Are happy people stupid?
There seems to be a bias in our culture to perceive happy people as less intelligent. We call someone a Pollyanna if we want to dismiss their optimism as foolish. We call someone a grinning idiot if we want to say that happiness is naïve. Perhaps this stereotyping results from the view that life is tragic. Although there is evidence that in some situations, negative thinking leads to more accuracy (Alloy, Abramson, & Chiara, 2000) and that optimistic thinking can be associated with an underestimation of risks (Peterson & Vaidya, 2003), most of the research does not support this view of happy people: People who are optimistic or happy are more successful in work, school and sports, are less depressed, have fewer physical health problems, and have better relationships with other people (Seligman, 1991; Lyubomirsky, King & Diener, 2005).
