Study: Trying to be happy can make you more miserable
By: Team Ifairer | Posted: 11-01-2020
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If there's one thing universally common, it's our desire to be happy. We take immense measures to achieve happiness. However, according to a recent study carried out among students in the UK, quoted in a report in The Guardian, the more people valued happiness, more the chances of showing signs of depression.
"When you value happiness too much, you become too attentive to your emotions and also kind of struggle with regulating them in a good way," Dr Julia Vogt, a co-author of the research from the University of Reading, commented. "I just found this fascinating, that people who want to be happy are actually the ones that are not happy," Vogt added.
In order to arrive at the result, Vogt and colleagues presented 151 students - mostly women- with a series of online questionnaires. It was gauged how much they valued happiness, their levels of depression-related symptoms, if they can put aside emotions easily and how prone they are affected by emotions.