In this section we provide cultural and empirical evidence of people being averse to happiness, or believing that people should be averse to happiness, for the following reasons: being happy makes it more likely that bad things will happen to you, being happy makes you a worse person, expressing happiness is bad for you and others, and pursuing happiness is bad for you and others.
Being Happy Makes it More Likely that Bad Things Will Happen to You
Our research has shown us that many people are averse to happiness because bad things, such as unhappiness, suffering, and death, tend to happen to happy people. Since these negative conditions are often seen as being more negative than being happy is positive (Baumeister et al. 2001), belief that happiness causes, or tends to be followed by, these negative conditions is enough to make people averse to happiness (preferring a roughly neutral state). Furthermore, since different emotional states, such as happiness and unhappiness are valued differently by different cultures (e.g., Diener et al. 2003, p. 412), we should expect to find cultural differences in the extent to which people are averse to happiness because of the negative conditions it can cause.
East Asian cultures are somewhat under the influence of Taoism (Ho 1995). In Taoism, it is posited that things tend to revert to their opposite (Chen 2006; Peng et al. 2006). Happiness (best understood in this context as success or experiencing fortune and pleasantness) tends to be accompanied by and then outweighed by unhappiness and vice versa. For example, in the Tao-Te-Ching we read: “Misery!—happiness is to be found by its side! Happiness!—misery lurks beneath it! Who knows what either will come to in the end?” (Lao Tse 2008, p. 106). Furthermore, Ji et al. (2001) showed that Chinese were more likely than Americans to predict a reversal in their happiness status when shown graphs showing various trends over the life course, with the Chinese participants much more likely to choose graphs in which the happiness trend reverted or oscillated.
One half of this dialectical view of happiness—that happiness tends to cause, or be followed by, sadness—seems to be a very widespread belief. For example, in Korea, there is a lay cultural belief that if an individual is happy now, he or she is likely to be less happy in the future (Koo and Suh 2007). Furthermore, in a qualitative study, Uchida and Kitayama (2009) found that Japanese participants believed that happiness could lead to negative consequences because happiness made them inattentive to their surroundings. Sayings expressing the same sentiment (e.g., “crying will come after laughing”, “we laughed a lot, then we will come to its harms”, and “laughing loudly wakes up sadness”) are also often heard in Iran.
The belief that happiness causes, or is likely to be followed by, unhappiness is also present, albeit to a lesser degree, in Western cultures (Ho 2000). Noting Western adages and proverbs, such as the following ones: “happiness and a glass vessel are most easily shattered”, “after joy, sorrow”, “sorrow never comes too late and happiness too swiftly flies” (Tatarkiewicz 1976, p. 249), Tatarkiewicz concludes that some people naturally expect happiness to be followed by unhappiness. Taking this idea further, Holden (2009) claims that fearing happiness because it is likely to lead to unhappiness is also the meaning behind the popular Western sayings: “after happiness, there comes a fall” and “what goes up must come down” (p. 111). Furthermore, Gilbert et al. (2012) argue that happiness can be “frightening” if you believe that “when I feel happy I am always waiting for something bad to happen” (p. 375). Ben-Shahar (2002, p. 79) and Holden (2009) agree, arguing that people might be averse to happiness because they fear the devastating loss of newly-attained happiness more than they value the actual attainment of it. Indeed, Epicurus (c. 341–271 B.C.E) warned that intense pleasures, which many Westerners now associate with happiness, are to be avoided because they are likely to result in painful unsatisfiable desires for more and better of the same (Weijers 2011).
While some might be averse to all degrees of happiness, others are only averse to extreme happiness. Extreme or intense happiness has most or all of the consequences that lower intensities of happiness have and some that they do not. Similarly to above, in Japanese culture, extreme happiness (or good fortune) is thought to lead to suffering (Minami 1971), echoed by the Chinese proverb: “extreme happiness begets tragedy” (Bryant and Veroff 2007, p. 39). Pflug’s (2009) qualitative study revealed the same idea in a Western culture, finding that some German students mentioned that intense happiness leads to unhappiness in their responses to open-ended questions about happiness. Western philosopher, Joel Kupperman (2006), argues that extreme happiness might lead to negative consequences because it causes carelessness, which can result in catastrophic misfortune, including death.
