EXPECTATION MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER
One morning, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet are talking about what they enjoy most in the world. And although Winnie is a big fan of eating honey, there is a moment just before he begins to eat which is better than eating itself, but he is not sure what it is called.
The A. A. Milne who wrote the stories about Winnie-the-Pooh was not an author, he was a happiness scientist. Expectation can be a source of joy. Imagine you could have a kiss from anyone you want. Any celebrity. Who would it be? George Clooney? Angelina Jolie? I would go with Rachel Weisz. (Yes, I know she is married to James Bond – no need to rub it in.) Do you have someone in mind? If you do, then consider this: When would you want that kiss? Now? In three hours? In twenty-four? In three days? In one year? In ten years?
If you are like the respondents in a study undertaken by George Loewenstein, professor in economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research, you would want the kiss three days from now. Yes, someone actually researched this question.
The study, ‘Anticipating and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption’, was published in 1987 – the year of the release of Dirty Dancing – so now we know who all the respondents in the original study wanted to kiss. The study also showed that the respondents would be willing to pay more for the experience three days from now than for having the experience right now.
Every year, I prioritize a week of skiing in the Alps with my friends. Not only is it the purchase of an experience, it is also an investment in others – and something I look forward to for the half-year running up to it. Imagining my friends and me skiing down the mountain (me humming the James Bond theme), or relaxing on our balcony, with a sky that is the kind of blue that can only exist when it is paired with white, snow-covered mountains, I can already feel the warm cup of coffee in my hand and the sun on my face.
The point is, in some circumstances, expectation can be a source of great joy. However, we must also be aware that, in others, expectation and ambition can be a source of misery.
HAPPINESS TIP:
PAY NOW, CONSUME LATER
If you buy an experience, make sure that it is well into the future, so you can look forward to it.
Six months from now, what would you like to do? See a certain band with your friends? Invite someone who you feel a lot of gratitude towards to a nice restaurant? Buy the tickets or the gift certificate now. Or go long. Ten years from now, what would be your dream experience? Start putting money aside in a separate happiness account.
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KEEPING UP WITH THE JONESES
When I do presentations I often ask the audience to imagine two worlds.
In the first world, you make ￡50,000 per year and everybody else makes ￡25,000. In the second world, you make ￡100,000 per year (so twice as much as before) and everybody else makes ￡200,000. Prices are constant, so a cup of coffee will cost the same in either world.
What about you? In which of these worlds would you choose to live? Usually, over 50 per cent of the audience would prefer to live in the first world. This is consistent with academic studies that have been carried out many times since the question was first posed at Harvard University in 1998. The reason why a large proportion of us prefer to live in the first world is that we not only care about our ability to consume, we also care about our position in the social hierarchy.
This is also the reason why we try to imitate the consumer pattern of people who are richer than we are. At the same time, the availability of credit has made it easier to imitate a lifestyle we cannot afford, and this, together with our desire to keep up with the Joneses, has been listed as one of the explanations for the financial crisis of 2008. In other words, we are spending money we don’t have to buy stuff we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.
However, trying to signal that you have wealth is not a recent phenomenon. Back in 1899, the American sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term ‘conspicuous consumption’, which describes the phenomenon of buying luxury goods in order to publicly display your wealth to attain status. Veblen had noticed that a lot of the then nouveau riche Americans spent a great deal of their fortune on signalling how rich they were. This is the reason why some people today spend $15 million on a gold iPhone with six hundred inlaid white diamonds and fifty-three more diamonds for the Apple logo on the back. Apart from signalling how much money you have, it still does what a normal iPhone does and Siri still doesn’t understand what you are saying. However, if you think that is extravagant, let me tell you that Aristotle Onassis had the bar stools on his luxury yacht, Christina O, upholstered with leather made from the foreskins of whales. So, if you ever feel bad about your indulgences, just remember that one of the world’s richest men once spent a fortune on whale-foreskin bar stools.
The point of it all is that, if we spend our money on stuff we don’t need to impress people, we are not getting closer to happiness, we are just getting involved in an arms race. That is why we would all be better off if we all put a lid on the bling.
THE LAW OF JANTE
In Denmark, and throughout the Nordic countries, conspicuous consumption is being somewhat curbed because of Janteloven, or the Law of Jante. The ‘law’ comes from a 1933 novel by Danish-Norwegian Aksel Sandemose and can be boiled down to ‘You’re no better than us.’ It promotes a culture where people of high status are criticized because they have been classified as better – or pretend to be better – than their peers. In English, this is known as tall-poppy syndrome.
You’re not to think you are more important than we are.
You’re not to think you are anything special.
You’re not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.
You’re not to think anyone cares about you.
You’re not to think you know more than we do.
You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
You’re not to think you are good at anything.
You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
You’re not to laugh at us.
You’re not to think you can teach us anything.
This is a big component of Scandinavian culture and the reason why you will see very few flashy luxury cars in Denmark. Well, that and a 150 per cent car tax, obviously. But the Jantelov goes deeper and wider than cars.
Where success may be enthusiastically flaunted in the US, humbleness is the bigger virtue in Scandinavia. Buy a luxury car with a personal licence plate saying ‘SUCCESS’ (as I saw in Riga, Latvia), and you can expect to have your car keyed within a day or two.
There are a lot of negative implications to the Law of Jante, but I do think we tend to overlook one positive aspect: it does seek to curb conspicuous consumption, and that may not be a bad thing. Being exposed to other people’s wealth can have a negative effect. In South Korea, they have a saying for all this: ‘If one cousin buys land, the other cousin gets a stomach ache.’
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RICHER BUT NOT HAPPIER