Research: Trying to be happy makes us more unhappy – Cyprus Newspaper

According to a study at the University of Toronto, trying to be happy constantly weakens the power of will and makes people less happy.

The research, which was conducted at the Scarborough University of Toronto Scarborough and published in the Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being magazine, revealed why the search for happiness sometimes has an opposite effect.

Accordingly, trying to be consciously happy is a mentally exhausting process and this situation weakens the person's ability to control self by consuming the will power. This leads to the more easily attractive but long -term damaging choices of individuals.

Sam Maglio, a marketing professor at the Faculty of Toronto Scarborough University, one of the co -writers of the study, said, “The quest for happiness creates a snowball effect. As people make efforts to feel happier, this effort makes it difficult for them to continue their behaviors that make them really happy. ”

Maglio, constantly trying to be happy, after a long working day to come home to clean the house instead of spending time on social media, he said.

The other author of the study, Sidney University Faculty of Business Advent Kim with a 2018 work carried out in another study of similar results were achieved.

In that research, it was found that the time of people trying to reach happiness was limited and that made them more stressful and unhappy.

Happiness is not something that can be accumulated

Researchers conducted a survey with hundreds of people trying to increase happiness consciously and determined that these people used less will in their daily lives. Maglio and Kim think that the search for happiness and self -control consumes the same limited mental source.

In one of the experiments, the participants showed ads with the word “happiness”. Later, they were told to sit in front of a large chocolate bowl and eat as much as they wanted.

Researchers, assuming that people with high will power will consume less chocolate, the participants who encounter the word happiness consumed more chocolate.

In the last experiment, the participants were divided into two groups. While a group chose objects that would make them happier, the other group only made a choice according to their personal preferences.

Then both groups tried to complete a mental task that measures will power. The group, which focuses on happiness, gave up faster than the other group, and this confirmed that the quest for happiness has consumed mental resources.

Emphasizing that happiness is not a completely inaccessible target, Maglio said that it may be tiring to see happiness as something that needs to be obtained and accumulated.