Study finds the pursuit of wealth, fame and image does not make us happy

A new US study of well-educated people aged in their twenties shows some surprising results for what goals lead to happiness.

Psychology Professor Edward Deci, graduate student Christopher Niemiec and fellow University of Rochester psychologist Richard Ryan surveyed graduates of four-year colleges and universities for two years following graduation, as the young adults began to attain their goals.

The results found that achieving intrinsic goals positively affected participants’ mental and physical health. Intrinsic goals are things like loving relationships, personal growth and contributing to the community.

Achieving extrinsic goals however – such as wealth, fame and image – do nothing for a person’s mental health, and strongly contribute to ill-health. “Their attainment of those goals does not help their happiness, satisfaction, vitality and wellness at all,” says Deci. “It contributes zero to that. And the more unsettling finding is that it actually contributes to their greater ill-being, which is to say more anxiety and depressive symptoms.”

Deci highlights that it’s already well-known that pursuing wealth, fame and image can cause stress and ill-health. The idea that attaining these could be bad for us is not what we would probably believe, because it’s the opposite of entrenched American cultural values.

“People have always argued … ‘Well, it might be hard for them to be pursuing those, but once they’ve attained the goals then they’re really going to experience this great sense of wellness and happiness and satisfaction,” he says.

But this new evidence “argues pretty strongly against the widely-held notion that if I just get rich and famous I’d be so happy.”

This research will be published in the Journal of Research in Personality in June 2009. It was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

For more details visit The University of Rochester and ScienceDaily.com.

References:
Achieving Fame, Wealth, and Beauty are Psychological Dead Ends, Study Says, 2009, ScienceDaily,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090514111402.htm

Achieving Fame, Wealth, and Beauty are Psychological Dead Ends, Study Says, 2009, University of Rochester,
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3377