Psychologists are gearing up to launch the largest happiness experiment ever conducted, the Global Happiness Megastudy, striving to discover which emotional boosts are most effective and who benefits from them around the world. Having laid the groundwork, Professors Elizabeth Dunn and Barnabás Szászi are now seeking funding to advance the project, with plans to publish the findings in a respected journal, according to The Guardian.
"Our goal is for this to be the largest, most comprehensive, and most diverse experiment on happiness that has ever been conducted," said Professor Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, according to a report by Digi24. In the past six months, more than 1,000 scientists from over 70 countries submitted proposals for the Global Happiness Megastudy. An expert panel narrowed these proposals down to seven categories of happiness interventions, each including three or four different approaches to be tested.
The Global Happiness Megastudy aims to recruit at least 30,000 volunteers from around the world to participate in short interventions designed to enhance happiness. Volunteers will be randomly assigned to perform a brief happiness intervention from the list or placed in a control group for comparison. Each intervention is designed to last no more than 25 minutes and does not require special equipment, making the activities manageable from home.
"All the interventions can be done at home; people don't need anyone to supervise or help them," noted Dr. Barnabás Szászi, according to Newsbomb. One category of practices includes physical exercises, such as yoga, high-intensity interval training, or bodyweight workouts. Another involves social interaction, where people will call loved ones, push themselves to behave more extrovertedly, or interact with artificial intelligence.
The researchers aim to address shortcomings in previous happiness research, which primarily involved "WEIRD" populations—Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic—leading to a skewed understanding of happiness. Scientists point out that what makes a person in Chicago happy may not work in Chongqing, Nagoya, or Mombasa.
"It's like the Avengers: many of the top happiness researchers from around the world have come together to join forces," said Dunn, according to a report by The Guardian. By engaging a vast participant pool, the Global Happiness Megastudy enhances the reliability of the data. The study aims to find strategies that can effectively elevate happiness levels for different populations and determine how effective different happiness strategies are and whether the benefits are the same for everyone.
In previous research, happiness interventions were delivered in different ways to different populations in different settings, making direct comparisons impossible. The Global Happiness Megastudy aims to eliminate false conclusions from past research and to document the methods and data analyses used in a registered report.
Not pre-registering studies can lead to spurious claims if scientists repeatedly analyze their data until they find a statistically significant result. The practice of analyzing data until a significant result is found is known as p-hacking. Szászi compared p-hacking to "designing a target around a bullet hole and claiming it hit the bullseye," according to Newsbomb.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.