Money giveth, money taketh away: the dual effect of wealth on happiness

Differential sensitivity to adversity by income: Evidence from a study of Bereavement

Adverse life events are often understood as having negative consequences for mental health via objective hardships, which are worse for persons with less income. But adversity can also affect mental health via more subjective mechanisms, and here, it is possible that persons with higher income will exhibit greater psychological sensitivity to negative events, for various reasons. Drawing on multiple sociological literatures, this article theorizes potential mechanisms of increasing sensitivity with income. The proposition of differential sensitivity is tested using the strategic case of spousal and parental bereavement among older US adults. The analyses find consistent evidence of increasing sensitivity of depressive symptoms with income. A series of robustness checks indicate that findings are not due to endogenous or antecedent selection. Further, exploratory analyses of mechanisms suggest that higher sensitivity among the affluent was driven by greater expectations and better relationship quality with the deceased. These findings problematize the conceptualization and assessment of human suffering in economically stratified societies.

Deriving happiness through extraordinary or ordinary brand experiences in times of COVID-19 threat

The authors examined how the joint effect of brand experience type (ordinary vs. extraordinary) and COVID-19 threat on consumer happiness changed at different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings from five studies, with the COVID-19 threat and lockdown status measured as well as manipulated, suggest that COVID-19 threat exerts converse moderating influences on the extraordinariness-happiness relationship under no lockdown and lockdown. Under lockdown, threat attenuates the effect of brand extraordinariness on happiness; extraordinary brand experiences bring more happiness than ordinary brand experiences when the perceived threat of COVID-19 is low, but consumers derive comparable happiness from extraordinary and ordinary experiences when perceived threat is high. Under no lockdown, threat amplifies the positive effect of extraordinariness on happiness. Consumers rarely experience a large-scale lockdown due to a pandemic, and this research advances understanding of how consumer happiness from a brand experience changes with the trajectory of a pandemic.

Lost in Context? Critical Perspectives on Individualization

People in contemporary society are increasingly being addressed as agentic individuals who are held responsible for personal aspects of their life and beyond. These personal aspects contain the design and organization of one’s life path in terms of, e.g., (lifelong) education, work and retirement planning, health care, work-life balance, and happiness; or with regard to more abstract concepts like sustainability, individual subjects become responsible for the future of the ecosystem on a planetary scale. This individualization includes on the one hand potential empowerment of the subject to actively shape one’s own life, and on the other hand, it tends to ignore relevant socio-economic processes, scope, and power relations, which unfold as implicit and explicit social restrictions and potential pressure. Subjects navigate through such contexts with a compulsion to control faith and course of life by their decision-making, behavior, and an overall urge to optimize the self. This special section on individualization contains (a) an editorial frame of individualization within contemporary developments in a neoliberal context and (b) empirical contributions around the processes of individualization in various conditions such as the housing crisis in Berlin, career trajectories, and incorporated neoliberal ideology when opting out of a corporate career, pseudo individualization in Indian television commercials, and leisure activities alongside the example of soccer and related fan-group dynamics interpreted as an escape from the pressure to singularize.

Current Progress and Future Directions for Theory and Research on Savoring

As research on savoring has increased dramatically since publication of the book Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience (Bryant and Veroff, 2007), savoring has gradually become a core concept in positive psychology. I begin by reviewing the evolution of this concept, the development of instruments for assessing savoring ability and savoring strategies, and the wide range of applications of savoring in the psychosocial and health sciences. I then consider important directions for future theory and research. To advance our understanding of how naturalistic savoring unfolds over time, future work should integrate the perceptual judgments involved in not only the later stages of attending to and regulating positive experience (where past research has concentrated), but also the initial stages of searching for and noticing positive stimuli. Whereas most research has investigated reactive savoring, which occurs spontaneously in response to positive events or feelings, future work is also needed on proactive savoring, which begins with the deliberate act of seeking out or creating positive stimuli. To advance the measurement of savoring-related constructs, I recommend future work move beyond retrospective self-report methods toward the assessment of savoring as it occurs in real-time. The development of new methods of measuring meta-awareness and the regulation of attentional focus are crucial to advancing our understanding of savoring processes. I review recent research on the neurobiological correlates of savoring and suggest future directions in which to expand such work. I highlight the need for research aimed at unraveling the developmental processes through which savoring skills and deficits evolve and the role that savoring impairments play in the etiology and maintenance of psychopathology. Research is also needed to learn more about what enhances savoring, and to disentangle how people regulate the intensity versus duration of positive emotions. Finally, I encourage future researchers to integrate the study of anticipation, savoring the moment, and reminiscence within individuals across time.

