July 20, 2023

expert reaction to systematic review of happiness-increasing strategies in mentally healthy people

A systematic review published in Nature Human Behaviour looks at the strength of evidence for the most commonly recommended happiness strategies in mainstream media.

Prof Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at the University of Bristol, said:

“This is a much-needed review of the evidence in support of five commonly recommended positive psychology interventions reported in the media. It uses stringent statistical techniques and criteria for evaluating studies that claim to show positive benefits to happiness.  Unfortunately, despite the vast number of studies reviewed, almost all were poorly conducted which makes them susceptible to publication bias. This does not mean that there is no evidence in support of these interventions but until we have a substantive core body of well-designed research, we must treat such recommendations as tentative and not firmly established.”

Dr Peter Malinowski, Reader in Health Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University said:

“This paper is not so much about the “strategies for happiness”  but more a reflection of how research practices have changed. It has become more and more common to pre-register empirical studies, while there is a growing focus on power analyses.

“The conclusion the authors reach that – when assessed against the current standard for empirical rigour – only few studies are up to scratch. On this basis, not a lot can be said about the question, whether the different “happiness strategies” are effective.

“We cannot conclude that all the other empirical work, often published before these new standards were established, are useless. Indeed, for many research questions meta-analyses exist that suggest effectiveness of such approaches and that – to some extent at least – can mitigate for the lack of pre-registration or for low power.

“It makes sense for the authors to flag up that there may be the misconception (by journal editors or funders) that these research questions have been settled. If we take the current standard, they haven’t. But, if the scientific endeavour continues, this will always be the case: the standards will continue shifting.

“It is useful to keep this in mind and avoid becoming extremist by “binning” everything that has been done before. That’s not what the authors are doing, but what could be read into their results.”

Prof Dame Til Wykes, Head of the School of Mental Health and Psychological Sciences (MHaPS), Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, said:

“This is a well conducted systematic review of suggested (and most publicly accepted) strategies for improving happiness in people who do not have identifiable mental health disorders. They found poor evidence overall but particularly for meditation and mindfulness and involvement in green spaces.”

“What this review does not say is whether these strategies will be helpful to people with a mental health problem and there are well conducted studies showing that some are. We need some recognition of this difference so that pessimism does not pervade reporting of this project”.

“The review identified the overall effect of a “happiness strategy” and we know that people differ so some strategies may only be helpful to some people. This means we need to think about matching people to strategies or perhaps just take it as a game of chance – one of them will probably be beneficial.”

“The fact that meditation and mindfulness had poor evidence does need further research because the general public have accepted its power to increase wellbeing as fact. This strategy costs money and time and so science should provide robust evidence of benefits so that failure doesn’t hit their bank balance and their self-esteem and self-efficacy”

Prof Geoffrey Bird, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Oxford, said:

“I’m not really concerned by this paper. Pre-registration doesn’t magically make a bad study good, or its absence make a good study bad. Small samples sizes can be problematic of course, but we have procedures to combine small studies to estimate how effective an intervention is. I think these results are not cause for concern.”

‘A systematic review of the strength of evidence for the most commonly recommended happiness strategies in mainstream media’ by Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn et al. was published in Nature Human Behaviour at 16:00 UK time on Thursday 20^th July.

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01651-4

Declared interests

Prof Bruce Hood is the author of a forthcoming book “The Science of Happiness” to be published by Simon & Schuster in March 2024.

Dr Peter Malinowski received funding for his meditation research from the BIAL Foundation, the Econt Foundation and the Pain Relief Foundation. He is a trustee and director of a UK-based Buddhist charity, is a lay Buddhist teacher, and co-directs a company that supports the integration of meditation in various secular contexts.

Prof Dame Til Wykes: “No conflicts.”

Prof Geoffrey Bird: “no conflicts.”

For all other experts, no reply to our request for DOIs was received.