Maximizing positive emotions and minimizing negative emotions may at times yield to diminishing returns.

Life satisfaction increases when ideal emotions and what people actually experience align.

Well-being involves the ability to activate a variety of situation-adequate emotions—positive and negative.

As experts of our own psyches, it’s surprising how much we get wrong about what will truly make us happy. We might believe, for instance, that treating ourselves with kindness and compassion will make us selfish, weak, or complacent. Or that keeping to ourselves will make us happier than talking to strangers. Or that acquiring some coveted material object will finally deliver the lasting well-being we’ve been waiting for.

On a much larger scale, many of us hold tacit expectations about what a good life should look like: an anthology of happy moments (the more the better), while seldom (if ever) interrupted by heartache. Perhaps somewhat like the boundless blue of the summer skies, host only to the passing friendly cloud or a family of birds, unscathed by storms and tumult.

But research challenges all these assumptions.

A good life, it turns out, does not necessarily involve mustering ceiling-levels of positivity and extinguishing all traces of negativity. In fact, after a certain point, maximizing positive emotions and minimizing negative emotions may yield diminishing returns.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies (2026), researchers found that people were “not only uninterested in a life of maximized PA [positive affect] and minimized NA [negative affect], but actively avoid it.” Instead, the study showed that people preferred their days to include a mixture of affective states: both positive and negative emotions, together with some neutral moments. More specifically, on average, the participants' idealized optimal affect was made up of roughly 79 percent positive emotions and 10 percent negative emotions.

When ideals and reality align

There is........

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