused on happiness, can even make people less happy in the long run, because they are never satisfied with their happiness levels. It is also important to note that most research was done on relatively mentally healthy samples. People with mental health problems might have other issues if they pursue happiness on their own instead of with the help of a clinician. So, people should pursue happiness, but always thoughtfully.

How can people effectively increase their happiness?

Given the processes of hedonic adaptation, the best route to sustained happiness change would be through intentional and effortful activities rather than changing life circumstances. Hedonic adaptation can apply to intentional activities as well, but intentional activities lend themselves more readily to variety, which can help sustain positive changes in well-being. Positive Psychological Intervention (PPI) is an umbrella term for al treatment methods or activities that are designed to foster happiness. PPIs can be seen as a type of emotion regulation strategy in which one seeks to upregulate positive emotions. 

PPIs are becoming more widely used. Because of this, we are able to research them, their efficacy, and their boundaries, better in the future. This can make all people, even the people who were not born happy, happier. Although challenging, increasing one's happiness is possible and the science of well-being is continually advancing to offer people more efficacious ways of doing so.