Happy Compared to Whom?

Keeping score is a defining characteristic of contemporary societies.  Civilization, itself, breeds continual tension between human cooperation and competition. Samuel Bowles (2006) explicitly asserts that our evolutionary success required "intense intergroup competition ...in the interest of avoiding group (and hence individual and family) annihilation in the context of intergroup aggression (warfare)."

Fortunately, for most of us, 21st century success rarely is a matter of "annihilation".  Cooperation and competition are not tooth and claw, life and death struggles. We usually choose when and how to compete --discretionary competitions that depend on what we define as important and unimportant.  And those definitions are mostly determined by the ways that we perceive interpersonal issues.

For many people, athletes embody competition, and they self-define similarly.  We hear them say, "I love this game. I'd play for free. I love the battles."  It is reasonable then that athletes compare their game skills to those of their opponents.  But sometimes the competition extends far beyond the playing field.  The classic example is Latrell Sprewell, NBA superstar, who declined a 3 year, $21,000,000 basketball contract, complaining “I've got my family to feed.” (Gaine, 2018).  At the time, seven NBA players had been offered more than Latrell.  Perhaps he declined due to interpersonal competition rather than to athletic competition.  In any case, I guess he did not love the game so much that he would play for free.

Sprewell undoubtedly was comparing himself with the seven basketball stars "above" him, and money was the comparison metric.  Had he never heard the adages that money cannot buy happiness and that we should not try to keep up with the Joneses?   Are those adages true or mere vestiges of the past?

It is hard to be happy if you are starving, freezing, or homeless.  Money obviously is necessary for life's necessities.  But, how much is needed for a contented life?   In 2018, Jebb and colleagues published a Gallup World Poll-based study of approximately 1.7 million individuals sampled from 164 countries.  Converting all finances into their U.S. dollar equivalents, they concluded that once income reached about $95,000 annually, additional income did not appreciably increase individual happiness.   But how much is needed for the most basic emotional well-being, so that lack of money does not add undue stress?  They placed that figure at $60,000 to $75,000 per annum.  If you are skeptical about these results, I am on-board with you.

As this blog title suggests, I believe that the money-happiness-emotional well-being connections depend on who is compared to whom, and who does the comparison.   The work of Piff and Moskowitz (2018) has more utility and face validity.  Their work, conducted exclusively in the USA, suggested that high income individuals tend to base their happiness on pride and amusement.  That is, their comparisons are based on how their personal capacities and pleasures compare to those of their elite peer group.  By contrast, so-called “lower class” individuals determine their happiness and well-being not by counting their money, but by comparing how much interpersonal support they have relative to their peers. 

The Jebb and colleagues and Piff and Moskowitz studies are more reasonable, and are more consistent with my views, when they are combined with the work of Xi Chen (2015).  That international work emphasized comparison in terms of relative wealth and relative poverty.  In short, it concluded that people look around them and contrast their standard of living with that of their peers.  That comparison was most impactful for persons within the working class and below.  Xi Chen provided evidence to explain the obvious fact that poor people world-wide are far better off today than they ever were.  With few exceptions, today’s poor have more to eat, better housing, and better health care than in the past.  But today, impoverished people are acutely aware of the “lifestyles of the rich and famous” within their countries and throughout the world.  They would readily realize, for instance, that Latrell Sprewell is not having any trouble feeding his family.

References

Bowles, S. (2006). Group competition, reproductive leveling, and the evolution of human altruism. Science, 314, 1569–1572.  https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1134829

Gaine, C. (2018).  12 Athletes Who Turned Down Mega Contracts and Missed Out on Millions.https://www.complex.com/sports/2018/03/12-athletes-who-turned-down-mega-contracts-missed-out-millions/

Piff, P. K., & Moskowitz, J. P. (2018). Wealth, poverty, and happiness: Social class is differentially associated with positive emotions. Emotion, 18(6), 902-905. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000387

Xi Chen (2015).  Relative deprivation and individual well-being.  March IZA World of Labor 2015 DOI: 10.15185/izawol.140