Photo by Alex Block on Unsplash

There’s Some Sad News About Happiness

“Do unto others” might not be as helpful as we thought.

We’ve known for a while that one of the ways to make yourself feel good is by doing something nice for someone else.

What if that wasn’t true?

What if, instead, it was simply the thought that you’d done something nice? What if it didn’t actually matter if they were happy or not, but only if we thought they were.

Image by me.

That’s the indication of a study by Milla Titova and Kennon Sheldon in 2021. In Happiness comes from trying to make others feel good, rather than oneself , the researchers did the usual experiment of asking people to measure their current state of happiness.

Then some of the subjects were asked to do things for others, and some were asked to focus on themselves. Then they measured everybody’s happiness again.

(If you’re wondering, like me, how you accurately measure people’s happiness, the details are in the study linked above).

Doing something nice for others increases connection.