We live in a culture where we are told every day in the media, from TV shows to advertising in magazines, that in order to be really happy we must have a lot of things: cars, homes, appliances, stereo equipment, fancy computers, and money to go on tropical cruises and so on. The happiest people in the world are those who are the wealthiest; people without money are often shown, for example in television programs, if they are broke, as sad and depressed, living in bad neighborhoods. Is wealth really important to happiness? Is there a possibility that having a lot of money may have nothing to do with how we feel about ourselves; our lives, jobs, friendships, relationships, overall happiness and satisfaction? Or, alternatively, is it but one factor in many needed for real happiness of the individual? This paper will look at some psychological research studies in peer-reviewed journals which are examining just this problem – the link between money and happiness.
[...] More research on differences in people's own motivations would help clarify the relationship between happiness and money; as well a study which looked at other components of happiness, such as the one by Praag, Fritjers and Ferrer-i-Carbonell could help to see what other factors might be important to happiness besides money, such as interpersonal relationships, enjoyment of environment, philosophy of life, altruism and so on. Blackwell Publishing Ltd Works Cited Berger, John, (1979) Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, London. Boehm, Julia and Lyubomirsky, (2008)“Does Happiness Promote Career Success?” Journal of Career Assessment, Vol no pp 101-116 Poetz, A., [...]
[...] Extrinsic happiness is more based on the ability to consume what one desires, which in our culture (or others) may be as Berger, and this study notes, at odds with reality. (Solberg et al: 732) The authors of this study come to the conclusion that there is a link between lower self rating in terms of satisfaction and lower degree of education attainment. (Poetz et al: 547) There is a relationship they find between greater number of chronic conditions, poor daily coping, obesity, lack of exercise, emotional distress, result in poorer ratings of health satisfaction.” (Poetz et al: 547) The authors state that they felt this would be true before they tabulated their results? [...]
[...] (Poetz et al: 543) People, through the telephone surveys or the interviews self-rated their own stress levels based on a number of questions relating to housing, crime, pollution, job satisfaction and health status. These independent variables were then indexed by the authors to show comparisons between different answers, and what they reveal statistically. The authors walked around to pick four neighborhood where they would focus the study; therefore they did not do a thoroughly comparative study on how people feel about themselves in more affluent parts of the city versus the poorer parts of Hamilton, which I one of Canada's main industrial cities. [...]
[...] (Boehm and Lyubomirsky: 102) People free of stress take more risks, enter into situations where they will find new goals to pursue, and exist in an “environment” which “allows one to ‘broaden and build' intellectual, social and physical resources, which can be called on in later times of need.” (Boehm and Lyubomirsky: 102) As the authors declare in their report, though they find a direct relationship between happiness in a person and their income level, with happiness being a causal factor of increased income, and not the other way around, they realize that different countries and different cultures may have different ideas about what happiness is, and what the value and importance of being happy in one's workplace would mean, on its own, and in relation to issues of how much money one makes. [...]
[...] (pg 44) To conclude, this paper has looked at whether there is a direct relationship between happiness in people and the amount of money they have. The studies read for this paper reveal that money and happiness are generally positively associated, though desire for things can be mediated by different factors cultural privilege, amount of money, individual notions of what creates happiness or satisfaction. We want to be healthy, and we need to be able to pay our rent, eat, live in decent neighborhoods. [...]
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