Feeling good, feeling free – autonomy the key to happiness, says SFU study
If you can’t get no satisfaction, then maybe it’s because happiness does not only stem from pleasure or a meaningful existence. Instead, a new Simon Fraser University study suggests that freedom is the key to happiness.
Researchers found that while positive feelings and pleasure are important, autonomy and the freedom to make your own choices is a better gauge of happiness.
“People are not merely hedonists,” says Jason Payne, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology.
“When people step back and evaluate whether their life is going well, they consider more than their emotional balance sheet. They appear to ask themselves not just ‘do I feel good?’, but also ‘am I free?’”
Unlocking the secret to happiness has been the subject of debate since time immemorial. Experts usually suggest that happiness stems from:
Feeling good (affective experiences): more pleasure and less pain means a better life.
Meaningful existence (flourishing): happiness comes from many factors, including good relationships, competence, virtue, autonomy, personal growth.
The study, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, sought to put these two schools of thought to the test by surveying more than 1,200 adults from Canada and the United Kingdom.
The survey measured people’s positive and negative feelings, their life satisfaction and three psychological traits: autonomy – the feeling of being free to make choices; competence – feeling effective and capable; relatedness – feeling close and connected to others.
Researchers then used advanced statistical modelling to determine what influences people’s satisfaction.
Unsurprisingly, positive and negative emotions were strong indicators of happiness. But autonomy – the sense that you are free to make your own choices – was a better indicator of life satisfaction.
“Even after accounting for how good or bad people felt, those who felt more autonomous were more satisfied with their lives,” says Payne.
“Autonomy was the only psychological need that seems to contribute something that feelings alone did not explain.”
Aside from challenging widespread assumptions about happiness, the findings also have practical implications for the workplace, as well as public policy, according to Payne.
“Programs and interventions designed to improve well-being may succeed in improving feelings, but if they restrict people’s choices, then they could ultimately backfire and lead people to judge their lives as worse overall,” says Payne.
“For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the obligatory facemasks may well have been in the public good, but by making them involuntary, perhaps that explains some of the backlash as they impinged upon people’s feeling of autonomy.
“Policymakers looking to improve well-being should be mindful not only of potential direct outcomes, but also the second-order effects of not being free to choose the path to those outcomes.”
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