www.CostaRicaTicas.com

I continually return to Archie's thesis in the "How Much Do They Really Make?" thread.

In particular, his profound conclusions regarding the girls' happiness and well being being disconnected from their affluence and material wealth.

If you are interested in the subject:

www.davidmyers.org

Roam his site until you find the "Happiness" articles. They are not conjecture. They are empirically supported research on "Who is happy and why." You will find scientific proof that Archie is right on!

Especially enjoyable is Dr Myers' finding regarding pursuing activites that best demonstrate your skills. Now you know why so many of the girls take such pride in their work. Dr Myers has proven that a job well done contributes to greater self esteem.

FWIW

Can we assume afflence is a major factor in happiness?

According to Dr Myers:

No, we cannot. During the last four decades, the average U.S. citizen's buying power more than doubled. The 1957 per-person after tax income, inflated to 1995 dollars, was $8500; by 2002, thanks partly to the rich getting richer and to women's increasing employment, it was $23,000. Did this more-than-doubled wealth—enabling twice as many cars per person, and TVs, DVD players, laptops, air conditioners, and cell phones—also buy more happiness? Are those of us who enjoy the abundance of the affluent Western world happier with its "fantastic fineness"—with little levers we can adjust to heat and cool our homes to precisely the desired degree, to release clean water for a warm shower or a cold drink, and to microwave our plentiful food? As Figure 3 shows, the average American, though certainly richer, is not a bit happier. In 1957, some 35 percent said they were "very happy," as did slightly fewer—30 percent—in 2002.



FIGURE 3 Does money buy happiness? It surely helps us to avoid certain types of pain. Yet, though buying power has more than doubled since the 1950s, the average American's reported happiness has remained almost unchanged. (Happiness data from National Opinion Research Center surveys; income data from Historical Statistics of the United States and Economic Indicators.)

Indeed, if we can judge from statistics—a doubled divorce rate, more-than-doubled teen suicide, and mushrooming depression—contemporary Americans seem to be more often miserable. The same is true of the European countries, Australia, and Japan: In these countries, people enjoy better nutrition, health care, education, and science, and they are somewhat happier than those in very poor countries (Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002; Eckersley, 2000). Yet their increasing real incomes have not produced increasing happiness. Such findings lob a bombshell at modern materialism: Economic growth in affluent countries has provided no apparent boost to morale or social well-being.

A further bombshell comes from studies showing that individuals who strive most for wealth tend to live with lower well-being, a finding that "comes through very strongly in every culture I've looked at," reports Richard Ryan (1999). This is especially so for those seeking money to prove themselves, gain power, or show off rather than support their families (Srivastava & others, 2001). Ryan's collaborator, Tim Kasser (2000, 2002), concludes from their studies that those who instead strive for "intimacy, personal growth, and contribution to the community" experience a higher quality of life. Ryan and Kasser's research echoes an earlier finding by H. W. Perkins (1991): Among 800 college alumni surveyed, those with "Yuppie values"—preferring a high income and occupational success and prestige to having very close friends and a close marriage—were twice as likely as their former classmates to describe themselves as "fairly" or "very" unhappy. A similar correlation appears among 7167 college students surveyed in 41 countries. Those who value love more than money report much higher satisfaction with life than do their money-hungry peers (Figure 4).
rich in 20 years, "and 10 times richer than we were 100 years ago. Can we be sure that this increasing wealth creation is beneficial to personal and social well-being?"

please

I have been happy and sad broke and despondant, and i have been happy and sad with money

believe you me.. its better with money..

anyone that sais different does not have any

Summer 2004: What Is The Good Life?



The Secret to Happiness
by David Myers



Watch television, and you’ll learn that the good life is in a new car, a cold beer, or a new drug. Look at surveys, and Americans say they want more money. But look inside at what actually gives you joy, and the good life may be closer than you thought



David Myers

What is the good life? The old American Dream offers an answer: It's individually achieved affluence. It's the indulgences promised by magazine sweepstakes: a 40-foot yacht, a deluxe motor home, a personal housekeeper. (“Whoever said money can't buy happiness isn't spending it right,” proclaims a Lexus ad.) In a phrase, it's life, liberty, and the purchase of happiness.

Does money indeed buy happiness? Few YES! readers would answer yes. But ask another question—“Would a little more money make you a little happier?—and many readers will sheepishly nod. There is, we assume, a connection between fiscal fitness and feeling fine, an assumption that feeds what Juliet Schor has called the “cycle of work and spend”—working more to buy more. According to one 1990s Gallup Poll, one in two women, two in three men, and four in five people earning more than $75,000 a year say they would like to be richer.

