People may not necessarily have to change what they do to experience more happiness—but rather do what they already do differently. Here's why.
“Simply put, autonomy is the sense of wanting to take action instead of being coerced to do so,” says psychologist Atsushi Kukita from Claremont Graduate University and co-author of the study. “I believe that the sense of autonomy is something we intuitively value in society.”
Upon receiving a notification, participants were instructed to answer a short questionnaire that measured what they were doing and how they were feeling at that present moment. “Autonomy was consistently found to override activity type in predicting well-being,” say the researchers. “I was surprised to find how restful activities were generally perceived as meaningful—and even more interestingly, how they were perceived as most meaningful when accompanied by a medium level of autonomy ,” points out Kukita.