Being rich is only going to bum you out, according to a new study.
We’ve told you that money can’t buy real happiness; it can only buy some shallow and fleeting self-satisfaction. But the latest study on the subject suggests that money might actually buy unhappiness.
But, why the hell would anyone want to buy unhappiness?
We don’t buy it knowingly, as Jonah Lehrer at Wired reports. A study from psychologists at the University of Liege in Belgium highlights the effects of the fun-sucking phenomenon known as the “experience-stretching hypothesis.”
The more we experience something, the thinking goes, the less joy we derive from it. Remember when you first got your license? You’d drive anywhere, even to your next-door neighbor’s. Your first time in a three-star hotel you couldn’t believe your luck: Whoa! Free shower cap? Awesome! Or the first brussels sprout—wait, actually, forget that one.
So, our experiences eliminate happiness we once derived from simple things. Still, though, aren’t there new simple pleasures that could bring us happiness?
Apparently not.
If you’re rich, it’s almost impossible to experience any of life’s simplicities, the survey found: “[H]aving access to the best things in life may actually undermine one’s ability to reap enjoyment from life’s small pleasures.”
When you’re renting a small country for your wife’s half-birthday, those small family get-togethers are hard to appreciate. And your home bedroom doesn’t really compare to that one night you spent in King Tut’s tomb.
Maybe, as Lehrer says, the Amish are the one’s who’ve got it right. No internet. No electronics. No telephones. It’s farm, family and, presumably, tons of fun.
For those of us unwilling to trade in our iPhones, there’s a new source of joy we can take from the study. When we see that guy in the Porsche, or look down at those court-side seats from our spot in the nose-bleeds, we can be satisfied knowing that we’re much happier than those guys—I think.
–Ryan O’Hanlon