Some new evidence that spending money on others promotes happiness was recently published in ‘Science’ (Elizabeth Dunn, Lara Aknin and Michael Norton, ‘Spending money on others promotes happiness’, Science, 21 March, 2008).
Three studies were reported. The first involved asking a sample of 632 Americans to rate their general happiness and to report their annual income as well as how much they spent each month on bills and expenses, gifts to themselves, gifts to others and charitable donations. A regression analysis of the results suggested that income level and spending money on others had a similar positive effect on happiness, but personal spending was unrelated to happiness.
This study does not reveal anything about the direction of causation. The results could just mean that happy people tend to be more generous. I know that when I am feeling grumpy I am not in a mood to be generous. The other two studies provide a better indication of the direction of causation.
The second study involved asking people their happiness prior to and after receiving a bonus from the company they worked for. The results suggest that those who spent more of the bonus on others experienced greater happiness after receiving it. Unfortunately there were only 16 people in the survey, so some caution is needed in interpreting the results.
The third study was an experiment in which 46 people were asked to rate their happiness one morning and then given an envelope containing either $5 or $20 to spend that day. Some were asked to spend the money on themselves and the others were asked to spend the money on a gift for someone else or a charitable donation. At the end of the day they were all asked to rate their happiness again. The participants who were instructed to spend money on others were significantly happier than those instructed to spend the money on themselves.
If we can assume these findings are reliable, what should we make of them? Elizabeth Dunn, the lead author, is reported as having said that it would be wrong to glean from this research that you should try to get a high-paying job so you can make tons of money and spend it on others so that you'll be happy (see here). Why not? Even if a person of moderate means gets the same boost in happiness by giving away a few dollars a week as a billionaire gets from giving in away the same proportion of her income, the billionaire can have the additional satisfaction of helping a far larger number of people.
Will Wilkinson asks: “how long before someone tries to use this study to argue that taxes make us happy?” (See here.) I imagine it will not take long. It seems to me, however, that the findings might support the opposite conclusion (as Gil, a person leaving a comment on Will’s blog, has already suggested). To the extent that taxes substitute for voluntary giving they might reduce the happiness of donors since they no longer have any choice in the matter. If you were to give some cash to a needy person it is conceivable that this could make you feel happier. If the same person held a gun to your head and told you to hand over the same amount of cash then I think it would be reasonable to predict that this would make you feel very unhappy.
Monday, April 28, 2008
How can we choose between alternative futures?
I ended my last post (here) wondering how I would feel after I had finished reading Daniel Gilbert’s book, “Stumbling on happiness”. In particular, I wondered how I would feel if the author managed to persuade me that I was wrong in believing that individual humans have the capacity to look forward in order to choose the best future for themselves.
I need not have been concerned. This is a lively and interesting book, but it seems to me that Gilbert has not succeeded in demonstrating that we are unable to shop around among the different fates that might befall us. Perhaps he mis-stated his intention in the first chapter. His book certainly demonstrates that we experience illusions of foresight – more illusions than I had imagined we experience. It concludes, however, with a recommendation about how we can make more accurate predictions about our emotional futures. The author suggests that we can do this by observing how happy other people are in different circumstances rather than by trying to imagine how happy we would be in those circumstances in the future.
Gilbert acknowledges that because everyone is unique the emotional experience of others is an imperfect guide to how we might feel. He suggests, however, that we tend to make greater errors when we reject the lessens that the emotional experience of others has to teach us and rely exclusively on our attempts to imagine how we might feel in those circumstances.
It seems to me that by the end of his book Daniel Gilbert is acknowledging that humans do have the capacity to look forward in order to choose a better future for themselves and can improve their use of this capacity. In effect, this view is consistent with, economist, Gary Becker’s view (“Accounting for Tastes”, 1996, p11) that the capacity that people have to anticipate future utilities can be improved by developing “imagination capital”.
