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Where Is The Grass Greener? The Economics Of Happiness

Men have a certain innate

restlessness. We’re always
looking for a new adventure,
wanting to feel like we’re
progressing in life, and
wondering if the grass might be
greener somewhere else.

Our ever-searching nature can

be a good thing if it’s channeled
into pursuits that really lead to
greater happiness and
satisfaction. But restlessness
can also get us terribly off track if we expend our energy journeying down avenues
that are really dead ends.

Our Happiness Range

Psychologists have an equation they use to “compute” happiness:

H=S+C+V

H=Happiness

S=Set point

Perhaps 50% of our happiness and satisfaction in life is genetic in origin. Some
people are just born naturally jollier than others, and there’s nothing we can do
about it. This is our happiness “set point.” But it’s more accurate to call it a “set
range.” We can move our happiness ticker to the upper range of our happiness
potential or the lower range. What causes the ticker to move? Read on.

C=Conditions

There are some things we can’t change (or do much to change) about ourselves-
ethnicity, gender, health, attractiveness, etc. But these conditions don’t affect your
happiness as much as you might think because of something called the adaption
principle. Our minds are sensitive to changes in our lives, and these changes cause
our happiness ticker to move up or down. But we quickly get used to those changes
and the ticker settles right back into our normal range. This is why, as unbelievable

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as it sounds, both lottery winners and those who are paralyzed in an accident find
their happiness levels right back to their pre-windfall/tragedy levels in less than a
year.

V=Voluntary Conditions

Unlike other conditions, voluntary conditions are those things you choose-
relationships, job, hobbies, location, etc. These things can have a greater impact on
your happiness because they are less susceptible to the adaption principle.

So the key to finding the truly greener pastures is to concentrate on going after the
right things-the things that really will make you happier-instead of expending your
energy in pursuit of a happiness mirage.

This is where the economics of happiness comes in. Numerous studies have
revealed what factors in life are correlated with greater happiness. Now granted,
these things correlate to greater happiness; they don’t necessarily cause happiness.
But I always say it’s at least worth checking out where the happy people
congregate. Below we highlight eight areas of a man’s life that we often associate
with increasing or decreasing our happiness and analyze if the grass really is
greener in those pastures.

Money

“As the level of wealth has

doubled or tripled in the last
fifty years in many
industrialized nations, the
levels of happiness and
satisfaction with life that
people report have not
changed, and depression has
actually become more
common.” -The Happiness
Hypothesis

Perhaps no factor’s influence on

happiness has been so examined
and so much a part of the popular
culture as money and wealth. There
are those who say that money
doesn’t buy happiness, and those

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that counter that the first group is simply not shopping at the right stores.

The answer to whether money can buy happiness is a crucial one, as it influences
many of the decisions we are faced with in life. Should we pursue the major that
leads to a more lucrative career or stick with studying what we’re passionate
about? Should we take the promotion that offers more money but will allow us less
time with our family?

Numerous studies have shown that money does buy happiness….to a point. To the
extent that money allows you to provide for your basic needs plus a little wiggle
room, it does make you happier, but once you move into the middle-class, its effect
wanes. The most recent study of this issue was published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences and found that beyond a household income of
$75,000, money “does nothing for happiness, enjoyment, sadness, or
stress.” Day to day happiness did not increase after the 75k mark, although the
feeling of being satisfied overall with one’s life did continue to rise with income. A
massive global Gallup poll found similar results; wealth was correlated with life
satisfaction but not the positive feelings a person experiences from day to day.

That life satisfaction but not day-to-day happiness increases with wealth can be
chalked up to the fact that how much we make relative to other people is more
important than the absolute amount of our income. We derive satisfaction from
feeling like we’re higher up in society’s pecking order. But no matter what income
level people are at-rich or poor-they always think making 20% would
increase their happiness. Which is why even though the standard of living has
been rising for many decades, people aren’t getting any happier.

So there’s a bit of truth to the idea that money buys happiness. But there’s also
truth to the maxim that people who don’t think so aren’t “shopping” at the right
places. Which brings us to:

Material Possessions

The amount of money you

make is only part of the
story; how you spend that
money also makes a big
difference.

