Is the pursuit of happiness a good thing? Why or why not? Support your answer with examples of research studies.

It is a fact that people want to be happy, but perhaps they succeed best at that by trying to do good work and earn the trust and affection of other people, rather than trying directly to be happy. Indeed, some lab studies have found that trying to be happy sometimes backfires, leaving people less happy than participants in a control condition who simply experienced things without pushing themselves to feel good. It is perhaps better to let happiness be a reward for good deeds than to make it an end in itself.
Of course, nobody thinks that the best thing would be to be constantly miserable. But perhaps someone can be too happy or happy at the wrong times. A study of over 2,300 university students from eight countries (United States, Brazil, China, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Poland, Singapore)found that although students overall wanted to experience more positive emotions, they especially wanted to experience the emotions that matched what they desired to feel-even negative emotions such as anger. The lead researcher concluded, "If you feel emotions you want to feel, even if they're unpleasant, then you're better off."