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Money can’t buy happiness. But why not? After all, money has its advantages. In one study, Nobel Prize winning scientists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Keaton looked at this question. They found that as income increases, life-satisfaction rises too.
On the role of money in his dating life, Curb Your Enthusiasm comedian Larry David, quipped, "She's supposed to like me for myself? I don't even like me for myself!"
Still, most of us intuitively feel that money alone can’t explain happiness. Let’s look at why.
The Deadly Nurse
Consider two scenarios from one study led by Harvard cognitive scientist Jonathan Phillips:
Imagine a person named Sarah. After going to nursing school for several years, Sarah got a job at the children’s hospital and sees many different children each day. This is the job she has always wanted. Almost every single day Sarah feels good and generally experiences a lot of pleasant emotions. In fact, it is very rare that she would ever feel negative emotions like sadness or loneliness. When Sarah thinks about her life, she always comes to the same conclusion: she feels highly satisfied with the way she lives.
The reason Sarah feels this way is that she helps the sick children by giving them vitamins that taste like gummy bears. Sarah doesn’t really know how many children have been helped by her, but she likes to think about it when she falls asleep at night.
Researchers presented this story to participants and asked them to rate Sarah’s level of happiness. Participants gave Sarah a high rating. But consider this case, about another nurse named Sarah:
After going to nursing school for several years, Sarah got a job at the children’s hospital and sees many different children each day. Almost every single day Sarah feels good and generally experiences a lot of pleasant emotions.
The reason Sarah feels this way is that she poisons the sick children by giving them vitamins that have pesticides inside of them. Sarah doesn’t really know how many children have died because of her, but she likes to think about it when she falls asleep at night.
Participants thought this Sarah was not as happy. Why do people think Sarah 1 is happier than Sarah 2?
One answer is that feeling good isn’t enough to be happy. As the researchers put it, “[The] results of this study suggest that the influence of moral value on assessments of happiness is highly robust.” Put differently, most of us think that happiness involves living a moral life.
Is there any relationship between happiness, money, and morality?
Of Mice and Money
One insight involves killing mice. Economists at the University of Bonn ran a series of experiments. They wanted to know if markets would influence people’s willingness to kill a mouse for money.
In the first experiment, they presented participants with a choice. They could take 10 euros and a mouse in a laboratory would be gassed, or turn down the money and the mouse would live. 46% took the money.
In a second experiment, researchers set up a market between two people. One person was given responsibility for the life of the mouse. Another person was given 20 euros. If they reached an agreement on how to divide the money, each would receive a payment and the mouse would be killed. If they could not reach an agreement (if one or both refused to bargain) the mouse would be saved. 72% reached an agreement, thus allowing the mouse to die.
In a third case, researchers formed a larger market. Several “buyers” were endowed with cash, and several “sellers” were assigned responsibility for the lives of mice. The number jumped to 76%.
You might feel uneasy reading this. The results suggest that individually, most of us would turn down a cash payment to do something morally questionable (or morally evil, depending on your viewpoint). But in a market environment, our moral standards loosen. Markets normalized treating the life of a mouse as a commodity to be bought and sold.
What Money Can’t Buy
Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel makes this point in his book, What Money Can’t Buy. Sandel claims that while there are many advantages to having a market economy, there are disadvantages to being a market society.
For example, would you want to live in a society in which people tattoo advertisements on their forehead in exchange for money? Maybe. Still, for many of us it seems wrong. You might think a person who would do this is not happy.
Moreover, imagine lots of people in society sold space on their bodies to corporations. We may think it would reduce the overall happiness of society. People would make money, but there is more to happiness than just money.
What does this mean? You probably think happiness involves living a good life. A good life includes being a good person, a moral person. If money can’t buy a moral life, then money can’t buy happiness.
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