Is There a Happiness-Money Link?

I have noticed that a significantly larger amount of students are seeking me during my office hours not necessarily to discuss class content, but to ask for advice regarding conflicts or stress they are experiencing in their lives. Perhaps it is the specific population we serve at my school, or perhaps this reflects a larger trend in our culture today—we are struggling with the stressors in our lives and seeking help anywhere that we can find it. This reaffirms my conviction that we need to expose our students to more than just content to grow their knowledge base in each course—we need to expose them to information that will help them cultivate better life skills.

Enter the happiness lecture. I recently started integrating a unit on happiness in some of my classes (for a post I shared about my student reactions to this unit after the first time I taught it, click here).

Every semester when I lecture on the science of happiness the students are eager to participate, but also skeptical regarding the results of research that I share. Take, for instance, a similar response I got this time around to the same finding I share every semester—that the research suggests an additional hour of sleep every night for a year would predict greater happiness than a $60,000 salary bump. The skepticism I was met with this semester was even harsher than the last time around.

“Bullshit!” One student emphatically exclaimed. If ever there was an opportunity to dissect the meaning behind a research finding, here it was. Why are students so resistant to acknowledging that there are limits to what we can gain by money? And why is their automatic response to such a finding that there is no way it could be true? The student’s response was a great catalyst for exploring these themes, and really thinking about what it means to be happy.

We are in a culture where we are bombarded by messages regarding the pursuit of stuff. American capitalism is in many ways built on the notion of the insatiable consumer relentlessly pursuing the purchase of the next best thing, working to accumulate more and more wealth. This inevitably translates to more and more stuff. We have storage units we pay for monthly to hold the stuff we can’t fit in our homes.

In fact, research suggests that Americans spend more money per year on shoes, watches and other jewelry than they do on higher education; that we throw away more than 68 pounds of clothing per person per year (as reported by Wolfe, 2017). It is no wonder that the average American household is in over $100,000 in debt (Wolfe, 2017). For all of our accumulation of stuff, though, there remains this lack of satisfaction in our lives. Witness, for instance, the climbing rates of addictions and other mental illnesses and physical ailments that clearly demonstrate most of us are suffering or in pain.

We see the apparent happiness of the rich and famous, all the status and goods their wealth enables them to acquire and show off, and don’t question the authenticity of the branded lives they package and present to us. At the same time, though, we are also bombarded with stories of celebrities acting out, celebrities struggling with addictions or other difficulties in their own lives—so clearly their wealth isn’t insulating them from problems. And yet, there is still judgment when they do show signs of distress—the backlash that high profile celebrities get in the aftermath of suicide or even reports of divorces or other conflicts suggest that even though we know better, we expect their wealth to insulate them from the realities of life.

I am not suggesting that there is no connection between money and happiness—but that rather, the connection is not as straightforward as we are led to believe. Once basic needs are met, money does not predictably assure happiness, and in fact after a certain salary point, it may even be associated with a decline in happiness. Unfulfilling material pursuits, added pressure to maintain a certain salary point and greater social comparison have been identified as factors that may actually link increases in wealth with decreases in general life satisfaction (e.g. Ducharme, 2018).

While my students appeared to be resistant to certain claims regarding the dubious link between wealth and happiness, the more we questioned the assumptions regarding materialism embedded in the broken value system of our culture, the more we all started to recognize all of the illusions that need to be maintained for consumers to continue their relentless consumption. Love can’t be bought. Food only feeds our physical hunger, and the weight of our stuff in our relentless pursuit for more can make us feel heavier and burdened, rather than lighter and free.

So while I encourage everyone to work hard and pursue their ambitions, I also caution that your life purpose be more than just attaining material goods or wealth. A purpose-driven life is found to be far more linked to happiness than one of success being defined solely based on a given salary point. So find that purpose, and pursue that to the fullest. The irony is that once you find your purpose, as if often the case, material success will likely follow anyways.

Happiness Essential Reads

Chess, Happiness, and Chance

How to Find Joy in Your Life

Copyright Azadeh Aalai 2018