Psychologists Say That This Is How People Who Are Much Happier Choose To Spend Their Money

They say that money can’t buy happiness, but that is not strictly true. Even if you cannot literally purchase a product called “Happiness,” you can derive pleasure from the things that you buy – whether they be physical possessions or intangible experiences. But exactly how to spend our disposable income, and whether we are using this money to make ourselves truly happy, are issues that have plagued most of us at one time or another. And, at last, psychologists believe they have the answers.

It is no secret that many consumers are motivated to focus their spending on material possessions. In fact, materialism affects more young people today than ever before. According to a 2013 study by researchers at San Diego State University, 48 percent of high-school students in 1976-78 said that it was important to have lots of money. By 2005-07, some 62 percent agreed on the same point.

But such a materialistic outlook can have a negative effect on a person’s well-being. Indeed, when they are stressed, materially focussed people may turn to spending as an outlet – and when money runs tight, this behavior can only exacerbate the issue. “In other words, materialism has a multiplier effect,” Aric Rindfleisch, a business professor at the University of Illinois, told Huffington Post in February 2013 in response to the San Diego study.

And, of course, that effect extends to the compulsive habits many people have developed around the act of shopping. After all, there is no cut-off point, as Ed Diener, psychology professor at the University of Utah, told The New York Times newspaper in 2006. “It is open-ended and goes on forever,” Diener declared. “We can always want more, which is usually not true of other goals such as friendship.”

For years, then, psychologists have been exploring the issue to try to understand what really makes people happy. Could it be physical possessions, in which case desirable objects should be what we spend all our hard-earned extra money on. Or could it be something else entirely? Well, a handful of psychologists in San Francisco believe that they have found the solution.