The State of the Art in Happiness Advice; Can We Escape the Dodo-Verdict?

Ad Bergsma 0 A New Standard 0 0 A. Bergsma (&) Erasmus University , Rotterdam, The Netherlands Sonja Lyubomirsky is one of the leading happiness researchers in the world and her selfhelp book The How of Happiness has received wide acclaim from important scholars in positive psychology.1 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes that Lyubomirsky 'provides practical suggestions for improving one's life that are easy to follow'. He adds that her book is a 'wonderful addition to everyone's library'. Martin Seligman: 'The right place to look for science-based advice on How To Become Happier.' Daniel Gilbert is even more outspoken: 'Everyone has an opinion about happiness, and unfortunately, many of them write books. Finally we have a self-help book from a reputable scientist whose advice is based on the best experimental data. Charlatans, pundits, and new-age gurus should be worried and the rest of us should be grateful. The How of Happiness is smart, fun, and interestingand unlike almost every other book on the same shelf, it also happens to be true.' If we take the remark of Gilbert literally, we can call the The How of Happiness the new bible of popular positive psychology and say 'amen, praise the scientist'. I intend to be a little more cynical. I will regard Lyubomirsky's book as the state of the art in popular advice about happiness, and try to assess how far we have come. In general I agree that Lyubomirsky's book is about as good as it gets, but still it leaves a lot to be desired. The How of Happiness has set a new standard in happiness advice, as far I know it, mainly because Lyubomirsky has made three important contributions. The first is that she has customized the book for different readers. She acknowledges that different people may need different happiness strategies and she offers a provisional instrument to make a selection. The second contribution is that she stresses the importance of sustaining higher 1 Positive reviews of The how of happiness are collected in the first pages of the book and on the website: http://chass.ucr.edu/faculty_book/lyubomirsky/praise.html. well-being. Focusing on positive emotions, variation and timing of positive activities, social support, effort and commitment could help readers to make a lasting change in their lives. Lyubomirsky also mentions habit formation: Because such activities as looking on the bright side, savoring the moment, practicing forgiveness, and striving for important life goals make a difference in your happiness, it is certainly a good idea to make a habit of doing them (p. 281). The third important contribution of The How of Happiness is that it is evidence-based for a large part. There is empirical data available for all the happiness strategies offered that shows that they can raise happiness. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of this contribution. The Journal of Happiness Studies compiled a special issue on happiness advice, looking at world famous thinkers such as Confucius, Buddha, Lao Tse, Epicurus and Schopenhauer and concluded on the basis of empirical data that in some respects their advice was completely wrong (Bergsma 2008a). Lyubomirsky has shown the self-discipline to avoid such blatant mistakes. On the other side, I do not believe that the fact that she used available evidence implies that she is right in all respects, nor that her book will have an optimal therapeutic effect. The first reason to doubt is that although many of the recommendations are evidence-based, this is not true for the whole of the work. In essence it remains an untested self-help manuscript. The distinction is important, because Rosen et al. (2003) describe that well-intended and educated efforts to improve self-help manuals can, and sometimes do, have unintended negative consequences. We need to test the effects of Lyubomirskys book empirically to be sure. 2 The Diagnostic Self-Test Let me consider the diagnostic self-test that helps to select happiness exercises, I mentioned earlier as an example. The test is included, because people must select a strategy to raise their happiness that suits their characteristics. However, the test she presents is only used in empirical research to compare two happiness strategies: expressing gratitude and cultivating optimism. The test was not used to select one strategy out of all twelve happiness strategies Lyubomirsky discerns. A limitation of the self-test is that it is based on self-knowledge. Readers are invited to estimate how well they would like a particular activity. This is tricky, because some people may be unhappy because they lack the self-knowledge to choose a course in life that suits them best. Still, Lyubomirsky urges readers to use their self-knowledge to escape this vicious circle. My guess is that this strategy would indeed help some people to get a better grasp of how they can try to be happier, but she does ask a lot of the self-direction of her readers. Perhaps the people who need tailored happiness advice the most, are least able to profit from the diagnostic self-test. The self-test does not meet the standard that Lyubomirsky describes in the first pages in the book, when she remarks that only double-blind experimentation offers the kind of knowledge to be trusted enough to decide whether a claim is true. 3 Evidence is Necessary, But Not Enough In addition to that one can wonder how effective any evidence-based approach, like the one advocated by Lyubomirsky, will be. Since the effects of self-help have not been studied intensively enough to report conclusions, I will use research of the effects of psychotherapy as an analogy. It is clear that some psychological treatments are harmful, and should not be used anymore (Lilienfield 2007) The How of Happiness is flawless in this respect. Still, it is generally agreed upon that evidence-based treatment methods have yielded limited results in psychotherapy. Although the psychodynamic, humanistic or behavioral schools of psychotherapy have vastly different investments in scientific effect studies, they all tend to yield quite similar results. Luborsky et al. (1975) famously suggested to use the verdict of the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland: Everyone has won and all must have prizes. Almost everyone wins, because the effect of psychotherapy does not only depend on the specific treatment, but also on common factors, like the personal resources and life circumstances of the client (which explain 40% of outcome variance), the emotionally charged relationship with the therapist (30%) and placebo, hope and expectancy (15%). The specific techniques and models of the treatment may explain as little 15% of treatment variance (Hubble and Miller 2004). We can tentatively extrapolate these findings to self-help. It seems reasonable to assume that readers are more likely to profit from a self-help book like The How of Happiness if they have better personal resources, such as hope and expectancy, reading skills, (...truncated)