Posted at 6:00 a.m.
Two Quebec researchers wondered what our motivations are for earning and spending our money and how this affects our well-being. Because the reasons that encourage us to buy a garment or enroll in a yoga class will seriously influence the satisfaction and happiness that the expense will ultimately bring us.
“It’s the quality of ‘why I want to make money’ and the quality of ‘why I spend’,” explains psychologist Jacques Forest, professor at the School of Management Sciences at the University of Quebec. in Montreal (ESG UQAM). “If you ask someone in marketing, they’ll say any expense is good. Whether you are buying a product, an experience. »
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Psychologist Jacques Forest
However, the research he conducted with the psychologist Lara Manganelli enabled him to conclude that expenses that contribute to our personal fulfillment, those for our leisure activities or to help others, are more likely to make us happy.
The existing scientific literature on the subject, on which the researchers based themselves, had already established that if money allows us to get out of poverty, we are more likely to be happy, or at the very least, well. daily.
Once basic needs are met, the way we spend can greatly influence our well-being, provided we are aware of it.
If people realize that it’s not just anything that is so profitable psychologically, already there, we have a big head start.
Jacques Forest, psychologist and professor at ESG UQAM
Conversely, spending to satisfy a feeling of insecurity is much less likely to satisfy us.
Materialistic people, who invest in things to give themselves a certain image, are less satisfied with their lives and are less physically and mentally fit. They are more impulsive in their purchases and more at risk of accumulating debts. This perhaps explaining this, materialism is also associated with low self-esteem.
But do not think that giving for the repair of a church is a ticket to real joy, while the purchase of a luxury car to impress the gallery leads straight to misfortune.
The human being is more complex than that.
Materialistic behaviors can lead to well-being, for example if we spend on a good that aims to contribute to a major life project.
Conversely, seemingly altruistic behavior will not have the same effect if the goal (conscious or unconscious) is to post everything on social networks to improve its image.
“If we do it to calm his insecurity and to flash in front of the others, it will not be psychologically nourishing”, confirms Jacques Forest.
A disease that can be cured
The very good news is that you can change your spending behavior and make it more conducive to well-being.
How, doctor?
“People are materialists and they don’t even know it,” says Jacques Forest. The first step is awareness. »
According to Lara Maganelli, who conducted her research while preparing her doctoral thesis at UQAM under the supervision of Professor Forest, we do not take the time to ask questions before spending. His work offered participants healthier ways to spend if they didn’t have any. The result was promising.
It is not immutable. Someone might say he’s always been a spendthrift and that’s the way it is. But you can learn to change your motives and have a healthier relationship with money.
Jacques Forest, psychologist and professor at ESG UQAM
Initially, the research duo wanted to know what drives us to work to earn money and how this influences our well-being. His first study was published in 2020 and the second, this year.
The scientific literature on the psychology of money concludes that additional income has little effect on fulfillment. The more income we have, the less significant the entry of additional money is in the budget and on our well-being.
“I’m tired of hearing economists say that the more money you have, the better,” says Jacques Forest. It’s not true! »
In 2018, a study published in the journal Nature Human Behavior even went so far as to define a happiness wage threshold: above $75,000 a year, additional income has little effect on well-being. And among the reasons for working that satisfy us the most, we find the need to support one’s family, to have the feeling of accomplishment, to give back to others and to offer oneself leisure time.