Ironically, Daniel Gilbert implies that if individuals were more effective in pursuing their own happiness this could have adverse consequences. The example he gives is having children. There is a common belief that children bring happiness, even though people who are married without children report being happier, on average, than those with children living at home. Gilbert suggests that “the belief that children are a source of happiness becomes part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it” (p244). He notes that the opposite belief would actually be self-terminating because people acting upon it would fail to reproduce.
It seems to me that this apparent conflict between pursuit of happiness and human flourishing stems from either too narrow a definition of happiness or failure to recognise that people pursue some objectives that are not encompassed by a narrow definition of happiness. Gilbert wants to reserve ‘happiness’ to refer to “that class of subjective emotional experiences that are vaguely described as enjoyable or pleasurable” (p 41). This corresponds to what Daniel Nettle describes as Level 1 happiness (“Happiness”, 2005). He suggests that when people say they are happy with their lives they are reporting Level 2 happiness: “They mean that upon reflection on the balance sheet of pleasures and pains, they feel the balance to be reasonably positive over the long term” (p17). Level 3 happiness involves “making judgements about what the good life consists of and the extent to which one’s life fulfils it” (p23). Thus the belief that “children are a source of happiness” may be linked to individuals’ conscious perceptions of the “good life” rather than just “part of our cultural wisdom”.
Is Daniel Gilbert’s book relevant to anyone who wants to pursue the “good life’ rather than Gilbert’s narrower perception of happiness? Yes. It seems to me that anyone seeking to choose between alternative futures could benefit from greater knowledge of the illusions of foresight discussed in this book.
I need not have been concerned. This is a lively and interesting book, but it seems to me that Gilbert has not succeeded in demonstrating that we are unable to shop around among the different fates that might befall us. Perhaps he mis-stated his intention in the first chapter. His book certainly demonstrates that we experience illusions of foresight – more illusions than I had imagined we experience. It concludes, however, with a recommendation about how we can make more accurate predictions about our emotional futures. The author suggests that we can do this by observing how happy other people are in different circumstances rather than by trying to imagine how happy we would be in those circumstances in the future.
Gilbert acknowledges that because everyone is unique the emotional experience of others is an imperfect guide to how we might feel. He suggests, however, that we tend to make greater errors when we reject the lessens that the emotional experience of others has to teach us and rely exclusively on our attempts to imagine how we might feel in those circumstances.
It seems to me that by the end of his book Daniel Gilbert is acknowledging that humans do have the capacity to look forward in order to choose a better future for themselves and can improve their use of this capacity. In effect, this view is consistent with, economist, Gary Becker’s view (“Accounting for Tastes”, 1996, p11) that the capacity that people have to anticipate future utilities can be improved by developing “imagination capital”.
Ironically, Daniel Gilbert implies that if individuals were more effective in pursuing their own happiness this could have adverse consequences. The example he gives is having children. There is a common belief that children bring happiness, even though people who are married without children report being happier, on average, than those with children living at home. Gilbert suggests that “the belief that children are a source of happiness becomes part of our cultural wisdom simply because the opposite belief unravels the fabric of any society that holds it” (p244). He notes that the opposite belief would actually be self-terminating because people acting upon it would fail to reproduce.
It seems to me that this apparent conflict between pursuit of happiness and human flourishing stems from either too narrow a definition of happiness or failure to recognise that people pursue some objectives that are not encompassed by a narrow definition of happiness. Gilbert wants to reserve ‘happiness’ to refer to “that class of subjective emotional experiences that are vaguely described as enjoyable or pleasurable” (p 41). This corresponds to what Daniel Nettle describes as Level 1 happiness (“Happiness”, 2005). He suggests that when people say they are happy with their lives they are reporting Level 2 happiness: “They mean that upon reflection on the balance sheet of pleasures and pains, they feel the balance to be reasonably positive over the long term” (p17). Level 3 happiness involves “making judgements about what the good life consists of and the extent to which one’s life fulfils it” (p23). Thus the belief that “children are a source of happiness” may be linked to individuals’ conscious perceptions of the “good life” rather than just “part of our cultural wisdom”.
