MONEY AND SHOPPINGmoney and happiness with the reality of that relationship. Ankin
surveyed hundreds of Americans on different income-levels about
their happiness and asked them to estimate the average happiness of
people on other income levels. The participants were fairly accurate
when estimating the happiness of wealthier people, but massively
underestimated the happiness of people on lower than average
wage-levels. There’s little doubt that real poverty is miserable, but
the research suggested that we overestimate the emotional impact of
having less money than average. A 2010 survey of US workers by Daniel
Kahneman found that a higher salary was associated with more happi-
ness, but only up to an annual salary of $75,000, beyond which more
money made no difference.
Related to the question of the link between money and happiness is
materialism. The assumption is that people want more money in order
to be able to buy more stuff. However, research by Tim Kasser at Knox
College has shown that materialistic people, from children to pensioners,
are less satisfied with life, lack vitality and suffer more anxiety, depression
and addiction problems than do people who aren’t materialistic.
It gets worse. Kathleen Vohs, in a paper published in 2006, showed
that the mere thought of money makes us more selfish. She showed
that participants who performed anagram tasks involving money-
related words subsequently spent less time helping another participant
(actually an actor) who was confused by the task. Other experiments
Looking happy enough, Nigel Page and his partner Justine celebrate his
£56 million win on the Euro Lottery in February 2010.