I recently came across a video of a mental health professional disparaging the brain’s default mode network (DMN). The loudest contingent of the DMN-bashing bandwagon tends to be the mindfulness folks, but it’s not an exclusive club.

This particular person cited a study I’m familiar with and have mentioned previously. Researchers contacted study participants at random times to ask them (1) what they were doing right then and (2) how happy they were.

The results supposedly revealed that people were happier when their attention was focused on what they were doing (accessing the brain’s attention network) than they were when their minds were wandering (accessing the brain’s default mode network).

My first question now would be who were these people? Specifically, I would want to know something about their personalities, given that we are all so dissimilar from each other. That is just one of many reasons why you cannot simply lump a group of people together, average their responses to some questions, and come to a sound conclusion about…anything.

Happiness was, in fact, the subject of the research, so I can’t fault the researchers for asking people to evaluate their level of happiness. But I question the ability of people in general to gauge their degree of happiness or of any other emotion. And I definitely can fault the assumption that happiness is a worthy topic of research.

The study in question was really focused on transient happiness—or acute happiness, if you will—which most people experience to a greater or lesser extent, anyway. By that, I mean we don’t all experience an equal amount or intensity of happiness. And who knows if what I label happy is the same emotion you label happy.

An inability to experience any happiness is definitely an indicator of a problem; the inability to be happy all the time—not so much.

The Pursuit of Happiness

A recent Facebook post advertising a Buddhist-oriented program asserted that anger is a “delusion” and it’s bad because it makes us unhappy. This is both simple-minded and wrong. The relentless pursuit of happiness is far more delusional and destructive than the experience of anger.

I have a handout with a list of 136 positive emotions (along with a similar list of negative emotions). Happy is but one of them. Yet somehow people have gotten the idea that it is the best or most important emotion. And somehow people have concluded that a steady state of happiness is both desirable and achievable. (This seems to be a peculiarly American take.)

One of the other emotions on the list is excited, which is far more appealing to me than happy but far less acceptable to pursue. For one thing, people who pursue excitement are often advised that it is just a poor substitute for happiness. Pursuing excitement is also associated with novelty-seeking and risk-taking.

In the Five Factor Model of Personality, it’s related to extraversion and openness to experience. (Full disclosure: those are the two factors I always score highest in, in that order.) Introverts and ambiverts tend to view extraverts with some degree of suspicion if not outright aversion, so the negative association to excitement is not surprising.

The short-term side-effects of excitement (acute excitement), however, include anticipation, alertness, increased energy, and motivation. Good stuff! But the side-effects of attempting to maintain a constant state of excitement—chronic excitement—are altogether different: impaired concentration, sleeplessness, restlessness, elevated blood pressure, increased adrenaline and noradrenaline, racing heart. The body would react to a constant state of excitement essentially the same as it would to chronic stress.

Furthermore, one would have to continually up the ante, so to speak (seek more novelty, take greater risks), to maintain the same level of excitement. Someone who was chronically excited would likely become a source of annoyance to friends, family, and coworkers.

Chronic happiness is no better for us than chronic excitement. Here’s why:

1. Sometimes things are not going well, there is a real threat, and vigilance is required.

If someone offers you a pill that makes you happy 100 percent of the time, you should run fast in the other direction. It’s not good to feel happy in a dark alley at night. Happiness is a noun, so we think it’s something we can own. But happiness is a place to visit, not a place to live. It’s like the child’s idea that if you drive far and fast enough you can get to the horizon. No, the horizon’s not a place you get to. —Daniel Gilbert

2. Pursuing happiness is likely to keep you stuck on the hedonic treadmill, where you’ll need to keep moving to acquire more and more of the things or experiences you think will bring you pleasure—to each of which you will adapt surprisingly quickly.
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3. Happiness won’t increase your lifespan. In the final analysis, death comes in equal proportion to the happy and the sad. The result of research conducted by Oxford University with nearly 720,000 women is that “happiness and related measures of wellbeing do not appear to have any direct effect on mortality.”
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4. If you’re simply here for the party, you should be aware your body processes “empty positive emotions” the same way it processes chronic adversity, which is by activating the pro-inflammatory response to prepare for bacterial threats. (Inflammation is associated with many major and minor diseases, including heart disease, various cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.) A diet of too many empty positive emotions seems to be a lot like a diet of too many empty (sugar-, salt-, alcohol-, or fat-laden) calories.
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5. Happiness may make you feel good in the moment, but pursuing it by avoiding negative thoughts and feelings and difficult or painful situations can stunt your personal development. That can lead to decreased resilience, greater susceptibility to stress, and reduced creativity and problem-solving abilities.

6. You’re less likely to become depressed if you regularly experience a range of emotions instead of aiming exclusively for the positive ones.

Research indicates that if you pursue happiness, you may get it (just not all the time), but you’re not likely to feel satisfied. On the other hand, if you focus on meaning, instead, you’re extremely likely to feel satisfied and you may also get happiness as a bonus.