Science once 'proved' that being happy makes you worse at learning, but it turns out the researchers just forgot that people get better with practice.
A famous study once claimed that positive emotions actually hindered performance in certain types of learning. However, a new reanalysis shows this was just a massive statistical error. The original researchers didn't account for 'practice effects'—the simple fact that people naturally improve at a task the more they do it. When you control for that, the supposed negative link between happiness and performance completely disappears. It’s a perfect example of how easily a 'surprising' scientific discovery can just be a math mistake. For us, it’s a reminder that being in a good mood is probably still the best way to get things done.
Practice Effects Confound the Emotion–Performance Link in Self-Regulated Learning: A Reanalysis of Lin et al. (2026)
PsyArXiv · weu9m_v1
Lin et al. (*Journal of Educational Psychology*, 2026) proposed a computational model of the dynamic interplay between goal setting, performance, and emotions in self-regulated learning. In a repetitive math task (Study 1), they reported that positive emotions predicted lower subsequent performance, interpreting this via the coasting hypothesis. We argue that this finding may instead reflect a temporal confound: in a repetitive task, performance improves due to practice while emotional engagemen