The Question

Mindfulness, gratitude practice, spending time in nature, and similar strategies are widely recommended for improving happiness and mental wellbeing, appearing regularly in media, self-help books, and organisational wellness programmes. Folk and Dunn (2023) conducted a systematic review of the strength of evidence behind the most commonly recommended strategies.

What They Found

Most of the research papers examining these strategies are based on small, poorly designed trials. The evidence base for the most popular happiness strategies, as reviewed and recommended in mainstream media, is substantially weaker than their prevalence in public discourse would suggest (Folk & Dunn, 2023).

This does not mean these interventions do not work. It means that the research has not yet been conducted with sufficient rigour to establish whether they work causally and for whom. Small samples, lack of control groups, short follow-up periods, and publication bias all compromise the conclusions that can be drawn.

The finding connects directly to the Fleming (2024) study on workplace wellbeing interventions reviewed earlier in this series. The pattern is consistent: popular wellbeing interventions, whether deployed by employers or recommended by media, are routinely adopted and promoted on the basis of evidence that is more limited than their advocates acknowledge (Folk & Dunn, 2023).

Why It Matters

When individuals or organisations make decisions about how to invest time and resources in pursuit of wellbeing, the quality of the evidence behind available strategies matters. Strategies with weak evidence are not necessarily ineffective, but promoting them as established approaches misrepresents the state of knowledge and may crowd out more rigorous investigation of what actually works (Folk & Dunn, 2023).

Reference

Folk, D., & Dunn, E. (2023). A systematic review of the strength of evidence for the most commonly recommended happiness strategies in mainstream media. Nature Human Behaviour, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01651-4