In the long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development, which factor best predicted who stayed happy and healthy into old age?

The quality of close relationships

Hedonic adaptation describes which well-documented pattern?

Happiness rises steadily with age in every country

People largely return to their emotional baseline after major life changes

Pleasure and meaning are the same thing

Negative events are forgotten faster than positive ones

Studies on spending and wellbeing consistently find that people get more lasting happiness from:

Buying higher-status possessions

Saving every spare dollar and spending nothing

Experiences, and spending on other people

Upgrading their home electronics

How does the relationship between income and wellbeing generally behave?

Completely unrelated — income has no association with wellbeing

Positively related, but with strong diminishing returns

Perfectly linear — double the income, double the happiness

Negative — richer people are reliably less happy

Research on attention and mood found that people report being less happy when:

They are doing something physically demanding

Their mind is wandering away from what they are doing

They are outdoors rather than indoors

Which everyday factor is most consistently linked to lower reported life satisfaction?

Having fewer streaming subscriptions

In wellbeing research, what distinguishes eudaimonic wellbeing from hedonic wellbeing?

Eudaimonic is short-term pleasure, hedonic is long-term meaning

Eudaimonic is meaning, purpose and growth; hedonic is pleasure and positive feeling

They are two names for exactly the same thing

Eudaimonic applies to groups, hedonic only to individuals

Which of these is most strongly supported as a reliable way to lift mood for most people?

Waiting until you feel motivated before acting

Eliminating every source of stress from your life

Regular physical activity and protected sleep

Making one large luxury purchase per year

What's Your Happiness IQ? Test What Really Makes People Happier 😊

Most of what we believe about happiness turns out to be wrong. This 10-question happiness quiz tests your knowledge of what decades of positive psychology research actually found about wellbeing — money, relationships, gratitude, comparison and the surprising things that do and don't move the needle. An explanation follows every question, so you learn as you go.

This quiz is educational and for general interest. It is not mental-health advice or a diagnostic tool.