Essentialist Beliefs about Happiness and its Impacts on Well-Being

Abstract

Lay theories about happiness are pervasive in lay peoples everyday life. However, to date, despite lay peoples fascination with happiness, we know little about lay theories about happiness and its implications for well-being. The current research investigated lay theories about happiness within a framework of psychological essentialism. In Study 1 and 2, I developed and validated a new scale to assess the essentialist beliefs about happiness with three components: (1) the immutability, (2) the biological basis, and (3) the effort constructivism. In Study 3, I found that the essentialist beliefs about happiness were negatively correlated with well-being measures and with intention of happiness-seeking behaviors. To clarify the causal effect, in Study 4, I experimentally manipulated essentialist beliefs about happiness and revealed that viewing happiness in a perspective of essentialists significantly reduced intentions to engage in happiness exercises. In Study 5, a one-week intervention study was conducted to examine whether there exist moderating effects of the essentialist belief about happiness on the effectiveness of happiness-boosting interventions. The results showed that positive interventions yielded equal effectiveness. Implications for well-being are discussed.