But we delude ourselves. The good life springs less from earning one's first million than from loving and being loved, from developing the traits that mark happy lives, from finding connection and meaningful hope in faith communities, and from experiencing “flow” in work and recreation.

Rising materialism
Materialism surged during the 1970s and 1980s, as evident in the annual UCLA/American Council on Education (ACE) survey of nearly a quarter million entering collegians. The proportion considering it “very important or essential” that they become “very well-off financially” skyrocketed from 40 to 74 percent, flip-flopping with the shrinking numbers who considered it very important or essential to “develop a meaningful philosophy of life.” Materialism was up, spirituality down.

What a change in values. In the recent UCLA/ACE surveys, “very well-off financially” has been the top ranked of 19 rated goals, outranking “becoming an authority in my own field,” “helping others in difficulty,” and “raising a family.” And it's not just collegians. Asked by Roper pollsters to identify what makes “the good life,” 38 percent of Americans in 1975 and 63 percent in 1996 chose “a lot of money.”

In Luxury Fever, economist Robert Frank reports that, with more people having more money to spend, late-1990s spending on luxury goods was growing four times as fast as overall spending. Thousand-dollar-a-night suites at the Palm Beach Four Seasons Hotel were booked months ahead for weddings, as were $5000-a-night suites at Aspen. The number of America's 100-foot yachts doubled to 5,000 compared to a decade ago, and each may cost more than $10,000 per hour of use. Cars costing more than $30,000 (in 1996 dollars) increased during the 1990s from 7 to 12 percent of vehicles sold.

Does such unsustainable consumption enable the good life? Does being well-off make for well-being? Would people—would you—be happier if you could exchange a modest lifestyle for one with a world-class home entertainment system, winter skiing from your condo along the Aspen slopes, and being wined and dined on executive class travel? Social psychology theory and research offer some clear answers.

Are rich people happier?
To a modest extent, yes, rich people are happier. Especially in poor countries, such as India, being relatively well-off does make for greater well-being. We need food, rest, shelter, and some sense of control over our lives.

But in affluent countries, the link between wealth and self-reported well-being is “surprisingly weak,” notes researcher Ronald Inglehart. Once able to afford life's necessities, more and more money provides diminishing additional returns.

“People who go to work in their overalls and on the bus are just as happy, on the average, as those in suits who drive to work in their own Mercedes,” observes David Lykken, summarizing his own studies of happiness. Even the very rich—for example, the Forbes 100 wealthiest Americans in a 1980s survey by psychologist Ed Diener and his colleagues—are only slightly happier than average.

Over time, does our happiness rise with our affluence? A recent windfall from an inheritance, a surging economy, or a lottery win does provide a temporary jolt of joy. But as soon as one adapts to the new wealth, the euphoria subsides.

If personal happiness does not enduringly rise with our rising personal affluence, does a rising economic tide lift our collective happiness? Are we happier than in 1957, when economist John Galbraith was describing the United States as The Affluent Society?

Compared to then, today's America is the doubly affluent society—with doubled real incomes (thanks partly to the doubling of married women's employment) and double what money buys. Americans today own about twice as many cars per person, eat out more than twice as often, and commonly enjoy big screen color TVs, microwave ovens, home computers, air conditioning, Post-it notes, and gobs of other goodies. Materially, these are the best of times.

So, believing that it is “very important” to be very well-off financially, and having seen our affluence ratchet upward little by little over four decades, are we now happier?

We are not. Since 1957, the number of Americans who say they are “very happy” has declined slightly, from 35 to 30 percent. We are twice as rich and no happier. Meanwhile, the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has more than doubled, and increasingly our teens and young adults are plagued by depression.

I have called this soaring wealth and shrinking spirit “the American paradox.” More than ever, we at the end of the last century were finding ourselves with big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger.

These facts of life lead us to a startling conclusion: Our becoming better off materially has not made us better off psychologically. In the U.S., Europe, and Japan, affluence has not purchased the good life. The conclusion startles because it challenges modern materialism: Economic growth in affluent countries has provided no apparent boost to human morale.

It is further striking that those who strive most for wealth tend to live with lower well-being, a finding that “comes through very strongly in every culture I've looked at,” reports psychologist Richard Ryan.
In The High Price of Materialism, Ryan's research collaborator, Tim Kasser, concludes that those who instead strive for intimacy, personal growth, and contribution to the community enjoy a higher quality of life. This concurs with those from an earlier survey of 800 college alumni, which found that those with “Yuppie values”—those who preferred a high income and occupational success and prestige to having very close friends and a close marriage—were twice as likely as their other former classmates to describe themselves as “fairly” or “very” unhappy.

