by Paul Dolan
Experience expenditure
If we are happier by attending to our experiences, then it makes sense that we should spend our money on good experiences. Indeed, most of us will say that spending money on an experience, such as a helicopter ride, makes us happier than spending it on a material possession, like a flat-screen TV.2 In general, we adapt less quickly to happiness brought about by experiences, which means that their impact persists for longer. Not only does the impact of a new possession wane more quickly as an input into the production of happiness, but alternative choices can remain salient for longer as we think about what other material goods we could have bought.
We also don’t make other people miserable when we buy our family dinner in the way we do when we buy a new car.3 In a series of experiments that gave participants a choice between an experience (say, a vacation) and a possession (such as an electronic gadget), there was less social comparison for the experiences compared to the possessions, where keeping up with the Joneses matters more.4 Spending more on doing stuff and less on buying stuff allows you to reframe your decisions and reference groups so that the Joneses are no longer your comparison group. And you’ll find that this allows you to be happier as a result.
Even simply talking about experiential purchases as compared to material ones can make us happier. When a group of undergraduate strangers were placed in pairs and each pair was randomly assigned to talk about either an experiential purchase (spending money with the primary intention of having a life experience) or a material purchase (spending money with the primary intention of having a material possession), those who discussed experiential purchases reported enjoying the conversation more than those who discussed material purchases. So to enjoy your conversations more, talk about what you have done or plan to do rather than what you own or plan to buy. People will also like you more if you do this: pairs of participants who discussed experiential purchases reported having more favorable impressions of their conversation partners than those pairs who discussed material purchases.5
Having said that, when material and experiential purchases turn out badly, people report experiencing about the same low levels of happiness from them.6 A lot depends on the expectations you have. If you expect to own a home and you don’t, this will make you miserable, just as those students who expected to earn a lot when they were older but did not earn as much as anticipated turned out to be dissatisfied with their lives.
It’s also worth saying that the distinction between experiential and material purchases is not always clear-cut. A decade or so ago, I owned a TVR Chimaera. It was a lovely car. I bought it as much for the sound of the engine as anything else. Every time I started it, I smiled to myself a little bit; and this feeling did not fade much over time. It was also an amazing car to drive (if a little beastly, which resulted in me crashing it, but that’s another story). Cars are often seen as material purchases but my TVR was pure experience; and I have some fond memories of those experiences (even the crash, by now). Like most things in life, you need balance, though probably with a shift slightly toward more experiential goods over more material ones.
Shaking up attention
Because of the law of diminishing marginal returns (to beer, pizza, happiness), the last few units of pleasure are less valuable to your overall happiness than the first few units of purpose, and vice versa. This means that, as soon as your happiness in a relatively pleasurable activity starts to wane, you should do something else that is relatively purposeful. And when the happiness from that activity starts to wane, it’s time to flit back to a relatively pleasurable activity. Your attentional resources won’t become as depleted as they might otherwise because you are able to change tasks when you start to feel tired or distracted, and you avoid adapting to what might otherwise become mundane. But remember to stay focused on each activity while engaged in it. So this is not the same as multitasking, which, as we shall soon see, is not at all good for happiness.
For a given activity, you can also seek to pay attention to different aspects of it to keep diminishing marginal returns at bay. Take commuting. You could try walking or cycling a bit more, which has been shown to make the journey to and from work quite pleasurable.7 Okay, so this might not be possible for those of you with long commutes, but you could still change the nature of your commute so that you attend to stimuli that will make you happier. Make efforts to pay attention to what you listen to, what you do, or who you talk to on the train or in the car. I’m lucky in that I can work on the hour-long train ride from my home in Brighton to work in London, so I turn what would otherwise be only a painful commute into one that’s also purposeful. Or if you drive your kids to school, you could use that time to quiz them on multiplication tables (as Liz Plank, one of my researchers on this book, told me her dad did with her when she was a kid).
Notice that purpose has been made salient in these examples, where pain would otherwise dominate. When activities might be quite boring, such as standing in line or waiting at an airport, you can look to pay attention to pleasure by listening to some music or to purpose by reading a book. Or strike up a conversation with a stranger if you’re in the mood to chat. You probably do these sorts of things already and so it will simply be a case of reminding yourself to do them more often. If you can’t change what you do, then change what you pay attention to in the experience.
We know by now that taking a break when making a choice could help us. Similarly, sometimes taking a break from what you are doing and then returning to it again can increase your happiness when you return to the activity. Imagine being asked to watch TV programs with or without commercials. I bet you would prefer to watch TV without those annoying adverts. Me, too. But in a study that randomly selected people into one of these two conditions, those who watched with commercials enjoyed the programs more—and, just like us, they had failed to predict this effect.8 This is distinct from distraction because most television programs are designed specifically for commercial “interruptions” whereas other tasks are not: TV programs leave you with a cliff-hanger for a few minutes, allowing you to return to the program eager to find out what happens and happier when you do.