The relationship between trait emotional intelligence, resiliency, and mental health in older adults: the mediating role of savouring

OBJECTIVES

The present study explores savouring, defined as the process of attending to positive experiences, as a mediator in the relationships between resiliency, trait emotional intelligence (EI), and subjective mental health in older adults. Following Fredrickson's Broaden and Build Theory of positive emotions, the present study aims to extend our understanding of the underlying processes that link resiliency and trait EI with self-reported mental health in older adulthood.

METHOD

A sample of 149 adults aged 65 and over (M = 73.72) were recruited from retirement homes and community groups. Participants completed measures of resiliency, savouring, trait EI, and subjective mental health either online or in a paper format.

RESULTS

Path analysis revealed that savouring fully mediated the relationship between resiliency and mental health. However, trait EI did not significantly predict mental health in this sample.

CONCLUSION

These findings provided partial support for the Broaden and Build Theory of positive emotions. As anticipated, savouring imitated the broadening effect of positive emotions by mediating the relationship between resiliency and mental health. However, savouring failed to reflect the undoing effect of positive emotions and did not mediate the relationship between EI and mental health. These findings have implications for positive psychology exercises and may be a simple, yet effective means of improving the life quality of older adults.

The Effects of Satisfaction of Basic Psychological Needs at School on Children's Prosocial Behavior and Antisocial Behavior: The Mediating Role of School Satisfaction

Grounded in Basic Psychological Need Theory, we examined the direct effects of the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs at school (i.e., satisfaction of autonomy needs at school, satisfaction of relatedness needs at school, and satisfaction of competence needs at school) on prosocial behavior and antisocial behavior as well as the mediation effects of school satisfaction on the relations between the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs at school and prosocial behavior as well as antisocial behavior. We employed a sample of 801 Chinese children (429 males; Mage = 9.47) in a three-wave longitudinal study, with each wave occurring 6 months apart. Direct and indirect effects were estimated by Structural Equation Modeling. Results indicated that: (1) Satisfaction of relatedness needs at school and competence needs at school, but not satisfaction of autonomy needs at school, displayed direct effects on prosocial behavior. Also, satisfaction of relatedness needs at school, but not satisfaction of autonomy needs at school or competence needs at school, displayed direct effects on antisocial behavior. (2) Both satisfaction of relatedness needs at school and competence needs at school displayed indirect effects on prosocial behavior and antisocial behavior via school satisfaction as a mediator. However, satisfaction of autonomy needs at school failed to have indirect effects on prosocial behavior or antisocial behavior via school satisfaction. These findings suggest differential predictors of children's prosocial and antisocial behavior, supporting the separability of the two constructs. The findings also suggest developmental differences in need satisfaction, with the satisfaction of autonomy needs playing a relatively less important role in school-age children. We also discussed limitations and practical applications of the study.

Phenotypic Dimensions of Spirituality: Implications for Mental Health in China, India, and the United States

