SONJA (SOFYA) LYUBOMIRSKY

Distinguished Professor, University of California, Riverside

***pronounce my name***

Ph.D. Stanford University, 1994

(951) 827-5041 (msg only)

sonja.lyubomirsky[at]ucr.edu

Google Scholar Page       Lyubomirsky CV

The majority of my research career has been devoted to studying human happiness. Why is the scientific study of happiness important? In short, because most people believe that happiness is meaningful, desirable, and an important, worthy goal, because happiness is one of the most salient and significant dimensions of human experience and emotional life, because happiness yields numerous rewards for the individual, and because it makes for a better, healthier, stronger society. Along these lines, my current research addresses three critical questions: 1) What makes people happy?; 2) Is happiness a good thing?; and 3) How and why can people learn to lead happier and more flourishing lives?

Why Are Some People Happier Than Others?
I have always been struck by the capacity of some individuals to be remarkably happy, even in the face of stress, trauma, or adversity. Thus, my earlier research efforts had focused on trying to understand why some people are happier than others (for a review and theoretical framework, see Lyubomirsky, 2001). To this end, my approach had been to explore the cognitive and motivational processes that distinguish individuals who show exceptionally high and low levels of happiness. These processes include social comparison (how people compare themselves to peers), dissonance reduction (how people justify both trivial and important choices in their lives), self-evaluation (how people judge themselves), person perception (how people think about others), and dwelling or rumination. My students and I have found that truly happy individuals construe life events and daily situations in ways that seem to maintain their happiness, while unhappy individuals construe experiences in ways that seem to reinforce unhappiness (e.g., Liberman, Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Ross, 2009; Lyubomirsky, Layous, Chancellor, & Nelson, 2015; Lyubomirsky & Ross, 1997, 1999; see also Boehm, Ruberton, & Lyubomirsky, 2021).

To cast our work on happiness in a broader framework, we have also been exploring the meaning, expression, and pursuit of happiness across cultures, subcultures, and age groups. For example, despite media reports, we have found that parents actually experience more happiness and meaning than do non-parents–both when evaluating their lives as a whole, when going about their days, and when caring for their children (versus doing other activities; Nelson, Kushlev, English, Dunn, & Lyubomirsky, 2013). Of course, parents’ happiness is impacted by myriad factors, including their age and SES and their children’s ages and temperaments (Nelson, Killingsworth, Layous, Cole, & Lyubomirsky, 2019; Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, 2014). Furthermore, we have carried out happiness-increasing interventions among Japanese engineers, Korean and Hong Kong undergraduates, Spanish, French, and German professionals, Canadian elementary school students, and British and U.S. teens (for a few of our cross-cultural findings, see Boehm et al., 2011; Layous et al., 2013; Sheldon et al., 2017; Shin & Lyubomirsky, 2017; Shin et al., in press-a, in press-b, 2020).

What Are the Benefits of Happiness?
Is happiness a good thing? Or, does it just simply feel good? A review of all the available literature has revealed that happiness does indeed have numerous positive byproducts, which appear to benefit not only individuals, but families, communities, and the society at large (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). The benefits of happiness include higher income and superior work outcomes (e.g., greater productivity and higher quality of work), larger social rewards (e.g., more satisfying and longer marriages, more friends, stronger social support, and richer social interactions), more activity, energy, and flow, and better physical health (e.g., a bolstered immune system, lowered stress levels, and less pain) and even longer life. The literature, my colleagues and I have found, also suggests that happy individuals are more creative, helpful, charitable, and self-confident, have better self-control, and show greater self-regulatory and coping abilities.

On-going and future experimental and longitudinal studies that attempt to increase the long-term happiness of students and working adults are giving us the opportunity to assess whether increases in durable happiness predict changes in other positive outcomes, such as altruistic behavior, creativity, work performance, physical health, and social relationships. We are investigating whether both happiness and generosity propagate across social networks (funded by the Notre Dame Science of Generosity Initiative; Chancellor et al., 2018), and whether happiness is associated with more physical movement and greater social interactions (funded by Hitachi’s Central Research Laboratory; Chancellor, Layous, & Lyubomirsky, 2015). For example, we found that 9- to 11-year old kids who practiced acts of kindness not only got happier but became more popular with their peers (Layous et al., 2012) and that 14- and 15-year olds who practiced gratitude not only got happier but reported healthier eating habits (Fritz et al., 2019) and intentions to become a better person (Armenta et al., in press) over the course of a semester.  And an exciting experiment showed that doing acts of kindness for others (versus kindness for the world or themselves or doing something neutral) leads to changes in immune cell gene expression associated with disease resistance (Nelson-Coffey et al., 2017; but not telomere length; Fritz et al., in press). We are also currently using new technologies, including ambulatory, sociometric, psychophysiological, smartphone, and EEG methodologies, to assess happiness and the effects of positive activities (e.g., Chancellor et al., 2017; Parks, Della Porta, Pierce, Zilca, & Lyubomirsky, 2012; Yetton, Revord, Margolis, Lyubomirsky, & Seitz, 2019).

