Failing and Succeeding at Fundamental Social Motives: An Adaptive Perspective on Happiness

A person’s definition of success depends on their goals and motivations. Having different motives means that different things will make people happy. If we define happiness as an indicator of success, then people should be happier when achieving the tasks they deem their most important goals. Some individuals have a fast life strategy, focusing on reproduction and immediate rewards, while others aim to live slowly, investing in social connections and future rewards. Thus, we studied happiness in response to the fundamental social motives: affiliation (group vs independence), status, self-protection, mate seeking, mate retention, disease avoidance, and kin care. Further, we examined the effect of individual differences in agency and communion on expected happiness. In an online survey, participants (N = 297) made predictions about their happiness when imagining succeeding or failing each motive. People were happier at the prospect of finding a new mate than they were about making friends, having autonomy, and avoiding disease. Some of the differences in happiness were related to sex (e.g., women expected to be unhappier than men when they failed at making sure they were safe and avoiding diseases), some were related to personality (e.g., agentic participants were happier than communal participants when finding new mates or earning status), and some were related to life history strategy (e.g., more communal men expected to be happier than less communal men when avoiding disease). This study has important implications for understanding happiness from an evolutionary standpoint and how to achieve it based on one’s psycho-behavioral strategies.