While the field of empirical study on religion and spirituality in relation to mental health has rapidly expanded over the past decade, little is known about underlying dimensions of spirituality cross-culturally conceived. We aimed to bridge this gap by inductively deriving potential universal dimensions of spirituality through a large-scale, multi-national data collection, and examining the relationships of these dimensions with common psychiatric conditions. Five-thousand five-hundred and twelve participants from China, India, and the United States completed a two-hour online survey consisting of wide-ranging measures of the lived experience of spirituality, as well as clinical assessments. A series of inductive Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and cross-validating Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) were conducted to derive common underlying dimensions of spirituality. Logistic regression analyses were then conducted with each dimension to predict depression, suicidal ideation, generalized anxiety, and substance-related disorders. Preliminary EFA results were consistently supported by ESEM findings. Analyses of 40 spirituality measures revealed five invariant factors across countries which were interpreted as five dimensions of universal spiritual experience, specifically: love, in the fabric of relationships and as a sacred reality; unifying interconnectedness, as a sense of energetic oneness with other beings in the universe; altruism, as a commitment beyond the self with care and service; contemplative practice, such as meditation, prayer, yoga, or qigong; and religious and spiritual reflection and commitment, as a life well-examined. Love, interconnectedness, and altruism were associated with less risk of psychopathology for all countries. Religious and spiritual reflection and commitment and contemplative practice were associated with less risk in India and the United States but associated with greater risk in China. Education was directly associated with dimensions of spiritual awareness in India and China but inversely associated with dimensions in the United States. Findings support the notion that spirituality is a universal phenomenon with potentially universal dimensions. These aspects of spirituality may each offer protective effects against psychiatric symptoms and disorders and suggest new directions for treatment.

The Benefits of Savoring Life: Savoring as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Health and Life Satisfaction in Older Adults

We investigated the protective impact of savoring capacity on the relationship between physical health and psychological well-being among older adults. A total of 266 adults over 55 years old ( Mean = 73.4 years) completed measures of savoring ability, self-reported health, and life satisfaction. Savoring ability moderated the relationship between health and life satisfaction in older adults. Among people with less savoring ability, poor health was associated with lower life satisfaction. In contrast, people with greater savoring ability maintained higher life satisfaction, regardless of their level of health. These effects were consistent across a variety of different aspects of health, including general health, pain, limitations due to physical health, energy, and social functioning. These findings have direct implications for developing positive interventions to support the psychological well-being of older adults.

The price of abundance: how a wealth of experiences impoverishes savoring

We investigated the long-standing-yet previously untested-idea that an abundance of desirable life experiences may undermine people's ability to savor simpler pleasures. In Study 1, we found that the more countries individuals had visited, the less inclined they were to savor a future trip to a pleasant but ordinary destination. In Study 2, we conducted a field experiment at a popular tourist attraction, where we manipulated participants' perceptions of their own experiential backgrounds; when participants were led to feel well-traveled, they devoted significantly less time to their visit compared with individuals who were led to feel less worldly. We replicate these findings in Study 3 and found evidence that the observed effect could not be easily explained by other mechanisms. Being a world traveler-or just feeling like one-may undermine the proclivity to savor visits to enjoyable but unextraordinary destinations by endowing individuals with a sense of abundance.

Higher Income Is Associated With Less Daily Sadness but not More Daily Happiness

Although extensive previous research has explored the relationship between income and happiness, no large-scale research has ever examined the relationship between income and sadness. Yet, happiness and sadness are distinct emotional states, rather than diametric opposites, and past research points to the possibility that wealth may have a greater impact on sadness than happiness. Using data from a diverse cross section of the U.S. population ( N = 12,291), we show that higher income is associated with experiencing less daily sadness, but has no bearing on daily happiness. This pattern of findings could not be explained by relevant demographics, stress, and people’s daily time use. Although causality cannot be inferred from this correlational data set, the present findings point to the possibility that money may be a more effective tool for reducing sadness than enhancing happiness.

"I can, therefore I must": fragility in the upper-middle classes

We review evidence on a group recently identified as "at risk," that is, youth in upwardly mobile, upper-middle class community contexts. These youngsters are statistically more likely than normative samples to show serious disturbance across several domains including drug and alcohol use, as well as internalizing and externalizing problems. Extant data on these problems are reviewed with attention to gender-specific patterns, presenting quantitative developmental research findings along with relevant evidence across other disciplines. In considering possible reasons for elevated maladjustment, we appraise multiple pathways, including aspects of family dynamics, peer norms, pressures at schools, and policies in higher education. All of these pathways are considered within the context of broad, exosystemic mores: the pervasive emphasis, in contemporary American culture, on maximizing personal status, and how this can threaten the well-being of individuals and of communities. We then discuss issues that warrant attention in future research. The paper concludes with suggestions for interventions at multiple levels, targeting youth, parents, educators, as well as policymakers, toward reducing pressures and maximizing positive adaptation among "privileged but pressured" youth and their families.

