Money can, in fact, buy you happiness. Sort of.
According to new research, money can buy you happiness, but only if it’s relative to the incomes of others in one’s own peer group. That is, if I make more money than my friend Bob, I’m probably happier than him, and he’s probably more unhappy than me. Of course, this makes pretty good sense, but the paper doesn’t attempt to explain why this is.
So I’m going to take a stab at it in the light of my recent reading.
Human beings are social creatures. Even those that prefer to be alone most of the time require some social interaction — the vast majority of the population falls within the normal bounds of introverted- vs. extroverted-ness. If one were to take a human baby and separate him from society for his whole life, he would not have any social skills and would die relatively quickly. As individuals, we cannot exist for long in isolation. (This is one of the reasons that solitary confinement is generally reserved as a way of punishing prisoners.) Those rare few that truly hate all social interaction are few and far between. The Unabomber comes to mind, but even he likes a bit of intellectual stimulation every once in a while.
Because we are social, we form social groups based on appearance, age, and perhaps most importantly, ideology. Peers tend to be those that have overlapping interests, ages, and ideologies, and so we judge ourselves on how we are relative to them, because they are our mirroring surface. If one is more successful (in whatever way one defines success), one tends to be more self-confident and secure in one’s own abilities and talents. These qualities lend themselves to happiness and contentment. Friends and strangers alike are more drawn to this successful individual because he exudes confidence. This, in turn, makes him more successful, which is a large part of the reason that a well-crafted façade for someone just starting out in business is one of the most important aspects of becoming truly successful. The image and perception of success breeds further success. It is only a simple matter, then to see why those that are more more financially successful than their peers are happier than their peers: because everyone around them appreciates them more, will defer to them (because they’re clearly doing something right), and, in general, admires them.
So it’s not so big of a stretch to see why happiness often mirrors financial success.
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Then that leads to the questions: Why do we care that other people admire us? Why do we care that we’re appreciated and deferred to?
I would say that the reason we’re happier when we’re making more $$ than our neighbors is because we have always lived in a world with limited resources. Making more money is the same as being more successful, meaning we get the extra piece of deer meat or bread or whatever so we can live longer, get the strongest smartest women and make the most babies. It all comes down to making babies and passing on our genes, I think. Even if we suddenly lived in a world with unlimited resources and opportunities to pass our genes we’d still feel this way since it’s part of our physical design.
Also admittedly I haven’t actually read the report, but I wouldn’t think this is news – I remember talking about this effect (aka “keeping up with the Jonses”) in freshman psych class.
Comment by john — August 15, 2005 @ 11:47 pm
I don’t disagree, though as intellect has superceded evolutionary urges, memes become more important than raw genetic material. If you’re interested, you should read the book I mentioned in my original news post — it’s quick reading and very interesting. It looks at the why humanity is the way it is, and why some of the world’s biggest tragedies are Nature’s way of ensuring that “only the strong survive.”
Though it’s really more complicated than that.
Comment by Rian — August 15, 2005 @ 11:52 pm