The type of break you take can affect performance. As a great illustration of this, 145 participants from the University of California, Santa Barbara, each completed “unusual uses” tasks, where they had to generate as many creative uses as possible for a common object, such as a brick. They then took a break, during which time some of the participants completed a nondemanding task (where they saw colored digits on a screen and indicated whether they were even or odd). When they returned to the task, these people performed the best the second time around because their brains weren’t under- or overoccupied; just like Goldilocks’s porridge, their break was just right.9 Rob Metcalfe and I have shown that creativity is associated with greater happiness, and so giving your attentional resources an undemanding task to contemplate could improve your happiness as well as the quality of your ideas.10
If you are feeling a little more adventurous, try having a few new experiences. Start small and see how it goes. Change radio stations in the morning to take in different music. Buy tickets to see a comedian you have never heard of but who has had rave reviews. These will direct your attention in happiness-enhancing ways—and if they don’t, well, don’t do them again, and try something else. Also try new experiences with new people. There is some suggestion that they will make you more creative, which, as we have seen, is good for happiness: entrepreneurs report more innovation and are more likely to apply for patents when they have diverse social networks beyond just their family and friends.11
If nothing else, these or other new experiences will help to slow down the perceived passage of time. Part of the reason time passes so slowly for children is because they are constantly having new experiences.12 In fact, a ten-year-old will think that the passing of one minute is more than two minutes.13 It appears as if our brains actually calculate t
ime based on the number of events that occur; so the more events, the more time we feel has passed. If you saw six slides for thirty seconds each and thirty slides for six seconds each, you would think that you had spent more time looking at the thirty slides even though the time is obviously the same overall.14 This could help explain why you recall that a day has passed quickly when you’re in meeting after meeting but slowly if you’re just at your desk.
Those who are high in the personality trait “openness to new experiences” report being more satisfied with their lives and experience more positive emotions.15 Yeah, great, you might say, but what if I’m not an open type of person? Well, it will certainly require more of a nudge to push you into trying something new, but what’s the worst that can happen? You don’t like the new experience and so you don’t do it again. I tried Marmite once, and bloody hated it. But at least now I know it tastes awful. As always, attention is critical. You can attend to the pleasure and purpose of a new experience that turns out well, and you can also attend to the lessons learned from a new experience that turns out badly.
Good vibrations
There are a few obvious but sometimes forgotten stimuli that we can pay attention to in order to be happier. One of the most important is listening to music. This is a primal stimulus that has been a part of all cultures for thousands of years, bringing people together at weddings, funerals, music festivals, and flash mobs. As the philosopher Nietzsche pointed out, we listen to music with our entire bodies, moving muscles automatically in response to it by dancing, tapping our feet, or just bobbing along. It is a powerful way to open up the mind, and it most strongly affects the brain region associated with positive emotions and memory in a way that no other input to our happiness production process can.16
Music therapy has been used in the treatment of heart disease, stroke, post-traumatic stress disorder, and kids with mood disorders and behavioral problems.17 People with Alzheimer’s disease who cannot respond to language respond to music; it can also prevent tics in people with Tourette’s syndrome.18 The British Armed Forces are now using music as a successful intervention for treating trauma in war veterans. Listening to music even reduces cognitive dissonance: children forced to play with one toy instead of another devalued the other toy less when listening to music than when in silence. A bit of music therapy could help to make you a little happier, too, and it’s certainly cheaper than retail therapy.
I have long been grateful to my own parents for creating an environment where music could be enjoyed, and I would love my own kids to grow up to be as emotionally aroused by music as I continue to be. Music really was my first love. I was basically into pop and disco as a primary school kid, soul as a secondary school kid, indie music at university and in my early twenties, dance music in my late twenties and early thirties, and all of the above for the last decade. I have spent a considerable amount of money on records, CDs, and going to gigs, and it has all been money well spent. The Jam will always be my favorite group, followed closely now by Faithless, but I keep up with the latest music trends and have every intention of doing so until my hearing goes. Naturally, I am doing my best to indoctrinate Poppy and Stanley with my impeccable music taste.
So when you put this book down, dig out a favorite song, play it and pay attention to it, and see how good it makes you feel, both when it’s playing and afterward. If you have trouble remembering to play some music, just flip back a few pages to chapter 6, where we talked about designing your environment. Download a music app onto your phone or put a waterproof radio in the bathroom. What about defaults? Dig out an alarm clock radio or leave the stereo on in your car after you turn it off so it turns on the next time you hop in. And commitment? Put “music time” in your diary or set aside some “music money” for concerts or guitar lessons. Last, what about social norms? You can prioritize being with people in your life who love music or hook up with them on a music sharing app.