Conspicuous consumption-
buying the bigger house, the
fancy car, and the designer

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duds- doesn’t correlate with

greater happiness because of
something called the
“hedonic treadmill;” you
very quickly adapt to your
new things and need to buy
more stuff to feel the rush
again. A new car gives you a boost every time you drive it for the first few weeks; a
year later it’s simply your everyday mode of transportation. And your happiness
with material goods is very dependent on comparing your stuff with other people’s;
you’re ecstatic about your new flat-screen television until your neighbor shows you
his 3-D set-up.

But people who do more “prosocial spending,” using their money to buy things for
others and to donate to charity instead of getting things for themselves do
experience a lasting increase in their happiness. But our inner-caveman fights this
conclusion; humans naturally want to display their status to other members of the
tribe in conspicuous ways.

Another way to get more happiness bang for your buck is to use your money to buy
experiences instead of things. Spending your money on vacations, meals, movies,
and concerts increases your happiness more than spending it on material goods.
Experiences strengthen one of the greatest contributors to real happiness-our
social ties. Activities give us a chance to spend time with other people, create
mutual memories we can look back on together later, and provide us with
interesting stories to tell people who weren’t even there. And experiences are less
subject to the effect of the hedonic treadmill; our memories actually get better with
time. We forget about the negative things that happened on our trips and simply
remember how great it was.

Commute

When people are asked

about activities that make
them happy, sex tops the list
and commuting gets the very
bottom spot. Nevertheless,
people consistently believe
that having a cheaper and
bigger house or a higher
paying job will compensate

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for having a longer

commute. They are wrong.
Two Swiss economists who
studied the effect of
commuting on happiness found that such factors could not make up for the misery
created by a long commute.

What accounts for this “commuter’s paradox?”Obviously, commuting is simply

unpleasant; it lessens your time with your family, costs money, and stresses you
out. And not only is it unpleasant for the commuter, it diminishes the happiness of
his partner as well. But more importantly, while many voluntary conditions don’t
affect our happiness in the long term because we acclimate to them, people never
get accustomed to their daily slog to work because sometimes the traffic is awful
and sometimes it’s not. Or as Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert put it, “Driving
in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.”

A man would have to make a full 40% more money in a job to

compensate for a longer commute. And yet people will often still choose the
bigger house over the smaller one and the chance to walk to work. Why? They
make a “weighting mistake,” an error explained by author Jonah Leher and the
psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis:

“Consider two housing options: a three bedroom apartment that is

located in the middle of a city, with a ten minute commute time, or a
five bedroom McMansion on the urban outskirts, with a forty-five
minute commute. “People will think about this trade-off for a long
time,” Dijksterhuis says. “And most them will eventually choose the
large house. After all, a third bathroom or extra bedroom is very
important for when grandma and grandpa come over for Christmas,
whereas driving two hours each day is really not that bad.” What’s
interesting, Dijksterhuis says, is that the more time people spend
deliberating, the more important that extra space becomes. They’ll
imagine all sorts of scenarios (a big birthday party, Thanksgiving
dinner, another child) that will turn the suburban house into an
absolute necessity. The pain of a lengthy commute, meanwhile, will
seem less and less significant, at least when compared to the allure of
an extra bathroom. But, as Dijksterhuis points out, that reasoning
process is exactly backwards: “The additional bathroom is a
completely superfluous asset for at least 362 or 363 days each year,
whereas a long commute does become a burden after a while.”

On another note, when deciding where to live, be sure to factor in noise, another

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condition we never fully acclimate to. You may think living in your dream house
will compensate for it being positioned right by an incredibly busy intersection,
but there’s a good chance it won’t.

Job

Perhaps no factor causes a

man as much restlessness as
his job. A man unhappy with
his occupation will spend a
good deal of time wondering
if he wouldn’t be happier in a
different line of work
altogether. Depending on
what line of work he’s
fantasizing about, he might
be right.

Happiness does cluster in

certain jobs, particularly
those that involve serving other people; in a survey on occupational happiness and
satisfaction, jobs like clergyman, firefighter, and special education teacher topped
the list.

