Lyubomirsky, S., Boehm, J. K., Kasri, F.,& Zehm, K. (2007). The cognitive and hedonic costs of unwarranted dwelling. Manuscript under review. Increasing evidence suggests that multiple cognitive and motivational processes underlie individual differences in happiness (Lyubomirsky, 2001).  One behavior that can serve to detract from happiness is excessive self-reflection.  We hypothesized that chronically unhappy individuals would be more inclined than their happier peers to self-reflect and dwell about themselves, their outcomes, and their moods.  Furthermore, such self-reflection was expected to have a variety of adverse consequences.  Three studies tested this hypothesis in several contexts.  We predicted that, after exposure to unfavorable feedback, unhappy participants would be more likely to dwell about its implications than happy ones and, hence, show impaired attention during important academic tasks.  In each study, happy and unhappy students were first led to believe that they either “succeeded” or “failed” relative to peers at an anagram-solving task.  Results of all three studies showed that unhappy participants who had previously failed displayed increased negative, interfering thoughts and, in Studies 2 and 3, spent the most time subsequently performing a portion of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).  Furthermore, in Study 3, unhappy participants who had previously failed demonstrated impaired reading comprehension on the GRE.  Implications of our results for the consequences of chronic and excessive self-reflection for work and social functioning, as well as for reinforcing people’s levels of enduring unhappiness, are discussed. Back to Papers & Publications