Is Daniel Gilbert’s book relevant to anyone who wants to pursue the “good life’ rather than Gilbert’s narrower perception of happiness? Yes. It seems to me that anyone seeking to choose between alternative futures could benefit from greater knowledge of the illusions of foresight discussed in this book.
Should career choices be taken out of our hands?
This question was raised in my mind by the first chapter of Daniel Gilbert’s book, “Stumbling on Happiness”(2007). The question that the author actually considers is: Why do humans make predictions about the future? He gives two answers:
- First, people make predictions about the future because “our brains want to control the experiences we are about to have”. People “find it gratifying” to exercise control.
- Second, “we are the apes that learned to look forward because doing so enables us to shop around among the many fates that might befall us and select the best one”.
The author managed to catch me by surprise by asserting that the first answer is right and the second answer is wrong. He then informed me that he intended to spend the rest of the book trying to convince me that the second answer is wrong.
This set me wondering whether there would be important implications for the relationship between freedom and human flourishing if we were not able to choose rationally between alternative futures.
Imagine a young person making a career choice. Perhaps she is weighing up whether to become a politician or courtesan. In thinking about which option would contribute most to her future happiness she would presumably consider such things as potential pecuniary benefits, the kind of people she would be working with, the respect she would have of herself, attitudes of family and friends and potential risks associated with the alternatives. Based on these considerations she might decide that there is not much to choose between these alternatives. (Just joking!)
Why would I object if this person’s career choice was taken out of her own hands and placed in the hands of a government-appointed expert who would assess her aptitude for a range of occupations and choose the one that would give her the best chance of having a happy life? I have four reasons:
- My inner economist tells me that this person is probably in a better position to make such choices than any expert because she has better knowledge about herself and hence about how happy she would be likely to feel in different occupations.
- She has a right to make these decisions herself. Even if she is thought likely to make the wrong choice, her right to choose should be respected.
- Interference with her right to choose her occupation may have a net adverse effect on her happiness over a life-time, even if the expert is in a position to make a more-informed choice about her future happiness.
- There is evidence that happiness is associated with the exercise of competence in the face of challenge. Competence comes from accepting responsibility for decisions and learning from mistakes.
I concluded that I would be surprised but not devastated if Gilbert managed to persuade me that I was wrong in believing that individual humans have the capacity to look forward in order to choose the best future for themselves. I suggested that my inner economist might feel a little bruised, but I would remain a strong advocate of liberty.
I suggested, however, that Daniel Gilbert would probably claim that my imaginings about how I might feel after I had finished reading his book were not likely to be reliable predictions of how I would actually feel. See my next post for the sequel.
Was Lao-tzu a libertarian?
Lao-tzu was a Chinese philosopher who lived in the early sixth century BC and served as a resident scholar at the royal court of the Shou. Taoism, the religion based on his teachings, spread over much of Asia.
Lao-tzu wrote:
“If I keep from meddling with people, they take care of themselves,
If I keep from commanding people, they behave themselves,
If I keep from preaching at people, they improve themselves,
If I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves.”
When I first read that last year I was surprised that such a liberal viewpoint had once been influential in China.
So I went looking for more of the writings of Lao-tzu and found the following:
If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.
Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,and people become honest.
I let go of economics,and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass (Toa Te Ching, 57 (here).
When I looked further I found that some high ranking Chinese officials have recently called for the wisdom of ancient Taoism to be adopted to help build a harmonious society in China (here).
It seems to me that western political leaders could also learn a great deal from Lao-tzu.
Lao-tzu wrote:
“If I keep from meddling with people, they take care of themselves,
If I keep from commanding people, they behave themselves,
If I keep from preaching at people, they improve themselves,
If I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves.”
When I first read that last year I was surprised that such a liberal viewpoint had once been influential in China.
So I went looking for more of the writings of Lao-tzu and found the following:
If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.
Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,and people become honest.
I let go of economics,and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass (Toa Te Ching, 57 (here).
When I looked further I found that some high ranking Chinese officials have recently called for the wisdom of ancient Taoism to be adopted to help build a harmonious society in China (here).
It seems to me that western political leaders could also learn a great deal from Lao-tzu.
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