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Title
Revisiting the Sustainable Happiness Model and Pie Chart: Can Happiness Be Successfully
Pursued?
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6wb2g3fw
Journal
JOURNAL OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, 16(2)
ISSN
1743-9760
Authors
Sheldon, Kennon M
Lyubomirsky, Sonja
Publication Date
2021
DOI
10.1080/17439760.2019.1689421
Peer reviewed
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Revisiting the Sustainable Happiness Model and
Pie Chart: Can Happiness Be Successfully Pursued?
Kennon M. Sheldon & Sonja Lyubomirsky
To cite this article: Kennon M. Sheldon & Sonja Lyubomirsky (2019): Revisiting the Sustainable
Happiness Model and Pie Chart: Can Happiness Be Successfully Pursued?, The Journal of
Positive Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2019.1689421
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2019.1689421
Published online: 07 Nov 2019.
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Revisiting the Sustainable Happiness Model and Pie Chart: Can Happiness Be
Successfully Pursued?
Kennon M. Sheldon
a,b
and Sonja Lyubomirsky
c
a
University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA;
b
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation;
c
University of California, Riverside, CA, USA
ABSTRACT
The Sustainable Happiness Model (SHM) has been influential in positive psychology and well-being
science. However, the ‘pie chart’ aspect of the model has received valid critiques. In this article, we
start by agreeing with many such critiques, while also explaining the context of the original article
and noting that we were speculative but not dogmatic therein. We also show that subsequent
research has supported the most important premise of the SHM – namely, that individuals can
boost their well-being via their intentional behaviors, and maintain that boost in the longer-term.
However, such effects may be weaker than we initially believed. We describe three contemporary
models descended from the thinking embodied in the SHM – the Eudaimonic Activity Model, the
Hedonic Adaptation Prevention model, and the Positive Activity Model. Research testing these
models has further supported the premise that how people live makes a difference for their well-
being.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 4 September 2019
Accepted 8 October 2019
KEYWORDS
Subjective well-being;
sustainable happiness
model; pie chart; hedonic
adaptation; intentional
activities
In a widely cited article, Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, and Schkade
(2005) proposed a heuristic framework for understanding
the influences on well-being. The Sustainable Happiness
Model, as illustrated in the now well-known pie chart, dis-
tinguished among three overlapping kinds of influences:
inherent genetic predispositions, current life circumstances,
and current intentional activities. Lyubomirsky et al. also
provided, based on certain starting assumptions and a non-
exhaustive review of the literature of that time, initial esti-
mates concerning the relative importance of the three
factors in impacting chronic happiness levels: approxi-
mately 50% for genetic factors, 10% for circumstantial fac-
tors, and the remaining 40% for volitional or intentional
activity factors. Figure 1 illustrates this basic pie chart.
Based on their review, Lyubomirsky, Sheldon et al. (2005)
suggested that there is considerable potential for people to
take action to influence their own happiness. If happiness is
not fully determined by a person’sgeneticsandcircum-
stances, then there must be something left over for inten-
tional behavior. At the time, these conclusions supported
the nascent science of positive psychology, helping to
justify its search for new ways to help people activate
their potentials. The conclusions also dovetailed well with
Thomas Jefferson’s c ontenti on t hat the right to ‘pursue
happiness’ must be foundational in a just society, and
were well aligned with Western and individualist ideologi-
cal assumptions more generally.
Today, however, the pie chart diagram appears to have
outlived its usefulness (for recent critical reviews, see
Bergink, 2015; Brown & Rohrer, 2019;Kashdan,2015;
Krueger, 2015). Brown and Rohrer (2019)haveprovided
the most elaborated analysis, especially of the initial per-
centage estimates we provided. These critiques, with which
we mostly agree, have provided us with an opportunity to
articulate our current thinking. However, rather than
addressing such criticisms in detail here, in this article we
take a broader perspective. Accordingly, we first revisit the
context in which the chart was proposed, point out the
cautiousness with which we originally proposed it, and
remind readers of our original goal in proposing it – namely,
to show that it is theoretically possible for people to influ-
ence their own happiness via their intentional behaviors.
Our reasoning was that if happiness is not completely
determined by one’s genetic endowment (which is, after
all, relatively constant over time), then happiness must
fluctu ate over time (as it clearly does). We further argued
that patterns of behavioral activity provide one logical
source of influence upon those fluctuations, and perhaps
the most important influence, given the relatively weak
effects that had been observed at that time within mainly
Western cultures for many demographic-type variables,
such as income, marital status, gender, and ethnicity.
Today, we know this basic idea to be correct. The
SHM, and some of the assumptions embodied in the
CONTACT Kennon M. Sheldon SheldonK@missouri.edu
THE JOURNAL OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2019.1689421
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
pie chart, has informed both of our research efforts and
has given rise to several more nuanced models, includ-
ing our joint Hedonic Adaptation Prevention model
(HAP; Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2012), Sheldon’s
Eudaimonic Activity Model (EAM; Sheldon, 2017), and
Lyubomirsky’s Positive Activity Model (Lyubomirsky &
Layous, 2013). This more recent research affirms that
people can affect their own happiness, via their deliber-
ate efforts. Admittedly, however, these effects tend to be
smaller than we initially believed. They are also difficult
to investigate via double-blind experiments, the gold
standard of psychological research, because the
successful pursuit of happiness typically requires aware-
ness, knowledge, and intentional buy-in by participants.
