It’s often said that happiness is finding joy in the little things in life – now scientists appear to have found the proof.
Just five minutes a day performing ‘micro-acts of joy’ that foster positive emotions is enough to banish stress, boost health and improve sleep quality, psychologists discovered.
Listening to laughter, admiring a flower on a neighbourhood walk or doing a nice thing for a friend can measurably improve people’s emotional wellbeing and attitudes toward life, according to Dr Elissa Epel.
‘We were quite taken aback by the size of the improvements to people’s emotional well-being,’ said Prof Epel, an expert on stress and ageing who oversaw the new research.
Her team at the University of California San Francisco studied nearly 18,000 people, mainly from the US, Britain and Canada, for the web-based ‘Big Joy Project’ over a two-year period to 2024.
It was the first study to look at whether small, easy-to-do acts that take minimal time could have measurable and lasting effects on people. Participants were asked to perform five- to 10-minute acts of joy for a week.
Prof Epel said the thousands of people who took part in her project for a single week matched the positive results achieved by programmes that required months of classes for hours at a time.
The study, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, asked participants to perform seven acts over seven days. The acts included sharing a moment of celebration with someone else, doing something kind for another person, making a gratitude list and watching an awe-inspiring video about nature.
Listening to laughter, admiring a flower on a neighbourhood walk or doing a nice thing for a friend can measurably improve people’s emotional wellbeing (stock image)
Acts like sharing a moment of celebration with someone else, doing something kind for another person, making a gratitude list help people feel happier (stock image)
Prof Epel said her team picked tasks that were focused on promoting feelings of hope and optimism, wonder and awe, or fun and silliness. Each task took under 10 minutes, including answering short questions before and after.
Participants were quizzed about their emotional and physical health at the start and end of the week-long project, providing a measure of their emotional well-being, positive emotions and ‘happiness agency’, along with their stress and sleep quality.
The psychologists explained that emotional well-being includes how satisfied people are with their lives and whether they have purpose and meaning. Happiness agency is how much control they feel they have over their emotions.
The team found improvements in all areas, and the benefits increased depending on how fully people participated in the programme, meaning those who completed all seven days saw greater benefits than those who only managed two or three.
Ethnic minority participants saw even greater benefits than white participants, while younger people reported more benefits than older people.
Prof Epel said it was not clear yet why these micro-acts appear to have such a profound mood-boosting impact. She suggested it may be that these small acts break up ‘negative thought cycles’ – such as excessive worrying or self-criticism – and redirect mental energy in a more positive way.
While further research was needed, said Prof Epel, it’s clear that a daily dose of joy could help people in these trying times. ‘All of this well-being stuff, it’s not a luxury,’ she said.
‘We often say that we’ll let ourselves be happy once we’ve reached some point or finished some task. Well, we want to flip that – we need the energy of joy to get through the hard parts. These are really necessary skills.’
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