A separate empirical line of research on the concept ‘fear of emotion’ has reached a similar conclusion; some individuals are afraid of certain affects, including positive affects, particularly when they are strong. Such individuals fear strong affective states because they are concerned that they will lose control over their emotions or their behavioural reactions to emotions (e.g., Berg et al. 1998; Melka et al. 2011). Along similar lines, Holden (2009) has argued that people fear achieving extremely high levels of happiness because they worry that they will lose control of their lives in a narrative sense; that is, they will lose sense of who they are, and consequently feel alien in their own minds.
But happiness having negative consequences in life is not the only reason to be averse to it. In traditional Christianity, if happiness (perhaps best understood as a combination of worldly success, a positive state of mind, and occasional merriment in this context) is not accompanied by salvation and grace, it might draw a true Christian away from God, something which could be greatly feared. Indeed, the danger of happiness, for medieval Christians, lurked more in the possibility that it would lead to eternal damnation than in any suffering it might lead to in life (Tatarkiewicz 1976). This perceived danger of happiness resulted in cultural forces that created an aversion to happiness by inculcating most Western children with the idea “that to be happy is to be doing wrong” up till the second half of the nineteenth century (George M. Beard; c.f. Sicherman 1976, p. 904). More recently, Arieti and Bemporad (1980, c.f. Gilbert et al. 2012, p. 377) noted that some depressed patients are “fearful of feeling happy” because they have a “taboo on pleasure”, probably because of an upbringing in a hard line puritanical Christian family. Although these ideas no longer seem to be widespread in the contemporary era, it is not unreasonable to assume that they linger among some Christians to some extent (possibly in modified forms).
In sum, there is evidence from a variety of cultures that people are averse to happiness because they believe that happiness and especially extreme happiness lead to unhappiness and other negative consequences that outweigh the benefits of being happy.
Being Happy Makes You a Worse Person
People aren’t just averse to happiness because it might lead to something bad, however; some individuals and some cultures tend to believe that happiness is worthy of aversion because being happy can make someone a worse person (both morally and otherwise). Again, we found evidence for this belief in both non-Western and Western cultures. First we discuss beliefs that happiness is worthy of aversion because it can make someone a morally worse person, and then we discuss beliefs that happiness is worthy of aversion because it can make someone less creative.
Generally speaking, Islam is critical of people that are perceived to be very happy (best understood as experiencing regular and intense positive emotions and few, if any, negative emotions in this context). Prophet Muhammad is cited as saying that “were you to know what I know, you would laugh little and weep much” and “avoid much laughter, for much laughter deadens the heart” (Chittick 2005, p. 133, see also Quran, 5:87). Good and Good (1988) note that ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, under the influence of the Shiite ideology, happiness has been associated with shallowness, foolishness, and vulgarity. Happy people are also seen as being distracted from God, making them morally and spiritually deficient (in Islamic cultures, true happiness is considered to be an inner peace derived from devotion to God; Joshanloo 2013c). In contrast, sad people are often defined as serious and deep. Since Islam is relatively widespread, aversion to happiness for the reason that it can make you a bad person is likely to be equivalently widespread. Similarly, but on a smaller scale, Holden (2009, p. 110) observes that some Westerners are averse to happiness because they consider happy people to be superficial “intellectual lightweights” as opposed to “serious-minded” people who “lament the hopeless suffering of the world”. Naturally, happiness doesn’t necessarily cause ignorance about the hopeless suffering of the world (it is more likely the other way around), but some people nevertheless worry that happiness might preoccupy their minds, leaving them little time for deep reflection on important (e.g., political or religious) issues.
