New Research: Feeling Happy Actually Gives Us Greater Patience

The Dopamine Paradox: Waiting for Success

As a teenager, Michael Carroll from the UK won the equivalent of £46 million in the lottery. Within eight years, he was bankrupt. “The euphoria destroyed him,” some might say. “In his joy, he forgot common sense,” others might state.

However, it turns out that happiness doesn’t necessarily make us less rational. The latest German research suggests the opposite: a feeling of joy strengthens our ability to be patient.

How Does the Happiness Hormone Work?

A team from the University of Cologne, led by Dr. Elke Smith and Professor Jan Peters, conducted one of the most comprehensive studies to date on dopamine and decision-making in humans. This substance, often called the happiness hormone, operates within the brain’s reward system, triggering feelings of pleasure and satisfaction from an activity. But how exactly does it influence the choices we make?

Investigating the Dopamine Effect on Decisions

Previous research failed to provide a clear answer. The main question was whether dopamine prompted us to make more impulsive choices, focused on immediate gain.

Theoretically, this outcome seemed most probable. Dopamine production disturbances are often mentioned in the context of addiction or problematic social media use. Just one more cigarette, one more drink, one more post viewed—the brain’s reward center drives us to choose an immediate positive stimulus, despite negative consequences down the line.

Scientists Finally Unlocked Dopamine’s Role

The German scientists ultimately sought to solve the mystery of the dopamine effect on decisions. The results of their experiment were recently published in The Journal of Neuroscience.

During the study, 76 healthy participants were given either a placebo or L-DOPA, a substance that converts into dopamine in the body (a precursor). Afterward, they had to choose between a smaller reward received immediately and a larger reward delivered after a delay.

The researchers also employed advanced cognitive modeling to understand how dopamine affects subtler decision aspects: information gathering, response caution, and reaction time. What was the outcome?

The Surprising Link: Dopamine Boosts Patience

It turned out that individuals given the dopamine precursor were significantly more willing to wait for the larger reward. The impulsivity of their choices was 20% lower compared to the placebo group.

Participants still experienced the so-called magnitude effect, which causes the perceived value of a reward to drop faster in our minds when it is smaller, especially when waiting is involved. Nevertheless, this correlation occurred across all participants—dopamine did not influence this specific relationship.

Reward Value and the Happiness Hormone

Furthermore, L-DOPA did not affect the speed of information accumulation, decision caution, or reaction time. This strongly suggests that dopamine does not impact basic decision-making processes, but rather how we value future rewards.

“Our findings demonstrate that L-DOPA increases people’s readiness to wait for rewards, providing new evidence that challenges earlier, influential studies conducted on relatively small samples,” says Dr. Elke Smith.

How Do We Explain Impulsive Behavior Now?

These discoveries shed new light on the mechanisms driving our choices. The research by the German scientists may help explain the impulsive decisions made by people struggling with addiction, for example.

Dopamine and Addiction: A New Perspective

Michael Carroll, mentioned at the start of this article, didn’t immediately squander his fortune in a burst of post-win euphoria. He put the money in a savings account and invested some in bonds. It was only after several years that the expenditures that ruined him began. The fortune was spent on new houses, expensive cars, and—according to his lawyer—addictive substances.

The study authors point out that subsequent experiments could focus on individuals suffering from various disorders or, specifically, addictions. Investigating the dopamine effect on decisions in these groups may help create new treatment methods for such conditions. Perhaps the underlying mechanism works differently for those battling addiction.

Read this article in Polish: Nowe badania: poczucie szczęścia daje nam większą cierpliwość