Pause a moment and think: What's the most satisfying event that you have experienced in the last month? Psychologist Kennon Sheldon and his colleagues put that question to samples of university students. Then they asked the students to rate the extent to which 10 different needs were met by the satisfying event. What were the three emotional needs that most strongly accompanied that satisfaction? They were self-esteem, relatedness (feeling connected with others), and autonomy (feeling in control). At the bottom of the list of satisfaction-predicting factors was money and luxury.

A study by Ed Diener and Martin Seligman confirms that very happy university students are distinguished not by their money but by their “rich and satisfying close relationships.” The good life is not primarily about money and consumption.

A new American dream
If materialistic strivings do not entail the good life, then we can ask, what's the point of luxury fever? “Why,” wondered the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, “do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” What's the point of accumulating stacks of unplayed CD's, closets full of seldom worn clothes, three-car garages with luxury cars—all purchased in a vain quest for an elusive joy? And what's the point of leaving significant inherited wealth to one's heirs, as if it could bring them happiness, rather than applying it to a hurting world?

Ronald Inglehart, a social scientist who follows world values surveys, has discerned the beginnings of a subsiding of materialism and signs of a new generation maturing with increasing concern for personal relationships, the integrity of nature, and the meaning of life (or the “search for spiritual moorings,” as George Gallup has called it).

If affluence and materialism are not major ingredients for the good life, research indicates those that are:

* Close, supportive relationships. We humans have what today's social psychologists call a deep “need to belong.” Those supported by intimate friendships or a committed marriage are much likelier to declare themselves “very happy.”
* Faith communities. Connection, meaning, and deep hope are often nourished in congregations. In National Opinion Research Center surveys of 42,000 Americans since 1972, 26 percent of those rarely or never attending religious services declared themselves very happy, as did 47 percent of those attending multiple times weekly.
* Positive traits. Optimism, self-esteem, and perceived control over one's life are among the traits that mark happy experiences and happy lives. Happy people typically report feeling an “internal locus of control”—they feel empowered. When deprived of control over one's life—an experience studied in prisoners, nursing home patients, and people living under totalitarian regimes—people suffer lower morale and worse health. Severe poverty demoralizes when it erodes people's sense of control over their life circumstances.
* Flow. Work and leisure experiences that engage one's skills also enable the good life. Between the anxiety of being overwhelmed and stressed, and the apathy of being underwhelmed and bored, lies a zone in which people experience flow—an optimal state in which, absorbed in an activity, they lose consciousness of self and time. Flow theorist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found people reporting their greatest enjoyment not when mindlessly passive, but when unself-consciously absorbed in a mindful challenge. Most people are happier gardening than power-boating, talking to friends than watching TV. Low consumption recreations prove satisfying.

Sustainable joy
All this is good news. Those things that make for the genuinely good life—close relationships, a hope-filled faith, positive traits, engaging activity—are enduringly sustainable. As Jigme Singye Wangchuk, King of Bhutan, observes, “Gross national happiness is more important than gross national product.”

Fulfilling a new vision of an American dream need not romanticize poverty or destroy our market economy. But it will require our seasoning prosperity with purpose, capital with compassion, and enterprise with equity. Such a transformation in consciousness has happened before; today's thinking about race, gender, and the environment are radically changed from a half century ago. And it could happen again.

Does Economic Growth Improve Human Morale?
by David G. Myers, Ph.D.
During the mid-1980s my family and I spent a sabbatical year in the historic town of St. Andrews, Scotland. Comparing life there with life in America, we were impressed by a seeming disconnection between national wealth and well-being. To most Americans, Scottish life would have seemed Spartan. Incomes were about half that in the U.S. Among families in the Kingdom of Fife surrounding St. Andrews, 44 percent did not own a car, and we never met a family that owned two. Central heating in this place not far south of Iceland was, at that time, still a luxury.

In hundreds of conversations during our year there and during three half-summer stays since, we repeatedly noticed that, despite their simpler living, the Scots appeared no less joyful than Americans. We heard complaints about Margaret Thatcher, but never about being underpaid or unable to afford wants. With less money there was no less satisfaction with living, no less warmth of spirit, no less pleasure in one another's company.

Are rich Americans happier?
Within any country, such as our own, are rich people happier? In poor countries, such as Bangladesh and India, being relatively well off does make for somewhat greater well-being. Psychologically as well as materially, it is much better to be high caste than low caste.(1) We humans need food, rest, warmth, and social contact.

