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New research appearing in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science suggests that money can buy at least one form of happiness — something psychologists refer to as “happiness frequency.”
Whether or not money can buy other forms of happiness is still an open question, but the researchers, led by Jon Jachimowicz of Harvard Business School, are quick to point out some of its limitations.
“We draw on prior research that distinguishes between the frequency and intensity of happiness to suggest that higher income is more consistently linked to how frequently individuals experience happiness than how intensely happy each episode is,” state the researchers. “Notably, we demonstrate that only happiness frequency underlies the relationship between income and life satisfaction.”
This is an important point, given that there exists so much mixed evidence on the relationship between money and happiness. For instance, some research has found that higher income is related to people’s overall life satisfaction but not to moment-to-moment happiness. Other research has found that wealth explains a minuscule (less than 1%) amount of the variation in people’s happiness. Other research suggests the relationship between money and happiness is much stronger.
In an effort to add clarity to a murky research picture, the scientists recruited 1,290 U.S. adults to participate in a short online study. Participants were asked to report, on average, how frequently they experienced the emotion of happiness (“about once each month,” “about once each week,” “about once each day,” “about 2–3 times each day,” or “more than 3 times each day”) as well as how intense each feeling of happiness was (“very low,” “low,” “moderate,” “high,” or “very high”). Participants were then asked to report their annual household income and answer a few demographic questions.
The researchers found that income was associated with happiness frequency but not happiness intensity. Specifically, individuals who reported higher incomes experienced happiness more frequently than those with lower incomes.
The researchers next attempted to find out why this association might exist. They hypothesized that it might have to do with the type of happiness-promoting leisure activities people were engaging in. For instance, past research has found that wealthy individuals engage in more active leisure pursuits such as praying, socializing, and exercising while non-wealthy individuals engage in more passive leisure pursuits such as watching TV, napping, and resting. This may be one of the reasons why money is sometimes associated with elevated levels of happiness.
To test this idea, the researchers explored data from the 2012-2013 American Time Use Survey (ATUS). In this survey, over 20,000 U.S. adults were asked to indicate everything they did on the day before taking the survey. Participants were also asked to gauge their emotions at different times throughout the day. This allowed the researchers to calculate happiness frequency and happiness intensity and to match those values with the types of activities people engaged in.
They again found evidence linking income to happiness frequency but not intensity. They also found that lower-income individuals engaged in more passive leisure pursuits, which partially explained why these individuals experienced happiness less frequently.
The authors conclude, “Taken together, income may bring about happiness not through more intensely happy experiences, but through a greater number of them.”
