Background
People who value happiness to an extreme experience poorer mental health (Mauss et al., 2011). This paradoxical effect is mediated by feelings of disappointment (Mauss et al., 2011), suggesting that people who set happiness standards too high fail to meet those goals.
Hypotheses/Research Questions
As such, we hypothesized that people who value happiness to an extreme may be more prone to feeling the types of emotions associated with failure, such as shame, guilt, or embarrassment, in comparison to other negative emotions. This idea is important to examine given the unique role of elevated self-conscious emotions, particularly shame, in the development of depression (Kim et al., 2011).
Sample Characteristics and Sample Size
388 midlife adults, ages 35-64 (M=43.5)
Design
We administered a battery of online self-report questionnaires in the summer of 2019 on mTurk.
Results
Results showed valuing happiness to an extreme was positively correlated with self-conscious emotions overall, and with each individual self-conscious emotion. However, contrary to hypothesis, these relationships were not stronger than the associations for other types of negative emotions, such as anger, sadness, or disgust, or their composite. Based on the similar correlation magnitudes between valuing happiness to an extreme and self conscious negative emotions and non-self conscious negative emotions, we conclude that people who value happiness to an extreme are not more susceptible to self-conscious emotions.
Scientific Contribution
Understanding that people who value happiness to an extreme are not more susceptible to self-conscious emotions is important, given the critical role of elevated self-conscious emotions in the development of depression.