快樂的人更愚蠢更短命嗎?

The pursuit of happiness is one of the foundations of US life, but researchers say people who strive for happiness may end up worse off than when they began。

June Gruber of Yale University, Iris Mauss of the University of Denver and Maya Tamir of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem conducted a review of studies concerning the pursuit of happiness and found happiness has a dark side, too。

For example, one study tracked children from the 1920s to old age and found those rated as highly cheerful by their teachers died younger。

The review, published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, also found people feeling extreme amounts of happiness may not think as creatively as the less happy, and they also tend to take more risks。

The tools often suggested for increasing happiness - such as taking time to think about what happened that made a person happy or grateful, or setting up situations that are likely to make you happy - are good。

"But when you're doing it with the motivation or expectation that these things ought to make you happy, that can lead to disappointment and decreased happiness," Gruber says。

However, psychological scientists have discovered what appears to really increase happiness。

"The strongest predictor of happiness is not money, or external recognition through success or fame," Gruber says. "It's having meaningful social relationships."快樂至上是美式生活的根基之一，但近日研究人員稱追求快樂的人羣可能面臨“好開端，壞結局”的窘境。

耶魯大學的瓊格魯伯、丹佛大學的愛麗絲莫斯和耶路撒冷希伯來大學的瑪雅塔米爾日前就追求快樂的相關研究進行了評述，發現快樂其實也有負面作用。

舉個例子，一項自上世紀20年代就開始的兒童跟蹤調查指出，被老師評價爲快樂的孩子成年後去世更早。

這篇刊載於《視角與心理科學》的評估報告還發現，自覺非常開心的人可能沒有不開心者那麼有創意，而且前者更樂於冒險。

而讓人們快樂的方法還是值得提倡的——例如抽時間想想讓一個人開心愉悅的事情是什麼，或者建立一些情境讓自己開心。

“但是當你有意爲之讓自己開心時，最終結果可能是失望和打了折的快樂，”格魯伯說道。

儘管如此，心理學家們還是發現了真正開懷的東西。

“最強快樂指數不是錢或者成功、名譽帶來的外界看法，”格魯伯說，“而是有意義的人際關係。”