Commonly recommended ways to boost our mood – which can also include expressing gratitude or spending time in nature – are often based on small, poorly designed studies
By Christa Lesté-Lasserre
20 July 2023
Spending time in nature is often said to have mood-boosting benefits
Aldo Murillo/Getty Images
Hundreds of studies claim that mindfulness, walking in nature and expressing gratitude make us happier. But a new review found that most of the research papers looking into these strategies are based on small, poorly designed trials, which could make their conclusions unreliable.
This doesn’t mean these interventions don’t work, but we need much more solid scientific research to prove that they do, says Elizabeth Dunn at the University of British Columbia, Canada.
A decade ago, the psychology research field underwent a “renaissance” when scientists realised their standard ways of conducting experiments could lead to false results. These studies often had too few participants or hand-picked them once the experiment had ended, what Dunn calls “massaging the data”.
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Since the renaissance, researchers are expected to “pre-register” their studies, meaning they define their statistical analysis plans before starting the experiment. “What pre-registration does is tie our hands ahead of time,” says Dunn. “We have to commit to how we’re going to do the study and how we’re going to do the analyses before we actually get our hands on the data. That dramatically reduces the risk that we’ll find a false positive.”
Curious about how pre-renaissance trials might have influenced the results of happiness research, Dunn and her colleague Dunigan Folk carried out Google searches for phrases such as “how to be happy” and “scientifically proven ways to be happier”.
The five top happiness-improvement strategies from these searches were expressing gratitude, being more sociable, exercising, practising mindfulness or meditation and increasing exposure to nature.