Despite the assertion proclaimed in a motorcar advertisement - "Whoever said money can't buy happiness isn't spending it right" - the traditional wisdom on this topic remains powerful. But most people don't want to take on faith the traditional advice that money can't buy happiness and wish to find out for themselves.
A recent book by psychologist Tim Kasser, The High Price of Materialism (MIT Press, 2002), scientifically analyses how our materialistic consumer culture affects happiness and psychological health.
There is no doubt that severe poverty in itself will cause unhappiness. If your every waking moment is preoccupied with trying to keep body and soul together you cannot live a happy life. But the evidence is strong that, once you have sufficient income to sustain basic necessities and once you live in a secure social environment, increasing affluence makes little difference to your happiness (see Subjective Well-Being across Cultures, MIT Press 2000, by Ronald Inglehart and Hans-Dieter Klingemann).
Surveys of lottery winners and extremely wealthy people have shown that they claim to be only slightly happier than the average person. Although severe poverty guarantees misery, the accumulation of wealth does not guarantee happiness. Some Arab cultures have a symbol for wealth which is the digit one followed by a large number of zeros. The symbol one represents health. Take it away and you are left just with a bunch of zeroes.
Wealth in itself will neither produce happiness nor unhappiness. Of much more significance is one's attitude to wealth. Kasser cites convincing evidence in his book that the desire for wealth produces unhappiness in people when this desire rules their value systems.
He claims that there is a reciprocal relationship between materialism and unhappiness. People who are insecure, anxious and depressed tend to be more materialistic and, after the excitement of the latest acquisition dies down, the dull grind of materialism in turn breeds insecurity, anxiety and depression.
Kasser claims that materialistic values are symptomatic of underlying anxiety and represent an ineffective coping mechanism for dealing with these anxieties. He cites studies that show materialistic people are less satisfied with their lives, their families, their income, and their general enjoyment of life.
Surprisingly also, Kasser presents evidence that people who feel driven to accumulate wealth place little value on personal autonomy, self-direction and independent thought. This means that the more driven we are to accumulate wealth, the less likely we are to use our wealth to try to enrich our lives.
America is a materialistic society. The average income in America today is double in real terms what it was in the mid 1950s, but the number of people who think of themselves as "very happy" has declined from 35 percent in 1957 to 32 per cent today. The suicide rate in the young has tripled, serious crime has quadrupled and the divorce rate has doubled since 1957. Ireland is becoming much more materialistic than it was in the past.
Why is it that acquiring grand new material possessions usually has little lasting effect on our happiness? The answer to this question is adaptation according to American psychologist David G Myers (The Pursuit of Happiness - Avon, 1993). You quickly become adapted to whatever level of affluence you have and treat it simply as a baseline from which you look enviously upwards.
So what is the secret of happiness? What we each really need is to live lives that contribute to the betterment of the world, to live in a loving family, to feel valued and wanted, to enjoy good health, to develop our talents.
David G Myers gives the following research based suggestions for a happier life:
• Realise that enduring happiness doesn't come from wealth
• Manage your time
• Act happy - you can sometimes act yourself into a frame of mind
• Seek work and leisure that engages your skills
• Take aerobic exercise
• Get enough sleep
• Foster close relationships
• Reflect on positive aspects of your life
• Nurture your spiritual self.
George Bernard Shaw also gives some good advice: "The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation." (Parents and Children - 1914).
Happiness is something that happens to you as you get on with doing these things. It is a by-product of living a balanced life. If you pursue happiness as a goal in itself you will find that it will elude you like the end of the rainbow.
There is a principle in the universe that says: "Whatever it is you want, first give it away." It seems that there is a lot of truth in this. For example, if you want love, you must love others; if you want to be trusted, you must trust others; if you want respect, you must respect others. And you will find that if you are generous with your money, money will come back to you. But treat it lightly.
• William Reville is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Director of Electron Microscopy at UCC