Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness is a direct critique of the “happiness turn,” an intellectual and cultural shift that frames well-being as a scientific, measurable, and achievable goal. This movement gained institutional momentum through the work of Martin Seligman, who used his 1998 presidency of the American Psychological Association to promote positive psychology as a field of scientific study, with greater attention to the conditions that allow individuals and communities to flourish. Positive psychology emerged partly in response to what Seligman and other proponents saw as psychology’s disproportionate focus on mental illness and sought to expand the field’s attention to positive experiences, individual strengths, and the conditions that support well-being. As the APA notes, Seligman’s work helped establish positive psychology as an area concerned with identifying and cultivating the factors that contribute to well-being (APA. “Speaking of Psychology: Positive psychology in a pandemic, with Martin Seligman, PhD.” 14 Jan. 2021). The field subsequently expanded into a substantial body of empirical research on happiness and well-being, including the development of interventions designed to improve well-being.

The scientific study of happiness commonly relies on measures of subjective well-being, in which individuals report their own evaluations of their lives and emotional experiences. Such measures allow researchers to examine well-being empirically, but they also raise methodological questions about how subjective experiences can be measured and interpreted. Ahmed questions some of the assumptions underlying the use of self-reporting in happiness research. In particular, she challenges the idea that self-reported happiness can be treated as a transparent account of how a person feels.

Ahmed writes, “Happiness research is primarily based on self-reporting […] presuming that if people say they are happy, they are happy. This model both presumes the transparency of self-feeling […] as well as the unmotivated and uncomplicated nature of self-reporting” (5). Her concern extends beyond the reliability of measurement to the values attached to happiness itself. The Promise of Happiness asks how particular ways of living come to be regarded as sources of happiness and therefore as desirable or “good.” Viewed against the growing scientific and cultural emphasis on promoting well-being, Ahmed’s critique draws attention to the social norms that can accompany the expectation that people should pursue happiness in socially approved ways.