Happiness and Prejudice

Research shows that money buys happiness, so it means that the rich, happier than the poor, are more likely to use stereotypes in social judgment than the poor:

• Four experiments examined the effects of happiness on the tendency to use stereotypes in social judgment. In each experiment, individuals who had been induced to feel happy rendered more stereotypic judgments than did those in a neutral mood. Exp 1 demonstrated this phenomenon with a mood induction procedure that involved recalling life experiences. Exps 2 and 3 suggested that the greater reliance on stereotypes evident in the judgments of happy individuals was not attributable to cognitive capacity deficits created by intrusive happy thoughts or by cognitively disruptive excitement or energetic arousal that may accompany the experience of happiness. In Exp 4, happy individuals again were found to render more stereotypic judgments, except under conditions in which they had been told that they would be held accountable for their judgments. These results suggest that although happy people's tendency to engage in stereotypic thinking may be pervasive, they are quite capable of avoiding the influence of stereotypes in their judgments when situational factors provide a motivational impetus for such effort. (Galen V. Bodenhausen, Geoffrey P. Kramer, and Karin Süsser, "Happiness and Stereotypic Thinking in Social Judgment," Journal of Personality & Social Psychology 66.4, April 1994, pp. 621-632)


• In a series of experiments at Michigan State University, undergraduates were asked to imagine that they were members of a peer disciplinary panel assembled to judge an assault case. Some were told that the alleged assailant's name was John Garner; others were given the name Juan Garcia. The researchers, who reported their work in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, provided both groups with an otherwise identical case summary and asked them to rate the likelihood that the accused was guilty.
  
  The panelists' judgments, alas, conformed to a common racial stereotype. Juan was rated more likely to be guilty.
  
  But there's a twist. Only when the researchers induced a happy mood by playing the students cheerful music or asking them to describe a happy memory -- did the stereotyping occur. Subjects asked to remember mundane events from the previous day rated both suspects equally guilty.
  
  Achieving social harmony in a multiracial society need not preclude a happy populace. The disparity in Juan and John's guilt disappeared when the happy students were asked to justify their decisions.
  
  Psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen suggests that happy people simply aren't motivated enough to tackle a complex analysis; it might spoil their good mood. Instead, they rely on quick conclusions -- the cognitive equivalent of a TV dinner. Only when given sufficient reason do they take the time to prepare a more thoughtful evaluation. (Peter Doskoch, "The Dumb Side of Happiness," Psychology Today, September-October, 1994)

Does Money Buy Happiness?

Yes, money does buy happiness.

The trends in American happiness closely correlate with those in real hourly earnings and household incomes in the United States: the overall decline in real hourly earnings and the narrowing of the racial gap in household incomes since the early 1970s:

Does money buy happiness? Philosophers, psychiatrists, social commentators, and journalists have long pondered the question. Now economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald weigh-in with their analysis in Well-Being Over Time in Britain and the USA (NBER Working Paper No. 7487). Their data source is the General Social Surveys of the United States from 1972 through 1992, a period of generally rising material living standards. The Survey shows that in the early 1970s, 34 percent of those interviewed described themselves as "very happy." Yet by the late 1990s, the figure had shrunk to 30 percent. The trend seems clear: American society may be wealthier measured in dollars and cents, but we are less happy.

Yet Blanchflower and Oswald reject such a simple conclusion. Instead, a closer examination of the data suggests that some groups in society have become happier while others have suffered an evident decline in their sense of well-being. For example, the happiness of American men has grown over the past three decades. But the happiness of women, despite gains in the job market and legislation aimed at reducing gender discrimination, has diminished greatly. Blacks are less happy than whites. Yet the happiness gap between the races is narrowing. Black men and women show an upward slope in their happiness (with black men happier than black women) while whites are less happy than before. Higher income is also associated with higher happiness, although not by as much as many economists might suppose. The details of the American survey differ from the British figures, but the outline and equations are essentially the same. Taken altogether, after the typical statistical and analytical caveats, their answer to the age-old question is, "Yes. Money does buy happiness."

The paper offers several intriguing calculations. For example, the biggest single depressant on reported happiness is the variable "separated from spouse," followed by "widowed." Being unemployed is similarly depressing. The authors calculate how much money it would take to compensate for a major emotional trauma. It would take about $100,000 extra per year to reimburse for the suffering of divorce or widowhood, and $60,000 a year to recompense men for the pain of unemployment. Put somewhat differently, a lasting marriage is worth $100,000 a year and a steady job $60,000 annually.

Blanchflower and Oswald's results suggest that happiness is U-shaped over the life cycle. We seem to hit bottom somewhere around the age of 40. Perhaps that is good news for the United States at least. The mammoth baby boom generation is aging, and as a society we may feel better off in coming decades. (Christopher Farrell, "Changing Patterns of Income and Happiness")

The trend in American women's happiness is out of sync with that in their income, but the disjunction is probably explained by the fact that more women have come to shoulder the double shift than in the early 1970s, experiencing more time crunches than could be compensated by income gains.