A study published February 17 in Scientific Reports surveyed 7,443 people from 40 countries on their levels of life satisfaction, emotional well-being, and feelings of depression, anxiety, or stress. Participants also ranked how much pressure they felt to feel positive and to avoid negative emotions. Across all the countries in the study, people who reported feeling pressure to experience happiness and avoid unhappiness also reported less life satisfaction. This pressure was also associated with more frequent and intense negative emotions; positive emotions were more fleeting and less powerful. “Humans are social creatures, and they want to comply to the prevailing standards in a society,” says the lead study author, Egon Dejonckheere, PhD, of KU Leuven in Belgium and Tilburg University in the Netherlands. The trouble today is that societal standards of constant happiness have become unattainable for most people, Dr. Dejonckheere says. “If you feel that you cannot comply to the norms that society prescribes, you experience a discrepancy between how you ought to feel and what you actually feel,” Dejonckheere says. “Ironically, this triggers negative feelings that move you even further from the emotions society approves of.” The association between perceived societal pressure to appear upbeat and actual negative emotions was present in every country in the study, but it varied among nations. People who felt like they failed to meet societal expectations for happiness had the poorest well-being and mental health symptoms when they lived in places with the highest rankings on the World Happiness Index. Across most well-being indicators — including life satisfaction, the intensity of negative emotions, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress — the relationship between perceived pressure to be happy and poor well-being was nearly twice as strong in the countries with higher World Happiness Index scores than in places with lower scores. Countries included in the study that were rated as having higher happiness in the World Happiness Index included the Netherlands and Canada, while countries rated with lower happiness included Uganda and Senegal. The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how social pressure to appear happy might directly cause negative mental health outcomes. Another limitation of the study is that differences in language and culture may have influenced how people responded to the surveys. But the results still suggest that people who feel miserable in supposedly happy countries may have a lot of company, Dejonckheere says. If this sounds like you, know that the version of happiness you see all around you doesn’t necessarily reflect reality, especially if you’re taking your mood cues from social media, Dejonckheere says. It’s important to allow yourself and others to feel negative emotions. “Don’t actively try to pursue happiness as a goal, because that will backfire,” Dejonckheere advises. “You should see happiness as a by-product of a meaningful life, not the main goal.”
