Happiness Is. . . .

The paper of record for the First-World Problems Set today featured a couple of articles on happiness.  In the first, we learn that money can't buy you happiness, at least not directly.  Specifically, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton report on various research findings that suggest that, after a point, more money does not lead to greater personal happiness.  While living in poverty is generally associated with lower levels of glee, once one has reached a certain level of income (which, in the US, is about $75,000 per year), more money does not make one appreciably happier.  In other words, when it comes to happiness, the rich are not, in fact, substantially different from the rest of us--as long as "us" means those in the middle class.

Really, this is nothing new.  Back in 1943, Abraham Maslow formulated his "Hierarchy of Needs," a pyramid-shaped model that attempts to illustrate the levels of human satisfaction.  At the bottom of the pyramid are physiological and safety needs--the need for food, the need for shelter--that people must satisfy merely to survive.  Once those needs have been met, one can proceed up the pyramid towards the ultimate goal of "self-actualization"--what I guess the army would call as "being all that you can be" (although perhaps without so much automatic weaponry).  Maslow would no doubt look at the reports showing greater income uncorrelated with greater happiness and nod sagely, perhaps stroking his chin and chuckling.  Income provides for the needs at the bottom of the pyramid, but money can't buy you self-actualization.

Except, Dunn and Norton continue, maybe it can--if you use money correctly: not to purchase more stuff  but to purchase more experiences.  Vacations are better for the soul than big-screen TVs.  But an even better path to happiness lies in buying things for other people.  Subjects in a study who were given $20 reported greater feelings of satisfaction when they were told to spend the money on someone else than when they were told to spend the money on themselves.  Of course, $20 couldn't buy you a big-screen TV anyway, so maybe that's a flaw in the experimental design. 

So, generous people are happier than the stingy.  And according to a second article, conservatives are happier than liberals.  Again, I'm not sure this is surprising.  The author, Arthur C. Brooks, suggests that liberals may attribute this difference to the fact that "conservatives are simply inattentive to the misery of others."  Sounds reasonable to me.  But seriously, folks.  Of course conservatives are "happier."  By definition, conservatives tend to support the status quo: Not wanting things to change suggests a certain level of satisfaction with the way things are.  Furthermore, religious conservatives tend to be happier than non-religious ones.  If you're getting stoned on the opiate of the people, why wouldn't you be feeling good?

So, to sum up, generous religious conservatives are, as a group, a happy lot.  Which may explain why this stingy agnostic liberal is so often grim and depressed.  Still and all, though, maybe the best measurement of personal happiness is the comparative amount of time one can spend worrying about how unhappy one is.