Don’t underestimate the effects of humor, either. Twenty minutes of watching a comedy reduces stress levels by about the same amount as twenty minutes on a treadmill.19 One hour of watching a funny video is enough to increase infection-fighting antibodies in the bloodstream for twelve hours, as well as activate “natural killer cells,” which selectively target infected and tumorous cells.20 Laughter also promotes muscle relaxation: people who are about to receive an electric shock report being less anxious beforehand if they listen to a funny tape first.21 You might consider having a quick laugh before an injection or job interview.
Humor has also been used successfully to reduce perceptions of loneliness and pain in older people.22 It’s a way of dealing with life’s trials and tribulations, evident in hospital workers and first responders, who joke as a way to help them handle highly stressful situations.23 Humor also promotes social integration. Fathers are more likely to get involved in Sure Start (an early-intervention program for children) when Sure Start workers have a good sense of humor.24
We have already seen, quite obviously, that laughter can make you feel happier. But it is far from obvious to remember this simple fact. Again, apply design principles. I encourage my friends at work to set up amusing out-of-office replies so I am primed to laugh when I see them in my in-box. For defaults, prerecord your favorite comedies and stock up for dismal days. Commit to watching them with friends. Simply being around people who share your sense of humor is a recipe for laughter.
Although we each find different things funny, humor, like music, is pleasurable for almost everyone.25 I cannot think of generically purposeful activities in the same way, but it goes without saying that you must be interested in what you are doing—and interested while you are doing it, not just in the achievement of the end point.
Being mindful
Some of you might have expected me to have discussed mindfulness by now. Mindfulness training is about developing a constant sense of awareness and an ability to remain in the present moment. Mindfulness fits under the larger umbrella of therapies that build upon traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT is a talking therapy that aims to solve dysfunctional emotions, cognitions, and behaviors by focusing attention on the “here and now” rather than ruminating about another place and time. Some of the most effective CBT-type interventions are quite “light touch,” such as writing down a few thoughts here and there.26
Mindfulness adds novel psychological methods, such as meditation, to CBT techniques. It involves a greater focus on one’s breathing and body as well as a deeper awareness and acceptance of thoughts and feelings. It aims to change how we relate to our thoughts, instead of changing the thoughts themselves.27 One of the most effective aspects of mindfulness training is the conscious reorientation of attention. The focused attention task involves concentrating on only one thing, such as breathing. Open monitoring involves attending to everything in your environment that you might not otherwise notice, such as the wind or a ticking clock. Focused attention and open monitoring strategies have been shown to help people regulate their emotions and prevent the relapse into depression.28
Mindfulness definitely has its place. But I think it only goes so far for two reasons: first, people have to self-select into it; and second, it is quite effortful. The context-focused, rather than cognition-driven, approach in this book only requires that you or someone close to you can influence your environment and, once that is done, it only then requires you to go with the grain of your human behavior. As with much that I have suggested, it is generally easier and more effective to nudge system 1 than it is to shove system 2, and so I’m optimistic that the behavioral insights in this book can be incorporated into light-touch forms of CBT and mindfulness.
Pay attention to who you are doing it with
There is one almost surefire way to be happier: spend more time with people you like. As well as the benefits of asking others for advice about your happiness, the evidence quite clearly shows a strong positive association between happiness an
d doing things with the people you like and for those you care about. Having more social contact is one of the main reasons why religious people are more satisfied with their lives, though having a strong religious identity helps, too.29 Being around other people can also help facilitate adaptation to difficult experiences; widows appear to withdraw attention from their loss more quickly when they have social support.30 Your friends not only make you happier because they’re there to hang out with you but also because they make you feel like you matter.31
Recall from the data in chapter 2 that certain types of people bring us different amounts of pleasure and purpose as we engage in different activities. The data suggest that, for a more purposeful commute, carpool with your colleagues. Bring your relatives out to eat or include them in the time you spend with your kids to make these occasions more pleasurable. Get the kids to do the housework with you and then watch TV together, which increases the pleasure of both of these activities for most people. Taking care of our own kids is an experience that Les and I have found to be best shared with each other, and ideally also shared with other parents and their kids.
If the data do not convince you of the merits of being with other people, try answering a simple question: if you spent twenty minutes more each day with people you like or, failing that, talking on the phone to people you like, would you be happier? If you’ll allow me to answer for you: the answer is yes, irrespective of how happy you are at the moment. I am not so confident that a pay raise of $1,000 would make all of you happier, by the way. Sure, $1,000 will mean a lot to many of you but an extra $1,000 will not make all of you happier.
