The key to happiness
We have been arguing about what it really takes to be happy since the beginning of time. A research team from the University of Toronto (U of T) and Simon Fraser University (SFU) has come up with the key to happiness – and it’s not relationships or wealth. The researchers surveyed over 1 200 adults from Canada and the United Kingdom. The survey evaluated participants’ positive and negative emotions, overall life satisfaction, and three key psychological traits: autonomy (feeling of personal freedom), competence (feeling effective), and relatedness (social connection).
Are you free?
Study results showed that while positive feelings and pleasure play a role, personal autonomy and the freedom of choice are much better predictors of happiness. The researchers then turned to advanced statistical modelling to uncover what truly shapes life satisfaction. As expected, both emotional highs and lows proved to be powerful barometers of overall happiness. However, autonomy proved to be a stronger predictor of life satisfaction. Published in ‘The Journal of Positive Psychology’(opens in new window), the overall findings revealed that having freedom and autonomy drive happiness more effectively than just seeking pleasure. “People are not merely hedonists,” commented co-author Jason Payne, postdoctoral fellow at SFU’s Department of Psychology in a media release(opens in new window). “When people step back and evaluate whether their life is going well, they consider more than their emotional balance sheet. They appear to ask themselves not just ‘do I feel good?’, but also ‘am I free?’” He added: “Even after accounting for how good or bad people felt, those who felt more autonomous were more satisfied with their lives. Autonomy was the only psychological need that seems to contribute something that feelings alone did not explain.”
You can’t mandate happiness
Not only did the study flip traditional views of happiness on their head, it also provided practical guidance for shaping better work environments and public policies. “Programmes and interventions designed to improve well-being may succeed in improving feelings, but if they restrict people’s choices, then they could ultimately backfire and lead people to judge their lives as worse overall,” explained Payne. “For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the obligatory facemasks may well have been in the public good, but by making them involuntary, perhaps that explains some of the backlash as they impinged upon people’s feeling of autonomy.” According to Payne, trying to force people into wellness programmes defeats the whole purpose because true well-being has to be a choice, not an order. “Policymakers looking to improve well-being should be mindful not only of potential direct outcomes, but also the second-order effects of not being free to choose the path to those outcomes.” When it comes to putting these findings into practice, there are game-changing lessons for both our personal lives and society. “There is not one happiness. Everybody has to define for themselves what their personal conception of happiness is,” pointed out co-author and U of T psychology professor Ulrich Schimmack in a news item(opens in new window). Payne stressed that when it comes to happiness, one size doesn’t fit all. “It speaks to the complexity of human well-being. And it’s important to have some humility about that.”
