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While Facebook and Instagram feeds overflow with #blessed hashtags and motivational quotes about choosing joy, significant research suggests that our cultural obsession with happiness could be making us miserable—and missing the point entirely.
Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist, neurologist, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor, famously declared: “Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.” This wasn’t philosophical speculation—it was hard-won wisdom from someone who found meaning in humanity’s darkest chapter.
Decades later, Stanford researcher Jennifer Aaker and her colleagues have provided the scientific proof that Frankl was right all along.
Here’s where things get interesting: Other psychological research distinguishes between the hedonic approach, which “focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance,” and the eudaimonic approach, which “focuses on meaning and self-realization.” Think of it as the difference between collecting moments versus building meaning.
Frankl pointed to research indicating “a strong relationship between ‘meaninglessness’ and criminal behaviors, addictions, and depression .” When meaning disappears, people fill the void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism , or destructive behaviors. We’re witnessing this phenomenon in real time as anxiety and depression rates soar despite unprecedented access to comfort and convenience.
