Experimental evidence that wealth impedes the ability to enjoy positive experiences

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Dr. Jonathan

Psychological Science Being able to feel relaxed, content and at ease is necessary for and an indicator of well-regulated biological functions. Over the last decade there’s been a lot of interesting research on factors that promote or impede happiness. You’re probably aware of the studies showing that fiscal resources beyond those needed to procure fundamental needs do not increase the level of happiness of the study subjects. This research just published in the journal Psychological Science elegantly…

“…provides the first evidence that money impairs people’s ability to savor everyday positive emotions and experiences.”

The researchers recorded data on subjects of higher and lower income:

“In a sample of working adults, wealthier individuals reported lower savoring ability (the ability to enhance and prolong positive emotional experience). Moreover, the negative impact of wealth on individuals’ ability to savor undermined the positive effects of money on their happiness.”

The authors conducted two experiments. In the first, study subjects were exposed to a cue for wealth. Their ability to savor positive emotions was then measured.

“We experimentally exposed participants to a reminder of wealth and produced the same deleterious effect on their ability to savor as that produced by actual individual differences in wealth, a result supporting the theory that money has a causal effect on savoring…wealth may fail to deliver the happiness one might expect because of its detrimental consequences for savoring.”

In another study researchers quantified the ability to savor a piece of chocolate after filtering out confounding variables including individual taste and gender.

“Moving beyond self-reports, we found that participants exposed to a reminder of wealth spent less time savoring a piece of chocolate and exhibited reduced enjoyment of it compared with participants not exposed to wealth.”

The experimental data led the authors to these conclusions:

“This article presents evidence supporting the widely held but previously untested belief that having access to the best things in life may actually undercut people’s ability to reap enjoyment from life’s small pleasures…our research demonstrates that a simple reminder of wealth produces the same deleterious effects as actual wealth on an individual’s ability to savor, suggesting that perceived access to pleasurable experiences may be sufficient to impair everyday savoring…In other words, one need not actually visit the pyramids of Egypt or spend a week at the legendary Banff spas in Canada for one’s savoring ability to be impaired — simply knowing that these peak experiences are readily available may increase one’s tendency to take the small pleasures of daily life for granted.”

What is the practical use of this information? Generosity, of course, is a proven cause of happiness. Additionally, studies like this suggest that taking nothing for granted, while cultivating appreciation, gratitude and contentment are important for quality of life. Additional studies highlighted in earlier and forthcoming posts indicate that this affects the expression of our genetic potential for health and disease.

Nurture and train the brain to sustain happiness

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Dr. Jonathan

A revealing study was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) which demonstrated that a key difference between individuals suffering from depression and those who are not is the ability of their brains to sustain the feeling of happiness. Subjects suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) felt positive emotion briefly but connections between their fronto-striatal cortex and an area of the brain called the nucleus accumbens lacked the ‘strength’ to maintain it. The authors conclude: “These findings support the hypothesis that anhedonia in depressed patients reflects the inability to sustain engagement of structures involved in positive affect and reward.” (Anhedonia = the absence of or inability to experience pleasure.) This relates interestingly to an earlier paper published in the same journal which disclosed that reduced function and later shrinkage of a key brain area called the hippocampus correlated closely with repeated episodes of depression, even in young people. The authors state: “Curve-fitting analysis revealed a significant logarithmic association between illness duration and hippocampal volume,” and go on to conclude, “…these data confirm that relatively young adults with multiple episodes of depression have bilateral HC volume reductions.” (HC = hippocampal). Take home message: brain health needs to be protected from damage (inflammation and chemical or physical trauma) and maintained (as with muscular health) with adequate oxygen, blood sugar, nutrients critical to function, and the right kind of stimulation (exercise).