Can You Be Too Happy?

Why would this be? Well, think about it. You know these slightly discontented sorts. The glass is never entirely full to them, and they always want more. They have an edge to them, and this edge may give them the competitive drive to excel in school and on the job. In short, a little bit of discontent sparks success. Call that $8K the dreariness premium.

The same dynamic may be at work in the political domain. The psychologists found that the Blissful were less politically engaged than the Contented. Civic involvement is usually considered one measure of healthy functioning, so this may seem surprising at first. But again there is a certain logic to it: people who are slightly grumpy probably see the world as imperfect and in need of fixing, so they do something to fix it. Or to look at it the other way around, the positive attitudes and general agreeableness that make some people good partners may make them not so great citizens.

The most surprising finding to come out of these ambitious studies has to do with acts of charity. As reported in the December issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, when the psychologists asked the Blissful and the Contented about volunteer work, they expected to find something akin to political engagement. That is, they figured that volunteers would be motivated by their restlessness and discontent to change a world that badly needed change. But in fact they found the opposite: the Blissful were much more likely than the Contented to give away their time and energy for a cause, to act altruistically. It appears that volunteering is less like work and politics and more like love and intimacy, requiring a kind of selflessness that's not particularly practical.

Remember that what we've been calling the Blissful are not ascended masters. They're just the happiest of us regular folk. And what we're calling the Contented are just that: happier than average. But the psychologists' argument here is that it may be pointless for the Contented to strive for anything more than that. Indeed, it may be detrimental, especially if the quest for a constant state of happiness becomes obsessive, hedonistic thrill seeking. Seeking a perfect state of bliss is still perfectionism, after all, and that kind of seeking rarely makes anyone happy.

Wray Herbert writes the "We're Only Human…" blog at www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman.

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