Everyone’s unique recipe for happiness

The ancient pursuit of happiness may have undergone major changes. New research shows that what makes people happy is not universal, but profoundly personalized, challenging traditional wisdom about welfare interventions.

A groundbreaking study published in natural behavior, tracking more than 40,000 people in five countries and lasting for 33 years, reveals that pathways of happiness vary widely between individuals.

“We have to understand where happiness comes from in order to build effective interventions,” said Emorie Beck, assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis and first author on the paper.

The researchers examined two competitive happiness models. The “bottom-up” theory shows that satisfaction flows from specific life areas such as work and interpersonal relationships. Meanwhile, the “top-down” approach proposes that overall happiness affects our perception of these areas, not the other way around.

Surprisingly, both models proved to be universally true. Researchers analyzed decades of data from Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Australia and found that roughly equal groups demonstrated each pattern—some showed primarily bottom-up effects, some showed top-down, and some did not have a clear pattern.

“What emerges is that we see roughly equal groups showing each pattern,” Baker explains. “Some are bottom-up; some are top-down, and these areas do not affect their happiness; some are two-way, and some are unclear.”

This challenges the basic assumptions behind happiness interventions. Only about 20-25% of participants exhibited a two-way pattern, which would benefit from a typical approach of some size to enhance happiness.

These findings have profound implications for public policy and individual pursuit of happiness. The population-level measure of subjective well-being may mask significant individual differences. Strategies to effectively enhance happiness will need to be personalized, targeting the external environment of some people while focusing on the internal perspectives of others.

“These things are treated separately, but not really. They eat each other on a personal level.”

This personalized approach to happiness can explain why standard interventions work for some people, not others. Your neighbors may really find joy through meditation, and you may indeed need a raise at work – both of you may be right about your own path to happiness.