The essence of this research summary is that happiness — an umbrella term for wellbeing, frequent positive emotion, and optimism seems to predict superior performance writ large. This is of course closely tied to Conscious Businesses and Organizations which purposely balance a positive impact for all stakeholders involved.

Success (All Contexts) – A meta-study (a study of studies) of 200+ studies with 250,000+ participants found a surprising relationship between happiness and success. Researchers propose that it is actually happiness that leads to success in a variety of life outcomes. Happiness (frequent positive emotion) is associated with greater success in marriage/family outcomes, job performance, immune function, creativity, and self-perception (confidence).

See 1B. Happiness lead to success in a variety of life outcomes.

Bravery & Performance  – A study from the University of Pennsylvania titled “Happy soldiers are highest performers” was published in 2021. Researchers examined a sample of 908,096 soldiers in the US Army and found that happiness (defined as optimism and tendency towards positive emotion) predicted awards for performance and heroism. In fact, soldiers with the highest vs. lowest happiness were about four times more likely to win an award over a four year follow up window.

See 7A. Happiness in soldiers predicts performance and heroism.

Creativity/Innovation – A meta-analysis of about 25 years of studies found that positive moods produce more creativity than mood-neutral controls. Creativity is enhanced most by positive states that are activating and have an “approach motivation”.  An approach motivation (say, inspiration) contrasts with an avoidance motivation (like fear). It’s worth noting that emotions like fear and anxiety (common under stress) were associated with lower creativity. This corresponds to research by Barbara Fredrickson who found that eliciting positive emotion expands thought-action repertoires. The thought-action repertoire is a way of assessing cognitive flexibility — it is an assessment of the range of thoughts and actions available to you when prompted with a given situation (a good proxy for creativity and innovativeness).

See 7B. Happiness (positive emotion) improves creativity and problem solving (innovation).

Goal Achievement and Learning — In a study of children researchers wanted to assess how mood effected goal-setting and performance. It was predicted that goal level would drive performance. Researched induced either a happy or sad mood through asking children to think of happy or sad thoughts for a minute. Then they gave a simple problem solving task and asked the children how many they thought they would get through. Then they started. A happy mood produced a significantly higher goal and superior performance. A similar study looking at negative, neutral, and positive mood found facilitated learning and performance while sad mood hindered it all relative to neutral.

See 7C. A happy mood improves goal achievement and learning.

Problem Solving / Decision Making — Researchers were interested in the influence of positive affect (good mood) on clinical reasoning in physicians. One group was primed positively and the other neutral. Physicians then thought aloud as they solved a liver disease case. Two expert listeners rated their thinking to determine how quickly they got to the liver disease insight and how much they anchored to other incorrect ideas. The positive affect group considered the correct diagnosis significantly earlier and showed far less anchoring (so more clarity of thought).

See 7B1. Happy mood improves problem solving (in physicians).

Safety/Compliance – Through a meta-analysis of responses based on Gallup's Q12 employee engagement survey, Gallup researchers compared top and bottom quartile organizations with respect to engagement (interest and enthusiasm at work). They looked at 53 organizations’ safety data. Between the top and bottom quartiles there was a 70% difference in safety performance. Safety measures included percentage of workdays lost as a result of incidents, number of incidents, or incident rates. This squares with one of our organizational transformation case studies at Happiness Means Business in which we helped Young’s Commercial Transfer, the nation’s largest ag transporter, cut their cost of claims by 80% year over year saving $3M in insurance premiums.