Having a high national happiness score can make people feel pressure to be happy.
No one wants to be Eeyore in a crowd of Tiggers.
In fact, it can be downright depressing – and bad for your health – to feel obliged to feel happy when you just don’t.
Research looking at almost 7500 people in 40 countries has found that feeling under societal pressure to be happy is linked to poorer wellbeing, particularly for people living in countries that scored highly on the World Happiness Report.
Ironically, people living in countries that lauded happiness as life’s highest purpose tended to feel lower life satisfaction and higher stress, anxiety and depression.
“High World Happiness Index societies may paradoxically work against individual wellbeing for some,” the researchers reported.
So, while valuing and promoting happiness is a noble aim for a nation, maybe don’t take the sunshine and rainbow rhetoric too far, the research suggests.
Unlike medieval times where just not dying before the age of 30 was considered a win, today we are inundated with messages of how happy we should be.
These emotional standards are baked into advertising featuring smiling faces, strewn across the pages of magazines and social media, and engrained in the positive mindsets of life coaches and self-help books, the researchers point out.
What the world needs is more depressed donkeys and more morose robots so that all humans can experience a healthy level of schadenfreude.
Happiness is an illusion, except when you’re reading The Back Page. Send tips to felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au
