Money weakens your ability to enjoy life’s little pleasures

Money weakens your ability to enjoy life’s little pleasures

There has long been perceived link between money and happiness. Many people dream of the life they could lead if they won the lottery – a world of mansions, fine restaurants, and first-class travel. But few consider the costs. These fineries could lead to so much enjoyment that would no longer be able to appreciate life’s simpler pleasures, like a walk on a sunny day or the taste of a bar of chocolate.

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Jordi Quoidbach from the University of Liege showed that richer people aren’t as good as appreciating everyday pleasures as poorer people. Even the mere thought of money can make us take mundane joys for granted. Normal people who were reminded about wealth spent less time appreciating a humble bar of chocolate and obtained less enjoyment from it.

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Perhaps this is because money both gives and takes away: it opens doors to new pleasures, while making delights that were already accessible seem less enticing. Obsessing over wealth is like being on a treadmill – continuously running to stay in the same place emotionally. To begin with, Quoidbach asked 351 university employees, from cleaners to senior staff, to complete a test that measured their ability to feel positive emotions. Each recruit was asked to put themselves in a detailed pleasant scenario, from finishing an important task to discovering an amazing waterfall on a hike.

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Using other questionnaires, Quoidbach also assessed how happy they were, how much money it would take to live their dream life. And as a final twist, half of the questionnaires included a picture of a large stack of euros, while the other half saw the same picture that had been blurred beyond recognition. He found that the more money the recruits had, the worse they were at appreciating their positive emotions.

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In fact, the recruits also tended to be slightly happier the more money they had. Other studies have found the same trend, but Quoidbach’s important result is that money would have had a far greater impact on the volunteers’ happiness were it not for its negative effect on their ability to enjoy.

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Two researchers kept an eye on them and not only timed their eating, but rated how much enjoyment they were showing. The results were clear – the recruits who saw the money took 32 seconds to eat the chocolate, significantly less than the 45 seconds spent by the others. And on average, their happiness rating, as judged by the observers, was considerably lower than their peers.

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However, having money reduces the odds that people will actually spend in this way! Dunn has also found that money is better used to buy happiness if it’s spent on experiences rather than goods. In both experiments, a simple reminder of wealth weakened people’s ability to appreciate life’s smaller pleasures. That’s a striking result and Quoidbach explains it best himself. “One need not actually visit the pyramids of Egypt or spend a week at the legendary Banff spas in Canada for one’s ability to enjoy to be impaired,” he writes. “Simply knowing that these peak experiences are readily available may increase one’s tendency to take the small pleasures of daily life for granted”.

A.- Quoidbach found that a person’s ability to appreciate was unrelated to their desire of money. And even suggesting the thought of money, by showing them the euro picture, had the same negative effect, dampening their reactions to the happy imaginings.

B.- Moreover, the negative impact of wealth on individuals ability to appreciate undermined the positive effects of money on their happiness. We experimentally exposed participants to a reminder of wealth and produced the same negative effect on their ability to enjoy as that produced by actual individual differences in wealth.

C.- Of course, there’s only so far you can take the result of these questionnaires. A more objective experiment would be better, and that’s exactly what Quoidbach did. He asked 40 students to volunteer for a taste test. They were given a binder that included a questionnaire about their attitudes toward chocolate. On the opposite page, apparently for an unrelated study was a picture of either money or a neutral object. Afterwards, all they had to do was eat a chocolate.

D.- Quoidbach’s study helps to make sense of a trend in psychological research, where money has and incredibly weak effect on happiness. Once people have enough to buy basic needs and rise out of poverty, having extra cash has little bearing on their enjoyment of life.

E.- This idea of wealth as a double-edged sword is widely held and while it’s easy to suggest that it springs from jealousy, a new set of experiments support the idea.

F.- These studies are part of a growing body of research showing that the link between money and happiness is more complicated that we might imagine. Elizabeth Dunn, who worked with Quoidbach, has previously shown that money can buy happiness if it’s spent on others.

G.- Afterwards, they were quizzed in detail about how they would react to the scenarios, to see how strongly they enjoyed the experiences.