The Happiness of Withholding Happiness

• Main Authors: Ruan, Bowen, Yu, Linzhi, Hu, Bingyan
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Emotions; Happiness
• ISSN: 0098-9258

Positive life events generate happiness. Unfortunately, the happiness from most positive events fades over time as people pay less attention and adapt to their hedonic benefits (Frederick and Loewenstein 1999; Kahneman and Thaler 2006; Wilson and Gilbert 2008). This work introduces a simple yet costless method that allows people to adapt slower and thus derive more happiness from a positive event-delaying sharing the event with others. We make two main predictions. First, we predict that delaying the disclosure of a positive event will generate more happiness than immediate disclosure. Second, we predict that most people tend to disclose positive events immediately, thereby spoiling the additional happiness they could have obtained from delayed disclosure. While these two predictions seemingly contradict each other, they may both be related to an inherent desire to disclose information, akin to a desire to be known (Kim, Barasz, and John 2021). When people obtain information that others do not have, they experience a strong desire to disclose it, especially if the information is about the self and is positive. Consequently, they act to satisfy the desire (Hofmann et al., 2012) and thus tend to disclose the information immediately. If the desire is left unsatisfied, however, it draws attention to the desire and related objects (Loewenstein 1996), such as the not-yetdisclosed positive personal event (Lane and Wegner 1995; Slepian, Chun, and Mason 2017). This increased attention allows people to derive more happiness from the event. Furthermore, delaying the disclosure of the event does not mean that the person will never disclose it; they can still disclose it, just with a delay. As people anticipate future events and experience utility in the present from anticipation (e.g., anticipating an upcoming vacation can evoke happiness now; Loewenstein 1987), anticipating the eventual disclosure of the positive event-which will be rewarding and pleasant (Tamir and Mitchell 2012; Vijayakumar et al. 2020)-can similarly generate happiness in the moment. Taken together, we predict that delayed (vs. immediate) disclosure of a positive event will generate more happiness. We report three studies testing our predictions and theory. Study 1 (N= 252) asked participants to imagine receiving a dream job offer and had three between-subjects conditions: in the immediate-disclosure (delayed-disclosure) condition, participants imagined that they shared the news with someone they n