Ahmed (2007, p. 135) has pointed out that, at different times in the West, members of marginalised groups (e.g., women, immigrants, and homosexuals) have had an important reason to kill joy, avoid happiness, and cling to unhappiness: because to be happy in proximity to the injustice they suffer could make them weak in the face of oppression. So, perhaps even in the West, certain members of cultural subgroups have been averse to happiness because being happy might make them less motivated to fight for justice, thereby making them morally worse people. Furthermore, Ben-Shahar (2002, p. 79) and others (e.g., Holden 2009, p. 107) argue that people might fear happiness because they would feel unworthy and guilty if they were to attain it; they would feel like bad people for being happy when they know that more deserving people are suffering.
Similarly, there exists a cultural myth that portrays unhappy people as more creative than sad people (Fredrickson et al. 2000), leading some aspiring artists to fear happiness as they would fear writers block. For example, when Edvard Munch, the depressive author of the famous painting The Scream, was asked why he did not do something about his emotional ailments, he retorted: “They are part of me and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and it would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings.” (c.f. Layard 2005, p. 220). Holden (2009, p. 110) reports that this fear—the worry that being happy will lead to a loss of creative and artistic faculty—is widespread among actors and artists. Indeed, Glück (1996, pp. 579–580), herself an artist, has reported that the thought of being happy was terrifying to her because it represented itself as a “vision of desolate normalcy” and threatened to eradicate her desire and capacity to produce good art. Perhaps the fears of these artistic types can be explained by the idea that being happy is bad for you because being happy is boring and being boring is the characteristic most reviled by artists. In this vein, Wilson (2008, p. 7) argues that happiness makes people bland because interesting lives include agony and dejection, not just a preponderance of positive emotions.
In sum, some people and some cultures tend to be averse to happiness not just for what it leads to, but also for what it means about the person who is happy. In both Western and non-Western cultures, evidence points an aversion to happiness based on the belief that being happy makes you a worse person (morally or otherwise).
Expressing Happiness is Bad for You and Others
In addition to being averse to being happy, individuals in many cultures have issued warnings about expressing happiness (often understood as success in the following examples) because of the negative consequences for the expresser and those around her. Expressing happiness usually comes in the form of explicit verbal statements, such as “I am so happy today!”, excited and extroverted behaviour, and copious smiling and laughing. Happiness, understood as satisfaction, can also be expressed, albeit it in less physically obvious ways, such as demonstrating unflappable smugness when questioned about one’s life. Even though not expressing happiness is sometimes seen as a reason for concern in Western cultures, we found evidence for the belief that expressing happiness should be avoided in many non-Western and Western cultures.
According to Uchida and Kitayama (2009), in Eastern cultures, expressing happiness or outwardly displaying success can arouse envy, such that the positive feelings associated with happiness might be offset by the negative feelings of guilt and disharmony. Indeed, Miyamoto et al. (2010) experimental study revealed that East Asians’ concern about the interpersonal consequences of their actions, such as causing unhappiness in others by expressing happiness, makes what would probably be positive experiences for Westerners become bittersweet. Furthermore, in another study in which researchers asked participants to report different aspects, features, or effects of happiness, the Japanese participants frequently mentioned negative social consequences of expressing happiness, such as arousing other’s envy, while American participants did so rarely (Uchida and Kitayama 2009). These findings help to explain why the simultaneous experience of negative and positive emotions in pleasant settings is more prevalent in East Asian cultures than Western cultures (e.g., Goetz et al. 2008; Leu et al. 2010; Miyamoto et al. 2010).
Similarly, Lyubomirsky (2000) observes that the expressions of happiness or success in Russia are often perceived as inviting envy, resentment, and suspicion, at least partly because there is a cultural belief in Russia that anyone who is happy or successful might have used immoral means for achieving these states. A similar perspective is taken in some other cultures. In Micronesia, Lutz (1987) demonstrated that in Ifaluk culture happiness is discouraged as too individualistic for the communal good of the tribe because for the Ifaluk, happiness is associated with showing off, overexcitement, and failure at doing one’s duties. Since the envy and resentment of your neighbours can have severely negative consequences for you, it makes sense to be averse to anything that might cause neighbourly envy and resentment, such as overt displays of happiness or success. Even in the West, as Holden (2009, pp. 109–110) observes, it is common to try to avoid expressing happiness, and especially extreme happiness, in many situations because it annoys, and attracts the envy of, others and even invites possible attack from them.
