Abstract
An underlying principle behind much of the research in positive psychology is that individuals have considerable leeway to increase their levels of happiness. In an influential article that is frequently cited in support of such claims, Lyubomirsky et al. (Rev Gen Psychol 9:111–131, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.9.2.111) put forward a model (subsequently popularized under the name of the “happiness pie”) in which approximately 50% of individual differences in happiness are due to genetic factors and 10% to life circumstances, leaving 40% available to be changed via volitional activities. We re-examined Lyubomirsky et al.’s claims and found several apparent deficiencies in their chain of arguments on both the empirical and the conceptual level. We conclude that there is little empirical evidence for the variance decomposition suggested by the “happiness pie,” and that even if it were valid, it is not necessarily informative with respect to the question of whether individuals can truly exert substantial influence over their own chronic happiness level. We believe that our critical re-examination of Lyubomirsky et al.’s seminal article offers insights into some common misconceptions and pitfalls of scientific inference, and we hope that it might contribute to the construction of a more rigorous and solid empirical basis for the field of positive psychology.
Highlights
One of the key claims of the positive psychology movement is that most individuals are able to exercise substantial control over their own levels of happiness.1 On this account, people can become durably happier—in Seligman’s (2002, p. ix) words, “go from plus two to plus seven” in their lives—by adopting a variety of strategies, such as expressing gratitude (Emmons and McCullough 2003), applying one’s character strengths in novel ways (Seligman et al 2005), writing about positive experiences (Burton and King 2004), or practicing loving-kindness meditation (Fredrickson 2013)
Since the publication of Lyubomirsky et al.’s (2005) article, which according to Google Scholar had 3086 citations as of May 7, 2019, the “happiness pie”—including the relative proportions of its components, and especially the claim that intentional activity is a far more important determinant of well-being than life circumstances—has become a key element of the discourse surrounding well-being
This model has been cited by scholars working on topics that might be considered as the traditional domain of positive psychology, such as employee well-being (Page and Vella-Brodrick 2009), the relation between pleasure and engagement (Schueller and Seligman 2010), or interventions to enhance happiness in normal populations (Proyer et al 2013), and in research areas as diverse as psychotherapy (Rashid 2008), aging (Butler and Ciarrochi 2007), consumer behavior (Hudders and Pandelaere 2012), negative emotions (Jordan et al 2011), self-care for psychologists (Wise et al 2012), heart disease (Huffman et al 2011), tourism (Nawijn and Mitas 2012), and intellectual disability (Dykens 2006)
Summary
Lyubomirsky et al (2005) based their pie chart on the idea that, if 50% of variance in well-being is explained by genetic factors and 10% by circumstances, this “leaves as much as 40% of the variance for intentional activity” (p. 116). Lyubomirsky et al mentioned exercising regularly and striving for important personal goals as volitional activities, but both the inclination to perform daily physical activity and the tendency to persevere in one’s efforts seem to be partly heritable (Moore-Harrison and Lightfoot 2010; Rimfeld et al 2016). This is neither surprising (cf Turkheimer 2000), nor does it constitute support for genetic determinism, but merely demonstrates that the simple breakdown of the three factors into proportions that sum to 100% is unjustified from an empirical point of view. The heritability of general intelligence is high, but education reliably increases intelligence (Plomin and Deary 2015; Ritchie and Tucker-Drob 2018)
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