Finally, a separate line of research, supported by the John Templeton Foundation, focuses on the strength of humility — that is, how to measure it; what are its antecedents, causes, and consequences for individuals and organizations; and, perhaps most important, how people can develop it (e.g., Kruse, Chancellor, Ruberton, & Lyubomirsky, 2014; Ruberton, Kruse, & Lyubomirsky, 2016). We have been successful, for example, in inducing humble feelings via manipulations of gratitude, awe, and self-affirmation.

The Architecture of Sustainable Happiness
A vibrant and continuing program of research is asking the question, “How can happiness be reliably increased?” (for reviews, see Layous & Lyubomirsky, 2014; Lyubomirsky, 2008; Lyubomirsky & Layous, 2013; Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005; Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009). Despite pessimism from the current literature that the pursuit of happiness may be largely futile, my colleagues and I believe that durable increases in happiness are indeed possible and within the average person’s reach (see Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2019, for our rethinking of the “happiness pie chart”). Thus, following my construal theory of happiness, I am exploring how the thoughts and behaviors that characterize naturally happy people (i.e., “happy habits”) can be nurtured, acquired, or directly taught. To this end, my students’ and my current research is testing predictions from our positive activity model (Lyubomirsky & Layous, 2013) —specifically, investigating the mechanisms underlying the efficacy of simple intentional effortful activities (which we call “positive activities”) to boost well-being, as well as the conditions under which such activities might backfire (Fritz & Lyubomirsky, 2018).

To this end, we have conducted multiple experimental intervention studies in which participants’ cognitive and behavioral strategies are systematically retrained. For example, intervention studies with students, kids, community members, workers, depressed individuals, and hospital patients are testing the efficacy of five cognitive and behavioral volitional strategies: 1) regularly setting aside time to recall moments of gratitude (i.e., keeping a journal in which one “counts one’s blessings” or writing gratitude letters), 2) engaging in self-regulatory and positive thinking about oneself (i.e., reflecting, writing, and talking about one’s happiest and unhappiest life events or one’s goals for the future), 3) practicing altruism and kindness (i.e., routinely committing acts of kindness or trying to make a loved one happy), 4) affirming one’s most important values, and 5) savoring positive experiences (e.g., using one’s five senses to relish daily moments or living this month like it’s one’s last in a particular location). Importantly, we are testing our positive activity model by exploring whether the benefits of such activities differ across cultures (see above), and whether their success is moderated by such factors as person-activity “fit,” motivation, effort, social support, variety, dosage, personality, culture, age, and expectations (e.g., Boehm, Lyubomirsky, & Sheldon, 2011; Ko et al., 2021; Layous, Lee, Choi, & Lyubomirsky, 2103; Lyubomirsky, Dickerhoof, Boehm, & Sheldon, 2011; Lyubomirsky, Sousa, & Dickerhoof, 2006; Nelson et al., 2015; Nelson, Fuller, Choi, & Lyubomirsky, 2014; Nelson, Layous, Cole, & Lyubomirsky, 2016; Sheldon et al., 2010; Sheldon, Boehm, & Lyubomirsky, 2012; Sin, Della Porta, & Lyubomirsky, 2011).

Perhaps most critical to improving and maintaining happiness is the ability to connect with other people and to create meaningful connecting moments, and this is an important focus of our lab’s recent research (e.g., Fritz et al., under review; Margolis & Lyubomirsky, 2020; Reis, Regan, & Lyubomirsky, 2021). We have investigated how feelings of connection during social interactions can be measured (Okabe-Miyamoto et al., 2021); how they have been impacted by social distancing policies during COVID-19 (Folk et al., 2020; Okabe-Miyamoto et al., 2021); and how they may be induced by psychoactive substances, like MDMA (Lyubomirsky, 2022; Regan et al., in press).

We are also examining the “why” of happiness-boosting interventions by testing the mediating role of positive events, positive thoughts, positive emotions, and need satisfaction. Recently, we have become interested in the conditions under which positive activities can feel unpleasant or even backfire (Fritz & Lyubomirsky, 2018; Layous et al., 2017). Finally, we are investigating genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in responses to happiness-increasing interventions (Haworth et al., 2016), and considering how such interventions might protect people from mental health conditions (e.g., Layous, Chancellor, & Lyubomirsky, 2014) and influence biological processes (Fritz et al., in press; Nelson-Coffey, Fritz, Lyubomirsky, & Cole, 2017).

Thwarting Hedonic Adaptation
Finally, a line of research focuses on hedonic adaptation to positive experience as a critical barrier to raising happiness (Bao & Lyubomirsky, 2013; Lyubomirsky, 2010; Sheldon et al., 2012; Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2012). After all, if people become accustomed to (and take for granted) anything positive that happens to them, then how can they ever become happier? Our model suggests that adaptation to positive experience proceeds via two paths: 1) through diminished positive emotions and 2) through increased aspirations. The key to achieving increased and lasting well-being thereby lies in effortful, intentional activities that slow down or preclude the positive adaptation process. Our hypothesis is that such activities share several properties that potentially help them to effectively forestall adaptation: they are dynamic, episodic, novel, and attention-enticing. We have applied our model to understand what produces materialism and consumerism, and how to design interventions that significantly depress people’s aspirations and bolster their humility, thereby allowing them to step off the hedonic treadmill and become more thrifty (e.g., Chancellor & Lyubomirsky, 2011, 2013).

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Selected Publications (click here for complete list)

  • Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Wisco, B. E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). Rethinking rumination. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3, 400-424.