Personal spiritual values and quality of life: evidence from Chinese college students

Values are guiding principles in our life. While some studies found spiritual values to be "healthier," Sagiv and Schwartz (Eur J Soc Psychol 30:177-198, 2000) showed that people holding non-spiritual values were higher on affective well-being. We examined the predictive power of these two types of values with a longitudinal data set collected from Chinese students mainly in Hong Kong. Structural equation modeling revealed that spiritual values (as well as family income) positively predicted quality of life a year later. Non-spiritual, self-enhancement values, did not show any association. Results suggest that developing spiritual values may promote well-being through enabling individuals to find meaning and purpose in life.

Age Differences in Subjective Well-Being across Adulthood: The Roles of Savoring and Future Time Perspective

Prior research indicates there are age differences in subjective well-being during adulthood, but research on age differences in savoring (up-regulating positive emotion) is lacking. Using an online survey ( N = 218, adults 18–77), this study investigated age differences in subjective well-being and savoring, and whether future time perspective (perceived amount of time left to live) mediated associations between age and savoring. Results indicated a nonlinear effect of age on subjective well-being. Although savoring was associated with subjective well-being, age was not directly associated with savoring. However, an indirect effect of future time perspective linking age and savoring indicated that younger adults reported more perceived time left in life and those perceiving more time left in life reported greater savoring. Overall, the results do not support savoring as a direct explanatory mechanism for age differences in subjective well-being, but future time perspective appears to play an important role in indirect associations between age and savoring.

Poor savouring and low self-efficacy are predictors of anhedonia in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Previous research suggests that negative schizotypes may be impaired in their ability to savour pleasant events (Applegate et al., 2009) and that schizophrenia patients believe that everyday tasks are excessively difficult to complete so that they attempt these tasks less frequently (MacCarthy et al., 1986; Bentall et al., 2010). It is possible that these beliefs and behaviours underpin negative symptoms such as anhedonia, avolition, apathy and associality. In the present study, 50 schizophrenia patients and 100 matched controls (half employed and half unemployed) completed self-report measures of self-efficacy and savouring. Patients reported savouring past, present and future events less than employed and unemployed groups, irrespective of mood state and I.Q. Patients also rated everyday tasks as more difficult to master. Inpatients compared to outpatients rated tasks more difficult but less important although they did not differ on the savouring measure. Abnormal judgements of difficulty and the reduced propensity to mentally rehearse past or future positive experiences to up-regulate mood could explain negative symptom patients' lack of engagement in everyday activities and eventual social withdrawal. These findings suggest the need to develop cognitive-behavioural savouring and self-efficacy interventions for patients experiencing the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

Money makes you reveal more: consequences of monetary cues on preferential disclosure of personal information

With continuous growth in information aggregation and dissemination, studies on privacy preferences are important to understand what makes people reveal information about them. Previous studies have demonstrated that short-term gains and possible monetary rewards make people risk disclosing information. Given the malleability of privacy preferences and the ubiquitous monetary cues in daily lives, we measured the contextual effect of reminding people about money on their privacy disclosure preferences. In experiment 1, we found that priming money increased willingness to disclose their personal information that could be shared with an online shopping website. Beyond stated willingness, experiment 2 tested whether priming money increases propensity for actually giving out personal information. Across both experiments, we found that priming money increases both the reported willingness and the actual disclosure of personal information. Our results imply that not only do short-term rewards make people trade-off personal security and privacy, but also mere exposure to money increases self-disclosure.

From Tribulations to Appreciation

Can experiencing adversity enhance people’s appreciation for life’s small pleasures? To examine this question, we asked nearly 15,000 adults to complete a vignette-based measure of savoring. In addition, we presented participants with a checklist of adverse events (e.g., divorce, death of a loved one) and asked them to indicate whether they had experienced any of these events and, if so, to specify whether they felt they had emotionally dealt with the negative event or were still struggling with it. Although people who were currently struggling with adversity reported a diminished proclivity for savoring positive events, individuals who had dealt with more adversity in the past reported an elevated capacity for savoring. Thus, the worst experiences in life may come with an eventual upside, by promoting the ability to appreciate life’s small pleasures.

