Viliam_Bur comments on Open thread, July 21-27, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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If your first paragraph was true, wouldn't people continue to feel happy but just not show it? I feel like unhappiness must be adaptive (even without considering social effects) at least in some cases.
I think that secret happiness is a real thing. Some people take pleasure in complaining, enjoy being passively aggressive about something, etc., but of course they would publicly deny it.
On the other hand, I agree that in some situations, unhappiness may be adaptive. Evolution does not care about our values.
There are other categories of secret happiness-- enjoying low status or otherwise deprecated pleasures and schadenfreude about high status people. Either of those could have social support, but sometimes they don't.
We could also say that the rewarded by it. Like most addictions enjoyment doesn't tend to be a part of it (after enough time).