http://vimeo.com/45643899
Watch Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener in a brand new video as he discusses the science of money and happiness and challenges many commonly held assumptions.
In a 2010 Psychology Today article - Positive Psychology Researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky talks about how money can impair our ability to savor life events.
Can Money Buy Happiness or Steal From It?
New research reveals that money can
impair savoring ability. Published on August 30, 2010 by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D. in How of Happiness
This is a piece I wrote for Scientific American's Mind Matters column:
Money can't buy
you love. Worshipping Mammon foments evil ways. Materialists
are shallow and unhappy. The greenback finds itself in tough times these days.
Whether it's Wall Street bankers earning lavish multi-million-dollar
bonuses or two-bit city managers in Los Angeles County bringing in higher
salaries than President Obama, the recessionary economic climate has helped
spur outrage and revulsion at those of us collecting undeserved lucre.
Wealthy people
have a bad rep. Sure, there are philanthropists like Warren Buffet and Bill
Gates, who have given billions of their net worth away and have made the world
a better, healthier, safer place. But, sadly, they are an exception. American families who make over
$300,000 a year donate to charity a mere 4 percent of their incomes. The statistic should not be
surprising, as studies by University of Minnesota psychologist Kathleen
Vohs and her collaborators have shown that merely glimpsing dollar
bills makes people less generous and approachable, and more egocentric.
Now come a new
set of studies that reveal yet another toll that money takes. An international team of researchers led by
Jordi Quoidbach report in the August 2010 issue of Psychological
Science that, although wealth may grant us opportunities to
purchase many things, it simultaneously impairs our ability to enjoy those
things.
Their first
study, conducted with adult employees of the University of
Liège in Belgium showed that the wealthier the workers were, the
less likely they were to display a strong capacity to savor positive experiences
in their lives. Furthermore, simply being reminded of money (by being exposed
to a picture of a huge stack of Euros) dampened their savoring ability.
Quoidbach and
his colleagues' second study was even cleverer. Participants aged 16 to 59
recruited on the University of
British Columbia campus were entrusted with the not unpleasant task
of tasting a piece of chocolate. Before accepting the chocolate, however, they
were obliged to complete a brief questionnaire. For half of the participants,
this questionnaire furtively included a page with a picture of Canadian money
(allegedly for an unrelated experiment), and for the other half, it included a
neutral picture.
Although the
ostensibly irrelevant photo was unlikely to have elicited more than a cursory
glance, it had a pronounced effect on the volunteers' behavior. Those
"primed," or subconsciously reminded, of money ended up spending less
time consuming the chocolate and were rated by observers as enjoying it less.
How to explain
these results? The researchers argue that because wealth allows people to
experience the best that life has to offer, it ultimately undermines their
ability to savor life's little pleasures. Once we've had the opportunity to
drink the finest French wines, fly in a private jet, eat foie gras with edible
gold leaf, and watch the Super Bowl from a box seat, coffee at Starbucks with a
friend, a sunny day after a week of rain, or an unexpected Reese's peanut
butter cup on our desks just doesn't provide the same jolt of happiness it used to.
Indeed, a landmark
study of lottery winners showed just that: People who had won
between $50,000 and $1,000,000 (in 1970s dollars) were less impressed by life's
simple pleasures than people who experienced no such windfall.
Of course,
Quoidbach et al.'s findings may have alternative explanations. Maybe seeing
banknotes triggers feelings of disgust (due to associations with greed or just
with germs) or stirs up our money worries, and those feelings of disgust,
anxiety, or unease may be enough to lose our appetites just a little and curb
enjoyment of the chocolate bar.
Despite those
possibilities, I find the researchers' arguments compelling. In a book I'm
writing, I devote an entire chapter to the costs of materialism and wealth.
The single biggest culprit, I argue, is that having money raises our
aspirations about the happiness that we expect in our daily lives, and these
raised aspirations can be toxic. They say you can never go back to holding
hands, but it's also hard to go back to economy class (from business), to sleeping on a futon with a
bunch of roommates (from your comfortable master bedroom in a split level), or
to eating at chain restaurants (after regularly partaking of the cuisines of Mario Batali and Bobby Flay).
Unfortunately,
raised aspirations don't only lead us to take things for granted and impair our
savoring abilities. They steer us to consume too much, tax the planet's
resources, overspend and undersave, go into debt, gamble, live beyond our means,
and purchase mortgages that we can't afford. Not long ago, I read a newspaper
article that quoted the shocking statistic that 20 percent of Americans trade
in their automobiles every two years. Every two years! We acquire the new
Toyota Camry or Lexus SUV or Jaguar, and for the first few weeks or months, the
ride is thrilling. But, as we all know too well, the thrill wears off not long
after the new car smell fades.
If attaining
wealth or earning pay raises so unfailingly elevates our aspirations, are we
doomed never to reap money's pleasures and rewards? Can people who make
partner, write a best-seller, or invest wisely ever enjoy a simple piece of
chocolate? Of course, they can. Indeed, in my mind, one of the biggest
misconceptions about money is that it can't make us happy - or rather, that the
joys it offers can be only faint and fleeting. As it happens, a growing social
science of money is showing how we can compensate for some of its damaging
effects by getting the most out of our spending. The conclusion is that if we
want to buy happiness, we need to wring as many rewarding and stretching
experiences from our purchases as possible. The most effective empirically-supported
ways include
- spending our money on
activities that help us grow as a person (taking guitar lessons, investing
in an entrepreneurial venture), strengthen our connections with others
(dinners with colleagues, car trips with friends, roller blades for mom
and child), and contribute to our communities (catering a fundraiser,
donating to the needy);
- shelling it out on activities
and experiences (e.g., rock climbing expeditions, wine tasting family
reunions) rather than material possessions;
- spending it on many small
pleasures (e.g., regular massages, weekly delivery of fresh flowers, or
frequent phone calls to our best friend in Europe) rather than on one
big-ticket item (like a new car or flat-screen TV); and
- splurging on something that we
work extremely hard to get and have to wait for (whether it's a concert,
trip, or gadget) and relish the feeling of hard-won accomplishment and
anticipation as we wait.
Finally, our
money will be even better spent if we take the time to appreciate the objects
of our spending (the vacation, gadget, or smiles of the people we have helped);
if we make efforts to inject novelty, variety, and surprise (e.g., buying
activities that bring unexpected opportunities or adventures); and if we strive
to compare less with others (e.g., focusing on how much I enjoyed the Paul
McCartney concert rather than on how much better my neighbor's seats were, or
recognizing that my roller blades give me no less pleasure even if my sister
has an even fancier pair). As researchers (including Ken Sheldon
and myself) have argued, these are all factors that slow down or
pre-empt the process that leads us to take our purchases for granted and allow
us to derive the maximal possible happiness from them.
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