What Brings You the Most Happiness: Experiences or Material Things?
What does Science Say?
If I were to ask you if you thought money could truly buy happiness, I’m quite sure you’d deny it. That’s something we’ve heard over and over again throughout our lives, is it not? Meanwhile,we’re constantly hearing how people living in developing countries are happier than us despite of living in poverty. This is what conventional wisdom has taught us our entire lives.
Then again, when we earn a raise at work or buy something nice for ourselves, it’s hard to deny that we haven’t been made happier as a result of these events. That shows us that money can buy happiness to an extent. Given how split our anecdotal evidence on the topic is, let’s see what science has to say about the topic.
Can Money Buy Happiness?
Unfortunately, research doesn’t seem to support the idea that doesn’t bring us happiness. Kahneman and Deaton (2010) from Princeton University investigated the life-satisfaction and happiness of approximately 1,000 Americansand found out that a minimum level of income exists for people to feel satisfied with their lives. These authors said that that where this number lies is entirely dependent on where that person lives. In fact, in areas with a high cost of living, such as Hawaii, the income of a family needed to exceed $120,000 before the participants said that they were satisfied with their lives.
In addition, those who earned significantly less also reported that they experienced more sadness and other negative emotions. Even so, families that earned beyond the minimum number needed to attain happiness weren’t happier than those who earned just enough to meet the minimum line. With this in mind, it can be concluded that an adequate amount of money does buy, if not happiness, at least some kind of life-satisfaction.
Happiest Nations: What do they have in common?
According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Europe is once more the world’s happiest continent in 2015. The order of the happiest nations has not changed much either. Switzerland still tops the charts, followed closely by Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Finland, Netherlands and Sweden. The writers of the report,John Helliwell, Lord Richard Layard, and Jeffrey Sachs (2015), say that things like social support, incomes, and life expectancy were among the top reasons that explained why people are happy to live in countries like Switzerland. Many of the highest-scoring countries are also well-known for their excellent education- and healthcare systems.
Without question, the countries at the top of the list are rather well-off. Regardless, the United States,one of the wealthiest countries in the world, can only be found at 15th place. It seems we can safely say that money alone does not bring happiness to an entire nation. What could explain this? Could it be that wealth is divided in a more equal fashion in Scandinavian countries than in the US, for example?
Kahneman and Deaton (2010) would likelystate that there are more people that meet the minimum amount necessary to attain happiness in Scandinavian countries than in the US. On the other hand, all the extra money being held by the chosen few in the United States doesn’t seem to be making them any happier than reasonably well-off families.
At Least Make More Than Your Neighbors!
Firebaugh and Schroeder (2009) disagree withKahneman and Deaton. Their study indicates that the wealthiest of us also tend to be the happiest. They also found that most of us prefer to live in a wealthy neighborhood over a poor one. This makes perfect sense since wealthy neighborhoods typically have better schools, lower crime rates, and other factors that have been shown to contribute to our levels of happiness.
Astonishingly, Firebaugh and Schroeder (2009) also showed that the happiest people among us were those who lived in wealthy neighborhoods within poor regions! This seems to indicate that it isn’t enough for us to simply have decent amounts of money at our disposal; we also want to have more of it than others around us. The authors explained that people need to feel that they’re doing better than others. Still, in feeling this way, people don’t want to interact with poorer, less fortunate people. Instead, they prefer to spend their time with others who earn similar amounts of money as they do.
While these findings seem to reveal a rather ugly side of ourselves, they fail to explain why people in countries with relatively even distributions of wealth continuously score higher than those nations who have greater gaps between the rich and the poor.
Rich People Lose the Ability to Enjoy Small Things
Quoidbach, Dunn, Petrides and Mikolajczak (2010) showed that money comes with some seemingly inherent disadvantages. For instance, these authors say that the more money someone has, the less able to enjoy the small experiences and emotions in life they become. The study showed that wealthy people take less time to enjoy a piece of chocolate and describe a beautiful waterfall. They also seem to enjoy these simple pleasures less than poorer individuals.
Although money may bring us more opportunities to experience pleasurable things, it also causes us to become less appreciative of them. On the bright side, if you’re a wealthy woman, it seems you have less to worry about as the study found that women spent more time savoring chocolate than men regardless of their income.
What do Dying People Regret?
Bronnie Ware, an Australian, nurse wrote a book about her experiences working with dying patients titled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. She claims one of the most common regrets of her patients was spending too much time working and away from their family. Ware claims that every single one of her male patients mentioned this regret. She also says that people frequently wishthat they had kept in touch with friends instead of solely focusing on their family.
It was also common for dying people to feel as though they had lived according to the wants and desires of someone else. This person could be a parent, spouse, or even a boss. Many patients also believed that they had spent their lives trying to avoid arguments and being too meek. It was common for these types of individuals to wish to go back and reveal their true feelings to others.
Miserably, some people felt that they had been too busy during their entire lives to devote time to simply being content. These people failed to ask themselves what the small things that made them happy were. None of the people Ware talked to said they regretted not traveling more or having more money. Things like jewelry and designer clothing meant nothing to those nearing the end of their lives.
So What Can We Buy to Become Happier?
A vast number of studies have shown that buying material things doesn’t bring us lasting happiness. Where should we put our money, if not in material goods? Is there anything we could put our money towards that would secure us greater happiness? Gilovich, Kumar, and Jampol (2014) think that they’ve got the answer. These authors suggest that instead of spending money on tangible object, people ought to invest in life experiences, such as a trips to foreign countries.
Gilovich, Kumar, and Jampol explain that experiences of this kind are likely to make us feel happy for far longer than material things since they tend to enhance social relations. We also tend to evaluate life experiences, such as attending a foreign language class, without framing them in a comparison with other things. In contrast, buying a new car often causes us to compare what we’ve just invested in with whatever our friends, neighbors, and relatives have. Is what we just purchased the biggest, fastest and shiniest? If not, our new car might seem less valuable to us and cause us to feel less happy about what we have.
Can you think of a time you compared your trip to an art museum with one taken by a colleague of yours? Probably not. And even if you have, did your trip suddenly lose value because your colleague went to a larger museum? Of course not. Gilovich, Kumar, and Jampol also explain that experiences like these are significant to us because they form a large part of our identity.
Even so, writing this piece made me wonder if any money necessarily needs to exchange hands to experience happiness. It’s currently nine in the morning. I’m sitting in my garden with a cup of excellent coffee in the shade of a dismal mango tree that barely has the strength to bear fruit. I realize that happiness is here with me and I haven’t spent a cent to earn it. In many ways, happiness and how we go about acquiring it is relative.
References
Gilovich, T., Kumar, A, &Jampol, L. (2014) A wonderful life: experiential consumption and the pursuit of happiness. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25, 1 (2015) 152–165.
Daniel Kahneman, and Angus Deaton (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being, PNAS, vol. 107 no. 38, 16489–16493, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011492107
Glenn Firebaugh and Matthew B. Schroeder (2009). Does Your Neighbor’s Income Affect Your Happiness?, AJS. 115(3): 805–831.
Helliwell, J., Layard, R., &Sachs, J.(Eds.) (2015) World Happiness Report 2015. Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).
Quoidbach, J., Dunn, E.W., Petrides, K.W., & Mikolajczak, M. (2010). Money Giveth, Money Taketh Away: The Dual Effect of Wealth on Happiness, Psychological Science 21(6) 759–763.
