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00:00:14 University of Cambridge psychologist Sandra Matz

00:03:35 Though Most of Us

00:09:27 In another 2008 study by Dunn and colleague Richard Norton

00:11:33 There’s One More

Conventional wisdom tells us money can’t buy happiness. But there are some more surprising findings to be explored, and one of them is that spending money can, in some ways, make you feel better.

University of Cambridge psychologist Sandra Matz and her research team did an in-depth analysis of six months’ worth of transactions for 625 customers at a UK bank—that was over seventy-six thousand bank transactions. They grouped the transactions into fifty-nine different categories—for example, spending at garden centers, dentists, or coffee shops. Each of the categories was scored according to traits on the Big Five personality scale. As an example, charity spends might be highly associated with the traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness, and spending at nightclubs would correlate with extroversion. All 625 customers were given personality tests and asked separately to rank their satisfaction with life. Matz and her colleagues crunched the data and tried to see how well matched the spending habits were with the personalities of the people. For example, they noticed whether a person who measured as extroverted tended to spend on activities or items that aligned with that extroversion or not. Generally, they found that when people spend money according to their personalities, they reported better emotional responses and overall happiness afterward.

But what about other research that has found weak links—or no link at all—between consumption and happiness? In the 2016 paper, Matz concludes that “psychological fit” is the mediating variable. The research found that the better the fit between the product bought and the personality, the greater the happiness effect, and that this effect was more significant than a person’s overall income or how much they spent.

#BigFive #Dunn #ElizabethDunn #Kasser #LaraAnkin #Matz #Norton #PERMA #RichardNorton #SandraMatz #Soyoung #SoyoungQPark #RussellNewton #NewtonMG #TheAnxietyCure #BuySomethingNew #NickTrenton