Can happiness be reliably increased? Thousands of studies speak to this question. However, many of them were conducted during a period in which researchers commonly “ p-hacked,” creating uncertainty about how many discoveries might be false positives. To prevent p-hacking, happiness researchers increasingly preregister their studies, committing to analysis plans before analyzing data. We conducted a systematic literature search to identify preregistered experiments testing strategies for increasing happiness. We found surprisingly little support for many widely recommended strategies (e.g., performing random acts of kindness). However, our review suggests that other strategies—such as being more sociable—may reliably promote happiness. We also found strong evidence that governments and organizations can improve happiness by providing underprivileged individuals with financial support. We conclude that happiness research stands on the brink of an exciting new era, in which modern best practices will be applied to develop theoretically grounded strategies that can produce lasting gains in life satisfaction.

中文翻译：

---

人们怎样才能变得更快乐？预注册实验的系统审查


幸福感能够可靠地增加吗？数千项研究都回答了这个问题。然而，其中许多研究是在研究人员经常“被黑客攻击”的时期进行的，这使得不确定有多少发现可能是误报。为了防止 p-hacking，幸福研究人员越来越多地预先注册他们的研究，承诺在分析数据之前制定分析计划。我们进行了系统的文献检索，以确定预先注册的实验测试增加幸福感的策略。令人惊讶的是，我们发现对许多广泛推荐的策略（例如，随机进行善意行为）的支持很少。然而，我们的评论表明，其他策略（例如更加善于交际）可能会可靠地促进幸福。我们还发现强有力的证据表明，政府和组织可以通过向弱势群体提供经济支持来提高幸福感。我们得出的结论是，幸福研究正处于一个令人兴奋的新时代的边缘，在这个时代，现代最佳实践将被应用于开发基于理论的策略，从而产生生活满意度的持久收益。