As a way of considering the context in which we
originally presented the Sustainable Happiness Model,
let us first address a critical question: What does it mean
to say that a person has achieved a stable (and perhaps
sustainable) change in well-being? Figure 2 illustrates by
showing three successive measurements of subjective
well-being (SWB; namely, high positive affect and life
satisfaction, and low negative affect; Diener, Suh, Lucas,
& Smith, 1999).
As the figure shows, at least three waves of data are
required to demonstrate a stable change in SWB, in
which a person’s happiness level first goes up, and
then stays up. Importantly, the strong version of ‘happi-
ness set-point’ theory (Lykken & Tellegen, 1996), to
which our original article was a response, posits that
staying up is simply not possible: After any fluctuation
in their well-being, either up or down, people must
always return to their characteristic set point. To our
knowledge, ours was the first theoretical article to
address this sustainable change issue. It also attempted
to carve out a place in the happiness equation for inten-
tional personality processes, which could potentially
operate in addition to, in concert with, or in spite of,
peoples’ genetic constitutions (Little, 1999).
Still, it is worth noting that we were quite circumspect
in our proposals. We stated that we were focusing on the
genetic, circumstance, and activity categories because
‘they have historically received the majority of attention
in the well-being literature’ (p. 116) and not, by implica-
tion, because these categories exhaustively described all
the possible influences on happiness. On the same page,
we also said that our numerical estimates were
Figure 1. The pie chart aspect of the sustainable happiness
model (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005).
Figure 2. Illustrating a stable change in well-being.
2
K. M. SHELDON AND S. LYUBOMIRSKY
‘suggestions,’ were ‘approximate,’ and were based on
(then scarce) existing information, derived primarily
from mere cross-sectional studies. In discussing inten-
tional activity effects, we wrote that they offer
a ‘potential’ and ‘arguably the most promising’ route to
happiness, which might account for ‘as much as 40% of
the variance.’ On p. 118, we further stated that activities
‘seem to o ffer the best potential route’ to sustainable
happiness, based on the well-known fact that people
readily adapt to unchanging circumstances. Although
assigning numbers to the categories was risky on our
parts, clearly scientific progress consists sometimes of
engaging in speculation, which can open up new ques-
tions or possibilities, which must then, by necessity, be
tested and fine-tuned. We believe this constructive pro-
cess is precisely what is happening today, as our early
speculations have a) attracted a great deal of scientific
interest and attention, b) stimulated much new research,
and c) are being corrected and refined, with the help of
Brown and Rohrer (2019) and others.
In support of the most general claim of the SHM –
that intentional behavior can make a difference –
Figure 3 provides the results of an early experimental
study (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2006). This study found
that making a randomly assigned activity change had
a larger and more sustainable effect on well-being than
making an assigned circumstance change. When people
change their intentional behavior – that is, doing some-
thing new that takes effort – they have a better chance
of boosting their well-being and maintaining that boost
than when they merely change a factual circumstance
(such as moving into a new apartment, buying a car, or
asking for and receiving a raise). This is because people
are less likely to experience hedonic adaptation in
response to life changes that involve continued moti-
vated behavior, and conversely, are more likely to adapt
to changes that merely substitute one stable circum-
stance for another. Later in this article, we discuss our
HAP model (Lyubomirsky, 2007; Lyubomirsky, 2010;
Sheldon, Boehm, & Lyubomirsky, 2012; Sheldon &
Lyubomirsky, 2012), which specifies in detail the e
ffortful
processes
required to maintain the initial boost derived
from a positive circumstantial change.
Despite such promising early results, one important
insight we have gained from our own (and others’)
intervention research is how difficult it is to ‘induce’
people to become happier. It seems that people have
to create life shifts – or changes in cognition and beha-
vior – for themselves, which can require considerable
motivation and effort (Lyubomirsky, Dickerhoof, Boehm,
& Sheldon, 2011). Indeed, in the Sheldon and
Lyubomirsky (2006) study, some participants reported
not making the change that we requested they make.
Not surprisingly, these participants did not display the
pattern shown in Figure 3. This provided an early illus-
tration of the theme mentioned above – namely, that
interventions designed to change a person’s happiness
require intentional buy-in by participants, and that
merely assigning people to an activity condition may
not be effective. We will return to this issue later.
Brown and Rohrer (2019) criticized our initial estimate
that 40% of the variation in happiness is due to inten-
tional activity. Based on our research of the last 15 years,
we agree that this figure was likely an over-estimate.
Although positive psychology interventions (also
known as positive activity interventions) have been
shown to have real effects, a recent authoritative meta-
analysis revealed that these effects are rather small
Figure 3. Longitudinal effects of making an assigned activity change compared to making an assigned circumstance change (Sheldon
& Lyubomirsky, 2006).
THE JOURNAL OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
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