How do you quantify happiness? How can you evaluate the relationship between a feeling of happiness on one hand, and material affluence or wealth on the other? This equation has been solved by Jordi Quoidbach, a researcher in the department of cognitive sciences at the ULg. His study clearly shows that money, even just thinking about it, tends to reduce our ability to fully enjoy the small pleasures of life. Like eating pralines...

What got intoJordi Quoidbach, anyway, to make him try to find a scientific basis for the old adage that money can’t buy happiness? “This was our working hypothesis from the outset,” says the young researcher. “Several studies had shown, just for example, that lottery winners were not happier than people like them who had not won prizes.” Quoidbach is a researcher for the “Psychology of personality and individual differences” unit in the department of cognitive sciences in the Faculty of Psychology and Sciences of Education (FAPSE) at the University of Liège, and is the author, along with three other researchers (working for (respectively) the University of British Columbia, University College, London, and the Catholic University of Louvain), of a study  concerning the relationship between money and the “ability to savour”. The goal was some sort of scientific proof. As unusual as it may appear, the motivation for the study was quite normal in the context of the positive psychology movement  and that of “sciences of wellness”. These disciplines have seen an unusual uptick in interest in the United States since their emergence at the beginning of the century, and interest in Europe is increasing. Positive psychology is “the study of conditions or processes that contribute to the development or optimal functioning of individuals, groups, or institutions.” Thus this movement is not about a therapeutic discipline per se, but just involves an attempt to understand the factors that contribute to happiness and well-being. Jordi Quoidbach points out that this approach appeals to a public that wants to understand what contributes to happiness, and their interest translates into an increasing number of articles and reports in the media. “People are asking themselves what happiness really is, and so scientists do as well – how to quantify it, how to make people happy,” Quoidbach explains. “Recent research has cast doubt on a whole series of common beliefs that were traditionally accepted without question by most people, and has gradually come around to saying that things such as wealth, health, beauty or having children have only a limited effect on happiness.” It has thus been demonstrated that the origin of happiness is 50% a matter of genetics, 40% a matter of activities decided on by people, and only 10% dependent on circumstances of life. This was the state of the question when Quoidbach and his English-speaking colleagues decided to ask why money has so little effect on people’s happiness. Their study was intended to determine the connection existing between happiness and people’s ability to fully enjoy things like the present moment or the little pleasures of life.