Too Impatient to Smell the Roses

We tested whether exposure to the ultimate symbols of an impatience culture—fast food—undermines people’s ability to experience happiness from savoring pleasurable experiences. Study 1 found that the concentration of fast-food restaurants in individuals’ neighborhoods predicted their tendencies to savor. Study 2 revealed that exposure to fast-food primes impeded participants’ ability to derive happiness from pictures of natural beauty. Study 3 showed that priming fast food undermined positive emotional responses to a beautiful melody by inducing greater impatience, measured by both subjective perception of time passage and self-reports of impatience experienced during the music. Together, these studies show that as pervasive symbols of impatience, fast food can inhibit savoring, producing negative consequences for how we experience pleasurable events.

Rituals enhance consumption

Four experiments tested the novel hypothesis that ritualistic behavior potentiates and enhances ensuing consumption--an effect found for chocolates, lemonade, and even carrots. Experiment 1 showed that participants who engaged in ritualized behavior, compared with those who did not, evaluated chocolate as more flavorful, valuable, and deserving of behavioral savoring. Experiment 2 demonstrated that random gestures do not boost consumption as much as ritualistic gestures do. It further showed that a delay between a ritual and the opportunity to consume heightens enjoyment, which attests to the idea that ritual behavior stimulates goal-directed action (to consume). Experiment 3 found that performing a ritual oneself enhances consumption more than watching someone else perform the same ritual, suggesting that personal involvement is crucial for the benefits of rituals to emerge. Finally, Experiment 4 provided direct evidence of the underlying process: Rituals enhance the enjoyment of consumption because of the greater involvement in the experience that they prompt.

Give It Up

The present research provides the first evidence that temporarily giving up something pleasurable may provide an effective route to happiness. Participants were asked to eat a piece of chocolate during two lab sessions, held 1week apart. During the intervening week, we randomly assigned them to abstain from chocolate or to eat as much of it as possible, while a control group received no special instructions related to their chocolate consumption. At the second lab session, participants who had temporarily given up chocolate savored it significantly more and experienced more positive moods after eating it, compared to those in either of the other two conditions. Many cultural and religious practices entail temporarily giving up something pleasurable, and our research suggests that such self-denial may carry ironic benefits for well-being by combating hedonic adaptation.

Awe expands people's perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being

When do people feel as if they are rich in time? Not often, research and daily experience suggest. However, three experiments showed that participants who felt awe, relative to other emotions, felt they had more time available (Experiments 1 and 3) and were less impatient (Experiment 2). Participants who experienced awe also were more willing to volunteer their time to help other people (Experiment 2), more strongly preferred experiences over material products (Experiment 3), and experienced greater life satisfaction (Experiment 3). Mediation analyses revealed that these changes in decision making and well-being were due to awe's ability to alter the subjective experience of time. Experiences of awe bring people into the present moment, and being in the present moment underlies awe's capacity to adjust time perception, influence decisions, and make life feel more satisfying than it would otherwise.

High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being

Recent research has begun to distinguish two aspects of subjective well-being. Emotional well-being refers to the emotional quality of an individual's everyday experience--the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one's life pleasant or unpleasant. Life evaluation refers to the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it. We raise the question of whether money buys happiness, separately for these two aspects of well-being. We report an analysis of more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organization. We find that emotional well-being (measured by questions about emotional experiences yesterday) and life evaluation (measured by Cantril's Self-Anchoring Scale) have different correlates. Income and education are more closely related to life evaluation, but health, care giving, loneliness, and smoking are relatively stronger predictors of daily emotions. When plotted against log income, life evaluation rises steadily. Emotional well-being also rises with log income, but there is no further progress beyond an annual income of ~$75,000. Low income exacerbates the emotional pain associated with such misfortunes as divorce, ill health, and being alone. We conclude that high income buys life satisfaction but not happiness, and that low income is associated both with low life evaluation and low emotional well-being.