Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Can Money Buy Happiness?

Yes. But you might be surprised by the ways you should spend it.

Harvard professor Michael Norton and co-author Elizabeth Dunn have a new book out, Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending, that details the research on the 5 best ways to turn your dollars into lasting smiles. What are they?

1) Buy Experiences

Via Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending:

“…57 percent of Americans reported that the experiential purchase made them happier than the material purchase, while only 34 percent reported the opposite. This difference was more pronounced among women, young people and those living in cities and suburbs. But the same basic pattern emerged even for men, the elderly, and country dwellers. In study after study, people are in a better mood when they reflect on their experiential purchases, which they describe as “money well spent.”

2) Make It A Treat

Via Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending:

“…knowing you can’t have access to something all the time may help you appreciate it more when you do… When you love a television show — say, The Office — you might think the best way to maximize your happiness is to buy the DVD set and watch all the episodes straight through. Getting rid of the commercials and eliminating the weeklong wait between episodes seems sensible. But research suggests that taking breaks between episodes can increase your enjoyment. Perhaps most amazingly, commercials can improve the experience of watching television. Even entertaining shows can start to drag after five to seven minutes, decreasing our enjoyment. Commercials disrupt that adaptation process, so when the show comes back on, we can fall in love with Jim and Pam all over again.”

3) Buy Time

Via Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending:

“People who feel they have plenty of free time are more likely to exercise, do volunteer work, and participate in other activities that are linked to increased happiness. Although money can be used to buy “free time,” in part by outsourcing the demands of daily life such as cooking, cleaning and even grocery shopping, wealthier individuals report elevated levels of time pressure… Wealthier individuals tend to spend more of their time on activities associated with relatively high levels of tension and stress, such as shopping, working and commuting.“

4) Pay Now, Consume Later

Via Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending:

“Delay can enhance the pleasure of consumption not only by providing an opportunity to develop positive expectations, but also by enhancing what we call the “drool factor.” The very best stimulus for studying the drool factor? Chocolate. In a recent experiment, college students chose whether they wanted a Hershey’s Kiss or a Hershey’s Hug. They either ate their chosen chocolate immediately or waited thirty minutes. When students had to wait for their candy, they enjoyed it more and expressed more interest in buying additional Hershey’s chocolates. Even though they didn’t learn anything new about the chocolates, the delay provided an opportunity to build visceral desire, to drool a bit.“

5) Invest In Others

Via Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending:

“By the end of the day, individuals who spent money on others were measurably happier than those who spent money on themselves — even though there were no differences between the groups at the beginning of the day. And it turns out that the amount of money people found in their envelopes — $5 or $20 — had no effect on their happiness at the end of the day. How people spent the money mattered much more than how much of it they got.”

More from Michael Norton’s TEDx talk here:

To learn more check out Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending.

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Ten research-based steps to a happier life

I went through a number of great books on happiness and pulled together ten research-based tips that can help build a happier life:

1) Cut the small talk. Discuss what matters.

Via Pursuing the Good Life: 100 Reflections on Positive Psychology:

First, happier participants spent more time talking to others, unsurprising finding given the social basis of happiness. Second, the extent of small talk was negatively associated with happiness. And third, the extent of substantive talk was positively associated with happiness. So, happy people are socially engaged with others, and this engagement entails matters of substance.

2) Make sure to have at least five friends you can discuss your problems with.

Via Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life:

“National surveys find that when someone claims to have five or more friends with whom they can discuss important problems, they are 60 percent more likely to say that they are ‘very happy.’“

3) Don’t just cheer people up. Celebrate their good news.

Via The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does:

The surprising finding is that the closest, most intimate, and most trusting relationships appear to be distinguished not by how the partners respond to each other’s disappointments, losses, and reversals but how they react to good news. Flourishing relationships have been revealed to be those in which the couple responds “actively and constructively”— that is, with interest and delight— to each other’s windfalls and successes… people who strove to show genuine enthusiasm, support, and understanding of their partner’s good news, however small— and did so three times a day over a week— became happier and less depressed.

4) Write down your hopes and dreams.

Via The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does:

…keeping a journal regularly for ten to twenty minutes per day, in which we write down our hopes and dreams for the future (e.g., “In ten years, I will be married and a home owner”), visualize them coming true, and describe how we might get there and what that would feel like. This exercise— even when engaged in as briefly as two minutes— makes people happier and even healthier.

5) Live a month like it’s your last.

Via The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does:

I’m currently conducting a one-month-long “happiness intervention” in which participants are instructed to live the month as if it’s their last month. Their instructions are not to pretend that they have a terminal disease but rather to imagine as fully and faithfully as possible that they are about to move a very long way from their jobs, schools, friends, and families for an indefinite period of time. Previous research hints that this exercise should prompt us to appreciate in a profound way what we are preparing to give up. When we believe that we are seeing (or hearing, doing, or experiencing) things for the last time, we will see (or hear, do, or experience) them as though it’s the first time.

6) Know what makes everyone happy and everyone sad.

Via Engineering Happiness: A New Approach for Building a Joyful Life:

Their findings confirm what had been found previously: happiness is high during sex, exercise, or socializing, or while the mind is focused on the here and now, and low during commuting or while the mind is wandering.

7) Join a group.

Via Engineering Happiness: A New Approach for Building a Joyful Life:

The sociologist Ruut Veenhoven and his team have collected happiness data from ninety-one countries, representing two-thirds of the world’s population. He has concluded that Denmark is home to the happiest people in the world, with Switzerland close behind… Interestingly enough, one of the more detailed points of the research found that 92 percent of the people in Denmark are members of some sort of group, ranging from sports to cultural interests. To avoid loneliness, we must seek active social lives, maintain friendships, and enjoy stable relationships.

