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In my opinion, this paragraph is at the heart of the problem with this study.
"Perhaps, the psychologists hypothesized, people who buy lottery tickets tend to be melancholy to begin with, and this had skewed the results. They randomly selected another group of Illinoisans, some of whom had bought lottery tickets in the past and some of whom hadn’t. The buyers and the non-buyers exhibited no significant affective differences."
Lottery winners are not correctly matched to people who buy don't buy lottery tickets. Lottery winners tend to be people who buy large amounts of lottery tickets. Someone who buys 50 tickets a week (and such people exist) is a thousand times more likely to win than someone who buys two tickets per year. Someone who buys fifty tickets a week is also an unrealistic or compulsive person who probably does not get much joy out of life or the moment. The lottery selects for those who compulsively negate their present for an unlikely future payout.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 10:42 AM on March 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

In my experience the truest observation about happiness (I wish I could remember where I read it, so I could give credit), is that as long as people have the basic necessities (food, clothing, shelter, etc), people are happy when they feel things are getting better, unhappy when they feel things are getting worse, and meh/content/no particular emotion when things stay the same. In other words, it's an indicator of slope rather than absolute value. The first derivative, if you will.

f'(x) > 0 happy
f'(x) = 0 meh
f'(x) < 0 unhappy

where x = life in general

So you can be poor and happy, middle class and unhappy, or rich and meh. This is sort of a time-weighted trend thing - we all get brief bursts of happiness or sadness from random stuff we see or hear, but the trend averaged out over several days depends on how you see your life heading.

Beyond the basics, stuff doesn't make us happy in the long term, because it doesn't constantly make each day seem better than the last, day after day. Even very useful stuff gets integrated into our lives, we adjust to having it, and we plateau (and f'(x) = 0). My laptop is a thing of wonder, really, but now I'm used to it and take it for granted, and it doesn't make me happy any more even though I really appreciate having it. I'd be plenty unhappy if it broke, though - the hassle of repairing it and the loss of its function would definitely worsen my life for a few days (f'(x) < 0).

At least for me, this is the best explanation of why I feel happy or sad. I live a comfortable middle-class life surrounded by marvels of technology, yet I'm not often happy. Usually meh, but sometimes actually unhappy (with a good dose of guilt thrown in when considering how many people are less fortunate). When I stop and really analyze my mood, it's always based on that first derivative (except for PMS, but I can cope with that). There's always something that's getting better or worse, no matter how silly, that seems to drive my overall happy/unhappy mood. When nothing particular is changing, I'm just meh despite my breathtaking good fortune to be a middle-class citizen of the First World.
posted by Quietgal at 11:08 AM on March 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

I've always been intrigued by Epicurus' idea of living with friends as the ultimate happiness.

Yeah, if you're an extrovert. [Shudders.]

Re money: the problem is that there are some really key things it can't buy, such as love and health. Sure, it can buy you much better medical care, but in the end, it can't cure your cancer. Maybe one day; not now.

I can think of some ways in which I would DEFINITELY be happier if I had more money. I would LOVE not to have to go to work. I have so many projects I'm dying to do, so many books I want to read, etc., and I don't have time because of fucking work. And I LIKE my job. I just know I'd be happier if I could support myself without it.

So think of me, winner of the lottery, never having to work again. I'm sitting at home, lounging on the sofa, painting pictures or re-reading "King Lear," ... and then my wife leaves me.

Now think of an impoverished guy whose wife leaves him. Maybe you can say he's more unhappy than me, because he's poor AND lonely. But if you quit keeping score, you realize that we're both pretty fucking miserable. (Please: I'm not saying that Bill Gates with cancer would be in the same boat as some guy in a ghetto with cancer. I'm just saying they'd both be upset.)

So it doesn't surprise me that there are unhappy rich people, especially if they stupidly expected that their money would solve all those problems in life that money can't touch.

It's always odd to me when people get offended by character-based movies in which the characters are rich, e.g. Woody Allen movies. There's a certain type of person who goes to see such a movie, in which the hero is depressed because his girlfriend left him, and says, "Fuck him! With all his money, he's complaining?"

