In The Pursuit Of Happiness
It is an age-old question that has been discussed amongst family and friends in homes, offices, coffee shops and bars all around the world…'can money make you truly happy?'
Most people are in the pursuit of happiness. Some economists even think happiness is the best indicator of a healthy society. We know that money can make you happier, though at a certain point it doesn’t make you much happier.
One of the keys to this ‘financial happiness’ appears to be how we choose to allocate our money, especially considering it is a limited resource for the vast majority of us.
A logical assumption that most people make when spending their money is that by purchasing a physical object, it will a) last longer and b) make us happier for a longer time than if we spent it on a one-off experience like a concert or vacation.
It turns out that assumption is in fact completely wrong!
“One of the enemies of happiness is adaptation” says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University, who has been studying the question of money and happiness for over twenty years.
“We buy things to make us happy and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting at first but then we adapt to them and the novelty wears off.”
These findings show that money can buy happiness but only up to a point.
During a survey on how ‘adaptation affects happiness’, people were asked to self-report their happiness with major material and experiential purchases. Initially, the happiness shown with both types of purchase was ranked about the same. Over time, however, people’s satisfaction with the things they bought went down whereas their satisfaction with experiences went up.
Surprisingly, it’s therefore counterintuitive that something like a physical object that can be kept for a long time, doesn’t actually keep you as happy as long as a ‘once-lived’ experience does.
The reason is that experiences effectively become ingrained in your identity. They are a bigger part of yourselves than your material goods. You can end up really liking your material stuff but nonetheless it will remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really become a part of you. You are the sum total of your experiences.
Another reason, is that shared experiences connect us more to other people than shared consumption. You are much more likely to feel connected to someone you took a vacation with to say South America than to someone who also happens to own the latest hi-tech flat screen TV.
You are also much less prone to negatively compare your own experiences to someone else’s than you would with material purchases.
Another conducted study by researchers Ryan Howell and Graham Hill found that it’s easier to feature-compare material goods (how many carats is your ring? how fast is your car?) than it is experiences. And since it’s easier to compare, most people do so.
A Game Changer Says…
The concept of material versus experiential in the pursuit of happiness can also be understood in the way that neurology plays a key part.
Hungarian psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, researched the subject of happiness for many years. His findings provided us with a new word, 'flow'.
The differential between pleasure and flow in the pursuit of happiness couldn’t be greater, with pleasure being a primarily passive state (i.e. reading a book, having a massage or receiving a gift) versus flow being the result of a more active state (i.e. travelling, playing a sport, or learning a new skill).
In Mihaly’s mind there is absolutely no doubt that flow contributes to a far greater impact on our happiness, as it can last much longer than pleasure which can reach its peak or intensity in a relatively short space of time.
So, now that you are aware of all this, rather than buying the new Apple Watch or latest BMW series car, ensure you book up your next holiday or concert; attend your next art EXPO or theatre production; or simply take up a new hobby, or learn a new skill. The fulfilment will be everlasting.
The stronger the experience, the stronger the emotion. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the memory. So if you want to recall many fantastic and happy memories in your later life, ensure it’s experiential activities that you invest in from now on!
The purpose of this blog is to identify and show the implications for individuals who want to maximise their happiness return on their financial outlay, for employers who want to have a happier workforce and for policy makers who wish to have a happy citizenry.
Finally, just ask yourself this one question:-
"Of all the things that have brought most happiness and enjoyment to my life, have they been physical objects or lived experiences?”
This answer should reveal the answer.