In many cultures, even people with the power to resist attacks from their mortal peers apparently have reason to avoid expressing happiness. Lyubomirsky (2000) mentions that, in Russia, the expression of happiness or success is often perceived as inviting the ire of the devil. And, in the United States, Holden (2009) observes that some people fear extreme happiness because “you fear that God is going to single you out and make you die because things are going too well” (p. 112). Perhaps for such people the attainment of extreme happiness seems so unnatural to them, that they believe the force in control of nature would have no choice but to correct the anomaly if they ever attained extreme happiness. There is also belief in the ‘evil eye’, prevalent in Iran and neighbouring countries, which is believed to damage people who fail to hide their happiness and achievements (Moshiri Tafreshi 2009). Perhaps in an attempt to avoid the gaze of the evil eye, when Iranians talk about something good that has happened or is going to happen to them, they may also invoke this ritual saying: “may the devil’s ear be deaf” (which is similar to the English proverb “do not tempt fate”). It is perhaps no coincidence that many of these lay beliefs apply to outward signs of both happiness and success, since these beliefs are likely to have evolved in a time when happiness was synonymous with success.
In sum, there are individuals and cultures that tend to be averse to expressing happiness because they worry that their peers, or a supernatural deity, might resent them for it, resulting in any number of severe consequences.
Pursuing Happiness is Bad for You and Others
Individuals in many cultures have also issued warnings about actively pursuing happiness (particularly of the individualistic and immediate pleasure-based kind) because of the negative consequences for the pursuer and those around him. These warnings could plausibly result in individuals and cultures tending to be averse to the pursuit of personal happiness (as opposed to pursuing the happiness of others); something we found considerable evidence for in both non-Western and Western cultures.
Many East Asian cultures are influenced by Buddhism. In a Buddhist context pursuing personal happiness is seen as misguided: “And with the very desire for happiness, out of delusion they destroy their own well-being as if it were their enemy” (Shantideva 1997, p. 21, as cited in Wallace and Shapiro 2006). Furthermore, Ricard (2011) argues that the desire for pleasure-based happiness is nearly always centred on the self, which can make a person more selfish and thereby have negative effects on the well-being of others. Indeed, Buddhists tend to argue that the narrow pursuit of happiness can lead to such mental states as cruelty, violence, pride, and greed, and hence have negative consequences for the pursuer of personal happiness and those around him (Ricard 2011). In addition to actively causing harm to others, Buddhists also tend to view the pursuit of happiness in a negative light because it may lead to the passive harm of others through neglect. Similarly, striving for personal pleasure-based happiness was seen as misguided and shameful in traditional Chinese culture because contributing to society was considered as better for oneself and everyone else (Lu 2001).
Many Western writers have also found reasons to despise the pursuit of happiness in its individualistic sense because of its negative effects on both the individuals pursuing happiness and on those around them (e.g., Bruckner 2012; Hochschild 1996). Indeed, that the pursuit of happiness (at least in its dogged, unreflective, or extreme forms) is worrying precisely because it often results in a lose–lose situation, with the pursuers ending up dissatisfied and burnt-out while those around them get disaffected and just generally burnt.
Regarding the negative effects of the direct pursuit of personal happiness on the pursuer, Bruckner (2012) has argued that the industry of happiness, and the notion that health is required for happiness, has led to such an abundance of devices and strategies for monitoring and improving happiness that the active pursuit of happiness requires constant effort in such a way that no pursuer of happiness has the time or carefree attitude required to appreciate happiness. Bruckner’s argument is a version of the paradox of happiness—that the direct pursuit of happiness is likely to lead to unhappiness (see, e.g., Martin 2008)—an idea with a lengthy history in Western thought that goes back at least as far as Epicurus (discussed above). The usual advice offered by authors in this Western tradition is to directly pursue activities, such as acting morally, that tend to bring about happiness as a by-product (e.g., Locke 1991).