But in affluent countries, where nearly everyone can afford life's necessities, increasing affluence matters surprisingly little. In the USA, Canada, and Europe, the correlation between income and happiness is, as University of Michigan researcher Ronald Inglehart noted in 1980s 16-nation study, "surprisingly weak (indeed, virtually negligible.)"(2) Happiness is lower among the very poor. But once comfortable, more money provides diminishing returns. The second piece of pie, or the second $50,000, never tastes as good as the first. So far as happiness is concerned, it hardly matters whether one drives a BMW or, like so many of the Scots, walks or rides a bus.

Even very rich people--the Forbes' 100 wealthiest Americans surveyed by University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener--are only slightly happier than average.(3) With net worths all exceeding $100 million, providing ample money to buy things they don't need and hardly care about, 4 in 5 of the 49 people responding to the survey agreed that "Money can increase OR decrease happiness, depending on how it is used." And some were indeed unhappy. One fabulously wealthy man said he could never remember being happy. One woman reported that money could not undo misery caused by her Ch*ldren's problems. Examples of the wretched wealthy are not hard to come by: Howard Hughes, Christina Onassis, J.Paul Getty.

Adapting to fame, fortune, and affliction
At the other end of life's circumstances are most victims of disabling tragedies. With exceptions--vicious Ch*ld abuse or rape, for example--most people who suffer negative life events do not exhibit long-term emotional devastation. People who become blind or paralyzed, perhaps after a car accident, thereafter suffer the frustrations imposed by their limitations. Daily, they must cope with the challenges imposed by their disabilities. Yet, remarkably, most eventually recover a near-normal level of day-to-day happiness. Thus, university students who must cope with disabilities are as likely as able-bodied students to report themselves happy, and their friends agree with their self-perceptions.(4) "Weeping may linger for the night" observed the Psalmist, "but joy comes with the morning."(5)

These findings underlie an astonishing conclusion from the new scientific pursuit of happiness. As the late New Zealand researcher Richard Kammann put it, "Objective life circumstances have a negligible role to play in the theory of happiness."(6) A society in where everyone lived in 4,000 square foot houses, people would likely be no happier than in a society in which everyone lived in 2,000 square foot houses.(7) Good events--a pay hike, winning a big game, an A on an important exam--make us happy, until we adapt. And bad events--an argument with one's mate, a work failure, a social rejection--deject us, but seldom for more than a few days.

Feeling the short-run influence of events, people use such events to explain their happiness, all the while missing subtler but bigger influences on their long-run well-being. Noticing than an influx of cash feels good, they may accept the Hollywood, Robin Leach image of who is happy--the rich and famous. In reality, we humans have an enormous capacity to adapt to fame, fortune, and affliction.

We adapt by recalibrating our "adaptation levels"--the neutral points at which sounds seem neither loud nor soft, lights neither bright nor dim, experiences neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Here in Michigan on a winter's day, 60 degrees would feel warm, but not when we are adapted to summer's heat. So it is with things. Our first desktop computer, with information loaded from a cassette tape, seemed remarkable, until we got that speedier hard-drive machine, which itself became pokey once we got a faster, more powerful machine. So it happens that yesterday's luxuries become today's necessities and tomorrow's relics.

Does economic growth improve human morale?
We have scrutinized the American dream of achieved wealth and well-being by comparing rich and unrich countries, and rich and unrich people. That leaves the final question: Over time, does happiness rise with affluence?

Typically not. Lottery winners appear to gain but a temporary jolt of joy from their winnings.(8) Looking back, they feel delighted to have won. Yet the euphoria doesn't last. In fact, previously enjoyed activities such as reading may become less pleasurable. Compared to the high of winning a million dollars, ordinary pleasures pale.

On a smaller scare, a jump in our income can boost our morale, for awhile. "But in the long run," notes Inglehart, "neither an ice cream cone nor a new car nor becoming rich and famous produces the same feelings of delight that it initially did... Happiness is not the result of being rich, but a temporary consequence of having recently become richer."(9) Ed Diener's research confirms that those whose incomes have increased over a 10-year period are not happier than those whose income has not increased. Wealth, it therefore seems, is like health: Although its utter absence can breed misery, having it does not guarantee happiness. Happiness is less a matter of getting what we want than of wanting what we have. The short-lived pain of simplification

For that matter, the pain of simplification may also be short-lived. Cornell University economist Robert Frank experienced this when:

