One lazy evening, sitting by the window, I was thinking about the diplomatic, contentious statements we tend to hear all the time. Things like this –
- Money doesn’t buy happiness
- People don’t judge you based on Race (or if you are an Indian, insert ‘caste’)
- Looks don’t matter
- Parents don’t ever play favorites among their kids
- All mothers are good mothers
- Working harder every day will make you successful….. et all
I think all of them are largely true. With caveats though.
Michael Norton is a social science researcher, TEDx speaker and professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.
Here is an excerpt from his TEDx speech on ‘How to buy Happiness’
Can money buy love? No.
Can money buy happiness? It can, oddly enough.
How can money buy happiness?
A lot of us spend a lot of time thinking about how we can earn both – money and happiness. As per new research, if we think we can’t buy happiness it is maybe because we are spending it wrong.On how we spend our money – Let us talk about the ways in which we are spending it that is wrong? On material goods and stuff we can do without, maybe.
What happens to people when they win a lottery? Paradoxically, as per research their lives are ruined. Most of them spend it and go into debt quite soon. In the process they also lose friends who nag them for newly earned money.
As per a research by Prof Norton, what people did with the money makes a lot of difference to their levels of happiness. The researchers gave two groups of people envelopes filled with money in them with the criteria that they were to spend it by 5 pm that evening. The difference being that one group were to spend the money on self and the second on others. For those who were to spend it on oneself, it was business as usual. They mostly got something like makeup or coffee. The second group though had a disruption – they deliberated over how to spend the money. This was a change in pattern of thinking. They eventually spend it on the homeless and on others. The second group thought about and used money differently from how they usually do. The groups were measured on a happiness scale between 1-10 before and after the experiment. It always turned out that those who spent it on others had a significantly higher positive effect on happiness than those who didn’t. The results held true irrespective of whether this was in Uganda or Canada.
Broadly thus, I think the psychological research tallies with what we can intuitively grasp
- Money IS important to happiness UNTIL one’s basic needs and security is met. After a certain threshold (which may vary based on demographics), the positive net effects of money may be offset by negative effects in trying or working to maintain that lifestyle
- Doing makes us happier than Having. I keep reading about articles where ‘experiences’ are always better than spending on material goods. I find it EXTREMELY difficult to get my brain to accept the fact that the savvy new Banana Republic coat or Bobbi Brown lip gloss doesn’t make me as happy as a trip to the beach. But the only cogent explanation I can come up with is that it fails rule 1 in not crossing my ‘threshold’
- Spending money on others makes us feel good about ourselves. I’d accede.
While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.
I think I’d leave you with that thought by Groucho Marx and this Beatles song.
Adieu!