It's easy to come to the conclusion that all of our technology, all of our wealth, all of our stuff is not really making us happy. It's true that getting a new gadget can give you pleasure every day you use it, but having ten new gadgets is not ten times more fun. Unless, of course, you're Oprah and you give each member of your staff an iPad. This kind of social giving, or "pro-social spending" can make you considerably happier than spending the equivalent amount on numero uno. (Oprah gave the iPads and $10,000 to each member of her magazine's staff in 2010 to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Unfortunately for Oprah, her attempts to promote Microsoft's Surface tablet this year, and her magazine itself, have been less happy experiences.)
As the video above by AsapSCIENCE (the duo of Toronto musician Mitchell Moffit and artist Gregory Brown) demonstrates, "if you think money and happiness are exclusive, you simply aren't spending it right." Although the notion that once ones material needs are met, income over a certain threshold (often stated as $75,000) does not make us any happier, this is only true if that additional money is spent selfishly. The research that Moffit and Brown have drawn on most directly is from a paper by Dunn, Gilbert and Wilson from the Journal of Consumer Psychology, abstracted here:
The relationship between money and happiness is surprisingly weak, which may stem in part from the way people spend it. Drawing on empirical research, we propose eight principles designed to help consumers get more happiness for their money. Specifically, we suggest that consumers should:
- buy more experiences and fewer material goods
- use their money to benefit others rather than themselves
- buy many small pleasures rather than fewer large ones
- eschew extended warranties and other forms of overpriced insurance
- delay consumption
- consider how peripheral features of their purchases may affect their day-to-day lives
- beware of comparison shopping
- pay close attention to the happiness of others.
Of the above principles, many are related to our experience using technology. They explain why the investment in social media companies rivals that of hardware manufactures—even though they don't make anything. They offer also, I think, some caution for the big social media companies (Facebook and Twitter, particularly, of late) who have not been paying much attention to the happiness of users or developers in their attempts to monetize. For content providers, I think that the idea of "many small pleasures rather than fewer large ones," relates to micro-payment or a la carte pricing vs. bundling.
Of course, feeling like you have enough money to be generous with, or in the case of companies, that you feel you can be generous with your potential competitors, is a nice problem to have. Many households are so overloaded with debt that it's hard to get there, even for high-earners. And many companies allow themselves to be financed based on unrealistic expectations. These forms of leverage provide some happiness or success up to a point, but taken to extremes, in fact, undermine the pursuit of happiness. Debt and the expectations of investors are among those, "peripheral features [that] may affect [the] day-to-day lives" of people and companies.
I am not a big fan of the idea of "corporate personhood," but if we accept the fact that companies do have personalities and DNA and other people-like attributes (even if we don't believe that their money should allow them to buy speech), it raises the question about their potential for happiness. Do these principles about pro-social spending apply to businesses as well? Would we be happier as people if our companies were happier? If it means that they more attention to the happiness of others (us!), then the answer is obvious.
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