Research into global happiness aims to solve the mystery of what boosts us
The science of happiness has produced hundreds of thousands of studies, surveys, books, and reviews, but what reliably lifts the spirit, to what extent, and who benefits most from it is still far from established.
Now psychologists have drawn up plans for the world’s biggest happiness experiment to find out once and for all what really gives people an emotional boost, how effective different strategies are and whether the benefits are the same around the world.
“Our goal is for this to be the largest, most comprehensive and most diverse experiment on happiness ever conducted,” said Prof. Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “It’s like the Avengers: many of the best happiness researchers from around the world have come together to join forces.”
In the past six months, more than a thousand scientists from more than seventy countries submitted proposals for the project. In December, a panel of experts narrowed these down to seven categories of interventions, each comprising three or four different approaches, which will be tested in the Global Happiness Megastudy.
The researchers’ goal is to recruit at least 30,000 people worldwide for the trial. The volunteers are randomly assigned to perform a short, sharp intervention from the list, or assigned to a control group for comparison. Each happiness intervention lasts a maximum of 25 minutes and requires no special equipment.
The strategies range from exercise, such as yoga, high-intensity interval training, or bodyweight resistance training, to social interactions, where people can call a loved one, push themselves to behave more outgoing, or chat with an AI companion.
“All interventions can be carried out at home, people do not need anyone to watch them or help them,” says Dr Barnabás Szászi, behavioral scientist and principal investigator of the project at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. “That was a very conscious choice on our part.”
The project aims to address shortcomings that raise questions about the validity of older happiness research. One concern is that most research involves “weird” people – Western, educated, industrialized, wealthy and democratic – meaning that most of the evidence is based on people from North America, Europe and other Western regions. But what makes someone happy in Chicago may not work in Chongqing, Nagoya or Mombasa.
The lack of diversity is not the only problem. Happiness interventions are offered in different ways to different population groups in different settings, making direct comparisons impossible. Another problem arises when researchers do not pre-register their studies, a step that requires them to outline their plans and analyzes in advance. This can lead to false claims as scientists repeatedly analyze their data until they find a statistically significant result. The practice, known as p-hackingis likened to drawing a target around a bullet hole and claiming to have hit the bullseye.
Having laid the groundwork, Dunn and Szászi are now looking for backers to continue the project. If all goes well, they want one registered report in a major journal to document the methods and data analyzes they will use. The experiments themselves should begin shortly afterwards.
“What will we have in the end?” Dunn said. “We will have the largest and most diverse data set ever collected on the strategies that promote happiness. How effective are these strategies? Do they work everywhere? Do some people work very well for a small group of people and hardly do anything for many others?
“If we find things that are universally effective, or at least effective in certain places, and identify what kinds of places those are, or what kinds of people benefit from them, that will be a huge leap forward for the science of happiness.”