31 Ways To Be Happier - Or At Least A Little More OK

- an analysis of a Buzzfeed article from a psychological perspective

After choosing and reviewing multiple sources I found a source from Buzzfeed that claims their information is based on “scientific” facts or evidence. They take quotes and statements from a variety of different sources in order to make it seem like their information is factual. The Buzzfeed article I found is titled, “31 Ways To Be Happier- Or At Least A Little More OK” (Borges, 2018). In this response essay I will critically evaluate the claims against the scientific method and look at the social psychological concepts that we have covered in this class so far. I am going to specifically focus on the social psychology concept of self-esteem.

The first main idea in this popular culture source follows is to “smile more because smiling can make you less stressed” (Borges, 2018). They backed this up with a hyperlink to an article called, “Grin and bear it: the influence of manipulated facial expression on the stress response” (Kraft et al., 2012). In this study they investigated whether manipulating positive facial expressions would influence cardiovascular and affective responses to stress. These results indicated that those who were aware that they were smiling had lower heart rates during stress recovery than the neutral group. There are also unknown variables in that smiling in itself does not produce happiness directly, but instead in this study shows that it can be correlated to reduced stress levels. However since smiling in itself is forced then having this all of a sudden high self-esteem can also impair other aspects of your life such as social skills and your ability to communicate with others may change.

The second main idea that my popular culture source claimed was to try tracking your moods and habits to find the little things that make you feel better and worse (Borge, 2018). Psychologist Andrea Bonior, PhD, suggested, there is something immensely therapeutic about organizing [your life] into a systematic structure like a bullet journal. Having this high self esteem can lead to persistence and having an organization that is so systematic could become obsessive. Persistence is not always desirable because there can be a situation where someone keeps plugging away at something despite the fact that doing so is hurtful to themself and their well-being or others well-being.

The popular culture article claimed that facial expressions change responses to stress. In a study about self-esteem and emotional intensity research suggests that self esteem has a great impact on brain responses to positive and negative stimuli (Wang et al. 2019). Those with high self-esteem can react mildly to threats and this might result from enhanced attention bias for positive stimuli such as smiling more at others. By manipulating facial expressions there can be a connection between high self-esteem and a decrease in stress.

People with a high self-esteem are significantly happier than people with low-self esteem. This is shown by a “simple correlation between self-esteem and happiness was quite significant at .47. In short, self-esteem and happiness are substantially interrelated.” (Baumeister et al. 2003). This is a strong correlation between self-esteem and happiness however there is no causation established and a potential third-variable needs to be ruled out. It is interesting to note that in individualistic countries, people attend to their own internal attributes and these are important in determining overall happiness, collectivistic cultures encourage people to focus on groups and relationships (Diener et al. 1995). This has a direct impact on popular culture views happiness and self-esteem especially since this article was written from an individualistic countries perspective it is more likely to look at high self-esteem as a positive thing because it leads to more success, better outcomes in life and happiness.

From a cohort study of 16,475 college students’ Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) scores from 1982-2020. (Eller, lecture, October 8, 2021). Narcissism is the need for constant admiration, respect, or compliance from others and also results in a lack of empathy for others. In popular media there is a higher emphasis placed on being happy and caring for yourself which can correlate to a lack of empathy for others. Research suggests that high NPI-rated narcissists appear to be more psycho-logically healthy than non-narcissists due to the fact that they are happy and lower in negative affect and they are healthy in ways that people with high self-esteem are (Rosenthal et al. 2010). In research there are gray areas as there are many ways to define high self-esteem and as it relates to narcissism and the results were based on self-report measures and correlational data and so as a result there may be some bias in the data.

Actuality persistence versus the success rates in those with high self-esteem can be adequately measured because they think that they are being successful when actually they could be over persistent. This can happen because they want to take credit for their successes and feel successful which means that they may deny any blame for failures and avoid failure at any cost. High self-esteem individuals react rationally to failure by finding an optimal response, but a study done by (McFarlin et al 1984) suggests that this impression is mistaken. They seem to try harder, which may seem rational but isn’t because it can have consequences on healthy and optimal functioning. The popular culture source indicated that using a technique such as tracking your habits can be helpful in organizing your life.

In the research literature the claims they make don’t say what is incorrect and correct, but popular culture does. Research supports the gray areas that are missing such as how happiness is important and self-esteem is also important but too high of a self-esteem can be negative because of nuances such as narcissism, persistence, responses to stress and internal attributions. These gray areas are lost in popular culture because people are looking for articles such as the one on Buzzfeed for quick tips and advice on how to be happier, but articles such as these can send messages such as happiness is needed for self-esteem. The research literature supported the article in the way that it acknowledges that being happy is a complicated thing and there are many different ways to experience happiness and feel a sense of high self-esteem. Generally these differences exist due to the fact that popular culture is more accessible to the public and the public doesn’t want to read about the nuances, they just want answers. Furthermore these differences are due to the ways in which the messages are being sent.

In popular media there aren’t many ways for journalists to contact scientists. Journalists often have many articles to write at once and will not put as much effort into verifying their sources or including relevant data. There should be ways for scientists to make themself more accessible so that scientists can provide sources to journalists. Universities should provide incentives for scientists to talk to journalists. Spreading research to popular culture helps universities and the scientific community and if the research gets cited you get a bonus which can be helpful in promotion and tenure.

In the source that I chose I recommend that they should communicate more clearly about the nuances to which happiness and self-esteem are related. I would also recommend that they make it clear that happiness comes and goes and it is not necessarily the constant state to achieve because there are many other feelings that humans have to feel. Self-esteem impacts the way we think about emotions and in the article it fails to mention that. Overall in popular culture there needs to more clearly be stated that advice comes with nuances and each individual should decide what is right for them based on their needs such as self-esteem.

References:

​​Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 4(1), 1–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/1529-1006.01431

Diener E., Diener M. (1995). Cross-cultural correlates of life satisfaction and self-esteem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 653–663.7738768

Eller, J. (2021). The Self Lecture. University of Minnesota Social Psychology 3201.

Kraft, T. L., & Pressman, S. D. (2012). Grin and bear it: the influence of manipulated facial expression on the stress response. Psychological science, 23(11), 1372–1378. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976s12445312

McFarlin, D.B., Baumeister, R.F. and Blascovich, J. (1984). On knowing when to quit: Task failure, self-esteem, advice, and nonproductive persistence. Journal of Personality, 52: 138-155. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1984.tb00349.x

Rosenthal, S., Hooley, J. (2010). Narcissism assessment in social–personality research: Does the association between narcissism and psychological health result from a confound with self-esteem?, Journal of Research in Personality, 44,(4), 453-465, ISSN 0092-6566, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2010.05.008.

Wang J., Wu Y. (2019) Self-esteem modulates the ERP processing of emotional intensity in happy and angry faces. PLoS ONE 14(6): e0217844. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217844