As a young man fresh out of college, I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Nepal. My one-room house had no electricity, no heat, no indoor toilet, no running water. The local diet offered little variety and virtually no meat... Yet, although my living conditions in Nepal were a bit startling at first, the most salient feature of my experience was how quickly they came to seem normal. Within a matter of weeks, I lost all sense of impoverishment. Indeed, my $40 monthly stipend was more than most others had in my village, and with it I experienced a feeling of prosperity that I have recaptured only in recent years.(10)

Our human capacity for adaptation helps explain why, despite the elation of triumph and the anguish of tragedy, lottery winners and paraplegics usually return to their preexisting happiness. And it explains why material wants can prove insatiable--why Imelda Marcos, living in splendor amid privation in The Philippines, could buy more shoes that she could ever conceivably wear. When the possessor becomes possessed by accumulating ever-more possessions, the adaptation-level phenomenon has run wild.

Are we happier today?
We can also ask whether, over time, our collective happiness has floated upward with the rising economic tide. Are we happier today than in 1940, when two out of five homes lacked a shower or bathtub, heat often meant feeding a furnace wood or coal, and 35 percent of homes had no toilet?(11) Or consider 1957, when economist John Galbraith was about to describe the United States as The Affluent Society. Americans' per person income, expressed in today's dollars, was less than $8000. Today it is more than $16,000, thanks to increased real wages into the 1970s, increased nonwage income, and the doubling of married women's employment. Compared to 1957, we are therefore "the doubly affluent society"--with double what money buys including twice as many cars per person, not to mention microwave ovens, big screen color TVs, home computers, and $200 billion a year spent in restaurants and bars--two and a half times our 1960 inflation-adjusted restaurant spending per person.(12) From 1960 to 1990, the percentage of us with

dishwashers zoomed from 7 to 45 percent,
clothes dryers rose from 20 to 69 percent,
air conditioners soared from 15 to 70 percent.(13)
Looking through unsolicited mail order catologs recently, my wife, Carol, remarked, "You know what's becoming big business? It's stuff to put your stuff in." Such storage systems sell well in our neighborhood of century old homes, built presuming less need for closets and shelving to store one's accumulated possessions. And to store that shelving we're building bigger houses. In 1966, 22 percent of new homes had more than 2,000 square feet; in 1994, 47 percent did.(14) Not the best of times for the human spirit
So, believing that a little more money would make us a little happier, and having seen our affluence ratchet upward little by little over nearly four decades, are we now happier?

We are not. Since 1957, the number telling the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center that they are "very happy" has declined from 35 to 30 percent. Twice as rich, and a little less happy. In fact, between 1956 and 1988, the percentage of Americans saying they were "pretty well satisfied with your present financial situation" dropped from 42 to 30 percent.(15)

We are also more often downright miserable. Among Americans born since World War II, depression has increased dramatically--tenfold, reports University of Pennsylvania clinical researcher Martin Seligman.(16) Today's twenty-five year olds are much more likely to recall a time in their life when they were despondent and despairing than are their 75-year-old grandparents, despite the grandparents having had many more years to suffer all kinds of disorder, from broken legs to the anguish of depression. Researchers debate the actual extent of rising depression...but no matter how we define depression, the findings persist: Today's youth and young adults have grown up with much more affluence, slightly less overall happiness, and much greater risk of depression, not to mention tripled teen suicide and all the other social pathologies we have considered. Never has a culture experienced such physical comfort combined with such psychological misery. Never have we felt so free, or had our prisons so overstuffed. Never have we been so sophisticated about pleasure, or so likely to suffer broken relationships.

These are the best of times materially, "a time of elephantine vanity and greed" observes Garrison Keillor,(17) but they are not the best times for the human spirit. William Bennett, no critic of free market economies, is among those who recognize the futility of economics without ethics and money without a mission: "If we have full employment and greater economic growth- if we have cities of gold and alabaster--but our Ch*ldren have not learned how to walk in goodness, justice, and mercy, then the American experiment, not matter how gilded, will have failed."(18)

The conclusion is provocative
How, then, can we avoid a startling conclusion: Our becoming much better off over the last four decades has not been accompanied by one iota of increased psychological well-being. The same is true of the European countries and Japan, reports economist Richard Easterlin.(19) In Britain, for example, sharp increases in the percent of households with cars, central heating, and telephones have not been accompanied by increased happiness. The conclusion is provocative, because it explodes a bombshell underneath our society's materialism: Economic growth in affluent countries provides no apparent boost to human morale.

David G. Myers is Professor of Psycholog