A fear of experiencing joy, prompting deliberate efforts to steer clear of this emotion, was often fueled by such factors as an unhappy childhood, undue perfectionism, loneliness, and belief in black magic and karma, a cross-cultural sample carried out by a team of researchers revealed.
Some people actually loathe happiness, or have a distinct "aversion" to it, underscored Mohsen Joshanloo, an associate professor of psychology at Keimyung University in South Korea, and author of the study.
The cross-cultural psychologist described this concept as “the belief that experiencing or expressing happiness can cause bad things to happen.”
“Happiness is usually referred to as the ultimate goal of life that everyone strives for (or must strive for). But about a decade ago, I came to believe that this is not true for everyone,” Joshanloo, honorary principal fellow at the University of Melbourne, clarified.
Back in 2013, Joshanloo came up with a five-item "fear of happiness scale." Now, he put it to use on study subjects across a plethora of countries. He found out that people in some cultures tend to "prioritize hard work, religion, justice, morality, excellence, and prestige" over happiness.
But that was not all, as some individuals actually questioned the need for striving to be happy. They appeared to think that happiness can be even harmful.
"I began a series of studies on fear of happiness or aversion to happiness in different cultures to refute the widespread notion that all people are constantly striving for happiness and prioritize happiness over everything else... Today, I can say that the empirical research that other researchers and I have conducted has paid off and that there is greater awareness in the social sciences of the diversity of lay concepts of happiness.”
The 871 adults participating in the study came from the US, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Vietnam, the Philippines, India, and Romania. They were asked to respond to an online survey, where they rated their agreement with statements like, “I prefer not to be too joyful, because usually joy is followed by sadness.”
The survey also included "measures of nine potential predictor variables," the author pointed out.
It was when the "predictive power" of the variables was tested that it turned out "aversion to happiness" beliefs were rooted much more deeply in those who were younger, lonelier, and displayed excessively high perfection standards.
In an interesting twist, a greater part of the joy aversion-feeling people believed in black magic or karma, and retained memories of an unhappy childhood.
“At the individual level... belief in paranormal phenomena, and holding a collectivistic understanding of happiness are positively associated with aversion to happiness,” the study stated.