New Year reset: Seven things to add or subtract for happiness, according to science

The scientific study of happiness took off in the late 1990s.

Psychologist and researcher Jacqueline Nesi on the lifestyle changes that have been proven to boost well-being.

As a clinical psychologist and researcher, I love learning about the science of happiness. Nothing brings me happiness like studies about well-being: how to increase it, how to maintain it, how to spread it to others.

There’s just one, pesky little problem: many of these studies are nonsense. So, how do we know what to believe? What will actually make us happy? Let’s take a look at the science.

The science of happiness

Scholars and philosophers have always been interested in what makes for a good life, but the scientific study of happiness took off in the late 1990s with a new field called Positive Psychology. The next decade saw an explosion of research on happiness, with hundreds of studies on the topic published in academic journals.

Then, around 2012, the happiness bubble burst. Psychology researchers came to the unsettling realisation that many of their findings were wrong. Published studies had often relied on faulty, but common, publishing practices. There was p-hacking, or manipulating data analyses until statistically significant results were squeezed out, and HARKing (Hypothesizing After Results are Known), or changing one’s hypotheses after-the-fact to match obtained results.

When carefully scrutinised, the findings did not hold up. For instance, priming people with stereotypes about older people does not cause them to walk more slowly. Encouraging people to think about smart professors instead of soccer hooligans does not make them better at trivia.

This all came to a head when a highly respected journal published a paper claiming to find evidence of extrasensory perception (ESP). Relying on dubious statistical methods, it suggested that people’s behaviour could be influenced by future events that had not yet happened. (To be clear, this is not a real thing).

New research standards were needed.

Preregistration to the rescue

To stamp out p-hacking, HARKing and other acronymised no-nos, the field of psychology has entered a new era of transparency. As part of this larger movement toward “Open Science”, one new research standard is increasingly common practice.

It’s called “preregistration”, and the idea behind it is simple. Researchers make public their plans for studies, including all the analyses they’re going to run, before they do so. No more after-the-fact tinkering, or selectively reporting certain analyses, or changing the statistical methods until they get the finding they hypothesised.

Number two on the list: spend time connecting with the people around you.

As a result, we can generally be more confident in the results of preregistered studies.

It’s not a perfect solution. Transparency alone does not guarantee quality. At worst, a “preregistered” label can be misleading, creating the illusion of rigour without the methodological strength to back it up. Critics of preregistration also argue it limits scientific flexibility, prioritises certain methods at the expense of others, and creates unnecessary (and, at times, costly) administrative burden.

That said, the growing use of preregistration is moving psychology research in the right direction. At least, that’s what my ESP is telling me.

How to be happy, based on (good) science

What happens when we narrow the number of happiness studies to only those that were preregistered?

The number gets a whole lot smaller.

A team of researchers at the University of British Columbia systematically reviewed every experimental study on happiness, but limited their search only to those that had been preregistered. The result? Just 65 studies, which is a drop in the bucket in the world of happiness research. The benefit of this approach, though, is that it increases the likelihood that these 65 studies are good ones.

So, what do these studies tell us? How can we be happier?

The researchers break down evidence-backed happiness boosters into two categories: addition (things we can add to our lives) and subtraction (things we can eliminate from our lives).

Things to add to make us happier

1. Express gratitude

Think about how grateful you are for someone in your life, and consider telling them. In one study, participants’ moods improved after being told to write a gratitude letter to someone (without sending it), send a gratitude text, or post their gratitude on social media.

2. Be more social

Spend time connecting with the people around you. One study randomly assigned people to talk to a stranger while commuting (versus their typical commuting activities), and those people reported being in a better mood during the commute.

3. Act happy

Smile! One study showed that asking people to smile naturally (for example, by mimicking a person smiling in a photo) improved mood. The key is a natural smile, as one commonly cited study that involved participants biting on pens (to produce a smile-like facial expression) have been mostly debunked.

4. Increase novelty

We are all subject to hedonic adaption, or the idea that we quickly adapt to positive experiences. One way to avoid this is through injecting novelty into everyday experiences. For example, one study randomly assigned people to treat their weekend as a holiday, resulting in better moods and greater satisfaction when they returned to work on Monday. Another study – in all seriousness – assigned people to create “hand goggles” when watching a video for the third time, thereby making the experience more novel and increasing enjoyment.

5. Help others

We feel happier when we choose to spend money on others, like through gifts or donations. For example, when people are randomly assigned to spend money on themselves or on someone in need, those who spend the money on others report better moods afterward.

Things to subtract to make us happier

1. Unpleasant time use

Do less of the things you don’t like. One study gave participants $40 to spend on a purchase that would save them time (for example, paying someone to do household chores). Another weekend, they gave participants $40 to spend on a material purchase. When participants made the time-saving purchase, they felt less pressed for time and, subsequently, happier.

The evidence suggests that spending less time on your phone may not increase happiness per se, but it's more likely to do so when it enhances your social interactions. Photo / 123RF

2. Smartphone and social media use

As someone who studies the impact of smartphones and social media on mental health, I know first-hand that this research is complicated. The evidence suggests that reducing use will not increase happiness per se, but that it is more likely to do so when it enhances our participation in the social situations around us, and when it extends for a longer period (one month versus one day).

Good old-fashioned advice

This is not an all-encompassing list. The downside of this research approach is that it leaves out a lot of studies, some of them high-quality. Decades of research, for example, support the benefits of exercise, sleep, spending time in nature and many other interventions. These may be effective for increasing happiness, but there are few (if any) preregistered experiments proving it.

In time, the body of rigorous, preregistered research on happiness will grow. For now, the best we can do is follow this list and, otherwise, do things the old-fashioned way: without good science to guide us.

- Jacqueline Nesi, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, assistant professor at Brown University, and author of the weekly newsletter Techno Sapiens.