Yeah, but it sucks to be abandoned, no matter where you are on the economic scale. When people say things like that, it makes me think they believe that if they won the lottery, they suddenly wouldn't care if someone they loved died or left them. Wrong.
posted by grumblebee at 11:19 AM on March 19, 2010

I think there is a lot of insight in this statement. People chase dreams of wealth because they think that the wealth is an end to itself...

Why limit the insight just to acquiring money? Isn't it true that any desire is destroyed once you fulfill it? The Shel Silverstein children's book The Missing Piece (youtube video) makes this point about romance fantasies, and I think people know this, if only unconsciously. We don't only fantasize about things we desire; we also create imagined obstacles that prevent us from getting the object of desire, so that we can enjoy the dream. Otherwise we'd be forced to go for it, and end up bursting the bubble when we find out reality isn't as great as the dream.

How often do you hear things like "If it weren't for my boss/wife/husband/kids/friends, things would be different, I'd really be able to be happy!" This is even problematic from a political standpoint, because on one hand, there's a lot of furious energy trying to change things, trying to overcome the obstacles or remove the limits to true enjoyment and yet nothing really changes. Maybe, unconsciously we don't want things to change, we want those limits to stand in our way, so that we can continue to dream that some real, authentic form of enjoyment that's better than what we have now is just around the corner.

A strange example: Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique argues that patriarchal attitudes limit women's authentic enjoyment, restricting them to the role of housewife and preventing them from the deep satisfaction of education and a career that men enjoy. And yet barely a year earlier, Richard Yates published Revolutionary Road, to make almost the exact opposite point, that the boredom and restrictions of the career world (and maybe we can also add, the academic world) is the fundamental limit that stands in the way of our true enjoyment.

I'm not at all saying that either Freidan or Yates are tricking us, only that this is how our culture understands all of life's projects. It's almost impossible to motivate anyone to do anything without resorting to this framework, and yet at the same time, the automatic association between fulfilling your desires and being truly happy is deeply misleading to us personally. Having overcome the limits of patriarchy and conformity to some extent (which, to be clear, I think are good things politically), new limits and obstacles are discovered that explain our continued failure to really enjoy ourselves.

Every part of our culture tells us we can be happy only if we reach our dreams (which can be anything from crass materialism to political goals to the heights of spiritual enlightenment), and yet the reality is that if we ever do reach our goals, the dream is destroyed, reality sets in and we're back to dissatisfaction and boredom, asking ourselves "What is it that I really want?"

What could be the solution? Definitely not some attempt to cure us of this disease, which would only end up repeating the same logic: "If only I could escape from the culture's demand that I make my dreams come true, I will be truly happy..." The Missing Piece suggests a far more interesting solution: the purpose of a dream is not to be fulfilled, but to provide a direction. The proper relationship to desire is that it's like driving in a car towards the moon--you can travel for thousands of miles, and yet the moon always appears the same size, the same distance away.
posted by AlsoMike at 11:42 AM on March 19, 2010 [14 favorites]

I think the problem is, in part, that a lot of lottery winners think of their winnings as a big sum and not as an annuity, so they drive themselves into debt. Maybe they don't feel as rich once they realize it as an annuity or cash out for a lump sum because of bad habits they've had.

But how much did people win in the lottery in 1978? I didn't see that in the reading.

(Studies have shown that women find caring for their children less pleasurable than napping or jogging and only slightly more satisfying than doing the dishes.)

This is really surprising. Does this take into account the current culture where women persistantly (possibly defensively) say how rewarding it is to have children and how much they love being a mom (not to be confused with how much they love their children, because obviously they do love them in a deep way)?
posted by anniecat at 12:16 PM on March 19, 2010

Money Happiness Finding Happiness Life Happiness Happiness Quotes Happiness Richard Layard Money Make You Happy Happiness Layard Can Buy Happiness Money Makes You Happy Money Happy Happiness

Loveofmoneyisrootofallprosperity Fr Ojs2 Index Php Rsp Issue View American Dating In Araraquara Happiness Finding Happiness Life Happiness Happiness Quotes Happiness Richard Layard Money Make You Happy Happiness Layard Can Buy Happiness Money Makes You Happy Money Happy