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Study finds money really can buy you happiness

By Cox Media Group National Content Desk
By Cox Media Group National Content Desk

CAMBRIDGE, England — It looks like money can buy you happiness after all -- at least that's what researchers based at Cambridge University say in a recent study.

The study, published Thursday in the journal Psychological Science, found people who spent money on things which "matched their personality" were happier than their peers.

"Our findings suggest that spending money on products that help us express who we are as individuals could turn out to be as important to our well-being as finding the right job, the right neighborhood or even the right friends and partners," said Sandra Matz, a PhD candidate in Cambridge's department of psychology and one of the study's authors.

"By developing a more nuanced understanding of the links between spending and happiness, we hope to be able to provide more personalized advice on how to find happiness through the little consumption choices we make every day," she said.

Researchers teamed with an unnamed multinational bank based in the United Kingdom to analyze the spending of 625 study participants. Customers were asked to complete a standard personality and happiness questionnaire which was then used to analyze about 77,000 bank transactions.
Researchers categorized expenses based on the "Big Five" personality traits -- openness to new experiences, conscientious, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
Activities such as eating out in pubs were rated as extroverted and low on the conscientiousness scale, researchers said, whereas things like donating to charities or spending money on pets were considered to be agreeable spending categories.
In the study's abstract, researchers said they found "that people whose purchases better match their personality report higher levels of life satisfaction. This effect of psychological fit on happiness was stronger than the effect of individuals' total income or the effect of their total spending."

"Historically, studies had found a weak relationship between money and overall well-being," said Joe Gladstone, a research associate at Cambridge Judge Business School and one of the study's authors. "Spending can increase our happiness when it is spent on goods and services that fit our personalities, and so meet our psychological needs."

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