Happiness—To Enjoy Now or Later? Consequences of Delaying Happiness and Living in the Moment Beliefs

How do people think about happiness? Is it something best enjoyed as an investment over time, or is it something fleeting that should be savored? When people view happiness as an investment, they may endorse delaying happiness (DH) – the belief that working hard and sacrificing opportunities for happiness now will contribute to greater future happiness. When people view happiness as fleeting, they may endorse living in the moment (LM)—the belief that one should seize proximal opportunities to experience happiness now, rather than later. Using a mix of cross-sectional, meta-analytic (Studies 1, 2a, 2b, 2c), experimental (Study 3), and daily diary methods (Study 4), people who endorsed DH or LM beliefs anticipated more positive affect upon goal attainment and experienced greater well-being, but only DH was related to more negative affect when pursuing nonfocal goals and less delay discounting of future rewards.