But other studies have shown that any job can give your happiness if it utilizes your
signature strengths and does four things:

1. stretches a person without defeating him

2. provides clear goals
3. provides unambiguous feedback
4. provides a sense of control

And you don’t have to wait for your job to give you these things or necessarily
switch to a new job; you can look for ways to incorporate these things into your
existing position.

Location

Next to a job, a man’s locale

creates the most wanderlust.
Who hasn’t wondered on a
bad day if they wouldn’t be

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much happier living in

Austin or Portland instead of
Toledo? But will packing up
your bags and moving
making you happier?

When Professor Richard

Florida surveyed 27,000
people on the effect of place on their happiness, he found that location formed “the
third leg in the triangle of our well-being, alongside our personal relationships and
our work.” That location would be one of the top three factors influencing our
happiness should not be surprising-after all, place in many ways affects many other
areas of our lives: what jobs are available, what people we’ll form or keep
relationships with, how stressed or relaxed we are, our health, what hobbies we can
pursue and so on.

Age

You would be happier if you

could get back to your college
days, back to your 20s, right?
Wrong. Happiness does peak at
age 18 (man, I miss high school)
but then it goes downhill
until….age 50. It turns out that
being middle-aged isn’t the
living funeral you thought it
was. In fact most people are
happier at age 85 than age 18.
And it’s not because children
have flown the coop and you
have more time to play golf; the
happiness reported by the
elderly and middle-aged was
not premised on children,
gender, marriage status, or job.
For reasons researchers do not
yet understand, your brain just
starts feeling better as you get
grayer. So you can stop searching the internet for a time machine and look forward
to swapping your chucks for orthopedic shoes.

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Relationships

“An ideology of extreme

personal freedom can be
dangerous because it
encourages people to
leave homes, jobs, cities,
and marriage in search
of personal and
professional fulfillment,
thereby breaking the
relationships that were
probably their best hope
for such fulfillment.” The
Happiness Hypothesis

Humans are social creatures;

it’s bred into us by evolution.
Without this need for social ties
we wouldn’t have banded
together to survive the hostile
dangers of prehistoric life.
Thus, to be exiled from the
tribe was a punishment worse
than death.

So it’s not surprising that the most consistent factor in happiness is the strength
and extent of our social network. Whether we’re introverts or extroverts, spending
time with others greatly boosts our well-being. Our relationships give us a sense of
belonging, identity, security, support, and fun. Study after study has found that
having strong, positive relationships with family, spouse, children, and friends
provides the biggest boon to our happiness.

There may be a few lone wolves that can live in the Alaskan wilderness for decades
and be as happy as pie, but for most of us, we never get to used to isolation and
loneliness.

Sex

So what about sex? Many a

man has felt that if he were
only having more sex with

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more women he’d be a lot

happier. True? Well yes to
the first and no to the second.
Having more sex does indeed
make you happier. How
much happier? Even a
modest jump-going from
having sex less than once a
month to at least once a week
is equivalent to adding $50,000 to your income. After you’re getting some once a
week, the effect of frequency of sex on your happiness diminishes.

But the number of sexual partners a year that maximizes one’s happiness? 100?
25? One. Apparently monogamy is pretty sexy.

Conclusion

So to summarize, things that correlate to happiness include:

at least $75,000 income

spending money on other people and charity
spending money on experiences over material goods
living close to your job
being older
having a satisfying job
strong social ties
regular, monogamous sex

So you may be wasting your time:

trying to be extremely wealthy

wishing your were back in your 20s
buying a bunch of junk
enduring a lengthy commute to your job so you can have a bigger house
being Boo Radley
involuntary celibacy

In the end though, happiness really comes down to attitude and taking pleasure in
the small things in life. I’ve known men who worked crappy jobs in deadbeat towns
and still led happy lives. They learned to enjoy even the smallest of life’s pleasures.
A good book, delicious food, and the beauty and refreshment of the outdoors.
Instead of focusing on what they didn’t have, these men focused on all the things

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they had going for them. They fostered an attitude of gratitude. And actually,
there’s a study that proves the truth of this age-old bit of wisdom, too.

Related Posts

1. 30 Days to a Better Man Day 16: Create a Budget

2. 3 Lame Excuses For Not Saving Money
3. The Case for Marriage
4. 30 Days to a Better Man Day 5: Cultivate Your Gratitude

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