8) For a happier life, set goals.

Via Engineering Happiness: A New Approach for Building a Joyful Life:

In his studies, the psychologist Jonathan Freedman claimed that people with the ability to set objectives for themselves—both short-term and long-term—are happier. The University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson has found that working hard toward a goal and making progress to the point of expecting a goal to be realized don’t just activate positive feelings—they also suppress negative emotions such as fear and depression. According to Michael Argyle, simply having a long-term plan or goal gives people a sense of meaning in life. Progressing toward goals not only gives a purpose to life as a whole but also provides a structure and meaning to daily routines, strengthens social relationships, and helps us weather hard times.

9) Optimism can save your life.

Via Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being:

Within eight and a half years, half the men had died of a second heart attack, and we opened the sealed envelope. Could we predict who would have a second heart attack? None of the usual risk factors predicted death: not blood pressure, not cholesterol, not even how extensive the damage from the first heart attack. Only optimism, eight and a half years earlier, predicted a second heart attack: of the sixteen most pessimistic men, fifteen died. Of the sixteen most optimistic men, only five died. This finding has been repeatedly confirmed in larger studies of cardiovascular disease, using varied measures of optimism…

Men with the most optimistic style (one standard deviation above average) had 25 percent less CVD than average, and men with the least optimism (one standard deviation below the mean) had 25 percent more CVD than average. This trend was strong and continuous, indicating that greater optimism protected the men, whereas less optimism weakened them.

10) Anticipating happiness will double your happiness.

Via Stumbling on Happiness:

In one study, volunteers were told that they had won a free dinner at a fabulous French restaurant and were then asked when they would like to eat it. Now? Tonight? Tomorrow? Although the delights of the meal were obvious and tempting, most of the volunteers chose to put their restaurant visit off a bit, generally until the following week. Why the self-imposed delay? Because by waiting a week, these people not only got to spend several hours slurping oysters and sipping Château Cheval Blanc ’47, but they also got to look forward to all that slurping and sipping for a full seven days beforehand. Forestalling pleasure is an inventive technique for getting double the juice from half the fruit.

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What’s it take to win a Nobel prize? How about “being nice”?

The other day I posted the research for and against “nice guys finish last.” Turns out there’s one more area where being good pays off.

How do we know?

Researchers who hog the credit on scientific papers are less likely to win a Nobel prize. Those who give younger academics a bit of the spotlight are more likely to have a trip to Stockholm in their future.

Via The Half-life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

One striking finding was the beneficence of Nobel laureates, or as Zuckerman termed it, noblesse oblige. In general, when a scientific paper is published, the author who did the most is listed first. There are exceptions to this, and this can vary from field to field, but Zuckerman took it as a useful rule of thumb. What she found was that Nobel laureates are first authors of numerous publications early in their careers, but quickly begin to give their junior colleagues first authorship. And this happens far before they receive the Nobel Prize.

As one generous Nobel laureate in chemistry put it: “It helps a young man to be senior author, first author, and doesn’t detract from the credit that I get if my name is farther down the list.” On the other hand, those peers of Nobel laureates who were not as successful tried to maintain first authorship for themselves far more often, garnering more glory for themselves. By their forties, Nobel laureates are first authors on only 26 percent of their papers, as compared to their less accomplished contemporaries, who are first authors 56 percent of the time. Nicer people are indeed more creative, more successful, and even more likely to win Nobel prizes.

Want a Nobel Peace Prize? You need a trustworthy face.

They gave people pictures of Nobel Peace Prize winners and American’s Most Wanted criminals. The Nobel Prize winners could often be guessed after seeing a picture for only 100 milliseconds:

Although trustworthiness judgments based on a stranger’s face occur rapidly (Willis & Todorov, 2006), their accuracy is unknown. We examined the accuracy of trustworthiness judgments of the faces of 2 groups differing in trustworthiness (Nobel Peace Prize recipients/humanitarians vs. America’s Most Wanted criminals). Participants viewed 34 faces each for 100 ms or 30 s and rated their trustworthiness. Subsequently, participants were informed about the nature of the 2 groups and estimated group membership for each face. Judgments formed with extremely brief exposure were similar in accuracy and confidence to those formed after a long exposure. However, initial judgments of untrustworthy (criminals’) faces were less accurate (M=48.8%) than were those of trustworthy faces (M=62.7%). Judgment accuracy was above chance for trustworthy targets only at Time 1 and slightly above chance for both target types at Time 2. Participants relied on perceived kindness and aggressiveness to inform their rapidly formed intuitive decisions. Thus, intuition plays a minor facilitative role in reading faces.

So what if you’re a jerk with an untrustworthy mug but you still want to win a Nobel Prize?

I’d eat a lot of chocolate. I’m being serious.

Countries that eat more chocolate win more Nobels. Chocolate has been shown to increase smarts so there could be a connection. (Correlation, causation, whatever — it’s an excuse to eat chocolate, right?)

Via The New England Journal of Medicine:

There was a close, significant linear correlation (r=0.791, P<0.0001) between chocolate consumption per capita and the number of Nobel laureates per 10 million persons in a total of 23 countries (Figure 1). When recalculated with the exclusion of Sweden, the correlation coefficient increased to 0.862. Switzerland was the top performer in terms of both the number of Nobel laureates and chocolate consumption… since chocolate consumption has been documented to improve cognitive function, it seems most likely that in a dose-dependent way, chocolate intake provides the abundant fertile ground needed for the sprouting of Nobel laureates.

Would love to write more but I’m going to eat a Snickers bar while I study quantum mechanics.

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