Proof that money doesn't mean happiness

Gilbert says one way to free ourselves from the "money-go-round" is to recognize when enough is enough.

"People would be wise to earn money up to the point of inflection, to the point where more money isn't going to make much of a difference," he says. "One of the things that people have to think about when they talk about money and happiness is where they are in their reference group. If you're in the middle or high end of your reference group, more money isn't going to make it better. If you're in the low end, it actually might make a difference."

'Chicken-and-egg-stasy'

Paul Taylor says Americans have always stalked life's pleasures, so studying the causes seems prudent.

"The pursuit of happiness has had a particular resonance in our own national history; it's embedded right there in our founding document. But it has a pride of place in the whole of human history; human beings want to be happy. So understanding what the track record has been and what elements contribute to that pursuit is important," he says.

As executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based Pew Research Center, Taylor headed up a February 2006 survey -- "a snapshot," he calls it -- of how that pursuit is going early into the new millennium.

Where income is concerned, the Pew survey found that happiness does indeed increase with income; those who said they were "very happy" increased consistently with income, from 24% in the under-$30,000 income category to 49% in the $100,000-plus category.

But Taylor is quick to point out that there's a chicken-and-egg element to these findings that might lead to misinterpretation: "Perhaps money leads to happiness. Perhaps happiness leads to money. Or perhaps both are influenced by some other, more powerful factor."

Whatever the case, Taylor says the findings indicate that while money might not make you happy, not having money certainly contributes to unhappiness.

"The linear relationship that 'the more income you have, the happier you are' has been around a long time, despite the persistence of the old adage, 'Money doesn't buy you happiness.' Well, the one may not buy the other, but they do seem to hang out together in ways that suggest there is a relationship between the two," he says.

The Pew researchers intentionally left it to the 3,014 respondents to define what happiness means for them.

"That's going to mean different things to different people, but if you take a big enough sample, you'll at least get some broad gauge of people's self-assessment," he says.

The happiness paradox

Bruce Weinstein, "The Ethics Guy" and author of "Life Principles: Feeling Good by Doing Good," says those who confuse the accumulation of quantifiable things like money, power or fame with happiness are doomed to miss the love train.

"Aristotle says that happiness is the only thing that is coveted for its own sake rather than for the sake of something else. It's the ultimate end, the ultimate good. Money is only of instrumental value, only good for what it gets us. So what we find is that people who value money never have enough. If you ask anyone whose primary purpose in life is to acquire wealth if they have enough now, they will say no, I don't. The same with power or fame -- it's never enough.

"Beyond a certain point, more money does not equate with more happiness. If it did, you would expect to find the wealthiest or most famous people to be the happiest, and that simply is not the case. Once our basic needs are met, it turns out that it's friendship and being loved and having someone to love that makes life worth living," he says.

Want to find true happiness? Weinstein has a suggestion:

"I think the solution to happiness lies in the little things. When you're on the bus, instead of whipping out the BlackBerry, maybe actually strike up a conversation with the stranger next to you. Or do nothing; stare out the window or be quiet. I suspect that either or both of those things, practiced regularly, would bring a bigger sense of well-being."

Gilbert maintains that the whole concept of somehow accumulating happiness is both foolhardy and even a little scary.

"It's important to recognize that you're not meant to be happy all the time," he says. "That's not what your brain is generating emotions for. Emotions are a very primitive guidance system. It's your brain's way of telling you when you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing. That's why you get a positive emotional reaction when you approach a naked woman but not a bear. Imagine that you somehow found a medication or a surgery or a deodorant or whatever that made you permanently happy all the time. Well, now you're smiling when you approach the bear, and that's a problem.

"At least, luckily, we could say you won't have children to pass this problem along to.

"Your emotional system is guiding you through life, so it has to respond positively and negatively. A compass that's stuck on north all the time is useless, and that's what a person who is stuck on happy would be."

This article was reported and written by Jay MacDonald for Bankrate.com

Updated Dec. 14, 2007

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