For fear of the resulting negative effects, Westerners have also brought many warnings against the increasing self-inflation and radical individualism in contemporary Western cultures that have resulted from the widespread pursuit of the American dream. Envisaging the American dream as the achievement of happiness through (particularly material) success Hochschild (1996), points out that the American dream is based on radical individualism, the importance of personal achievement, and indifference to society as a whole. Hochschild believes that this highly materialistically oriented and self-centred ideology is flawed because it leaves little room for other personal values or the value of other people. Indeed, Hochschild concurs with Thomas Hooker (1586–1647, a prominent puritan colonial leader) who said: “For if each man may do what is good in his owne eyes, proceed according to his own pleasure, so that none may crosse him or controll him by any power; there must of necessity follow the distraction and desolation of the whole…” (c.f. Clinton 1952, p. 481). Indeed, Binkley (2011, p. 384) agrees that the pursuit of personal happiness leads to actions that are self-interested and “not in service to any vision of the social good”. Along similar lines, Rehberg (2000) investigated the fear of, and scepticism towards, happiness in the works of prominent European philosophers expressing similar concerns (e.g., Max Scheler, Helmut Plessner, Arnold Ghlen, and Friedrich Nietzsche). Likewise, Holden (2009, p. 109) has observed that some people fear happiness because they think it will make them selfish and insensitive to the needs of others in a way that will offend or otherwise harm them.
Writers in critical psychology and cultural studies warn us that “the direct pursuit of security and happiness seems progressively to erode our capacity for devotion even to the best modern ideals of justice and the freedom of all” (Richardson and Guignon 2008, p. 618); a phenomenon that might be explained by the idea that pursuing happiness is bad for us because it weakens our critical capacities in a way that makes us less free to make our own value judgements (Ewen 1976; Binkley 2011, p. 385). Schumaker (2006, p. 9) concurs, arguing that the pursuit of happiness embodied in the American Dream is a “wild goose chase” that is bad for us because it diverts us from the path to authentic happiness—a happiness that arises from loving relationships and other meaningful pursuits.
In sum, considerable evidence exists (in both Western and non-Western cultures) for individual voices and cultural norms that warn against the perils of pursuing happiness because of the damage it can cause to the pursuer and those around her. These warnings are most prominent against the direct pursuit of individualistic, immediate, hedonistic, and material concepts of happiness. Given these voices and norms it is not surprising that some people are averse to pursuing happiness because of the likely negative effects on themselves and those around them.
Summary
Throughout history, it is perhaps impossible to find a culture wherein an aversion to the direct pursuit, or attainment, of some kind of happiness is entirely absent. Indeed, our review revealed that aversion to happiness has assumed many forms and has been based on many different premises. The core themes of these beliefs are that happiness, particularly its extreme forms, causes bad things to happen, including: making you unhappy, making you selfish, careless, shallow, complacent, and boring, and making others unhappy by gaining at their expense, ignoring their plights, disrupting social harmony, and making them envious. It appears that these beliefs are more strongly endorsed in non-Western cultures, while Western culture is more strongly animated by an urge to maximize happiness and minimize sadness (e.g., Christopher and Smith 2006; Eid and Diener 2001; Lyubomirsky 2000). We wrap up this section by making the important observation that, considering the inevitable individual differences in regards to even dominant cultural trends (Markus and Hamedani 2007), we expect no culture to unanimously hold any of these beliefs.
It should be noted that the culmination of this evidence does little to cast doubt on the intrinsic value of most kinds of happiness. Indeed, while happiness and the pursuit of certain kinds of happiness are widely believed to have negative effects for some people in some cases, happiness is, in and of itself, still a positive experience for most people and according to most of the common conceptions of happiness. Furthermore, some of the beliefs about the negative consequences of happiness seem to be exaggerations, often spurred by superstition, of timeless advice on how to enjoy a pleasant or prosperous life. Nevertheless, it should not be in doubt that many individuals and cultures do tend to be averse to some forms of happiness, especially when taken to the extreme, for many different reasons.