An ad banner in right field at the Twins game today gave me pause (more on the banner in a moment) and since the game wasn’t exactly riveting (the Twins did win) my mind wandered, as any blogger’s mind surely will.

Most Americans by now I trust have heard of the study that shows societies whose median income is just above the subsistence level are in essence the happiest with their lives.

I wish I could find the study (or was it a book – give me minute, I’ll find it) but I do remember its thesis.

The premise is that one would think Americans, given the variety of choices we have in all things, especially as consumers, should find ourselves the happiest culture on earth.

But its not so.

Why is that?

Ah, there it is. It was a book.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz

from a review:

Schwartz and his colleagues developed a “maximization scale,” by means of which subjects rate their relative maximizer/satisficer proclivities. People are asked to rate themselves on a seven-point scale from “completely agree” to “completely disagree” with such statements as, “When shopping, I have a hard time finding clothing that I really love” or “Whenever I watch TV, I channel surf.” Most people cluster near the middle in such scales, but 10 percent of Schwartz’s subjects were classified as extreme maximizers, those who think long and hard about every decision. They tend to make objectively better decisions than the rest of us, but they are less satisfied both with what they’ve chosen and with life in general.

To be deprived of all choice is to be brutalized. Yet beyond a certain point more choice means less happiness. The more choices we ponder or the more time we invest in making a certain choice, the worse we tend to feel.

Researchers in the latter field have known for some time that people don’t think like adding machines, tallying up potential positive and negative outcomes (“gains” and “losses”), but feel worse about a given unit of loss than about a corresponding unit of gain. And when we contemplate a choice (this or that, yes or no), we know that doing one thing means foregoing another. Foregone alternatives — “opportunity costs,” in economists’ terms — are losses. Because maximizers think about more alternatives, or think more about alternatives, they also experience more opportunity costs, the sum of which may be greater than the gain from the chosen alternative. They’ve programmed themselves to be acutely aware of what they’re not getting.

Okay, let me catch my breath.

Most insidious of all is hedonic adaptation. Whenever we find something that does make us happier, we eventually get used to it, and our sense of well-being returns to where it was before the new thing came into our lives. We can never make progress on the hedonic treadmill.

There was a simpler time in America where one’s family was a “Ford” family. Or a “Chrysler family. Or a “Chevrolet” family, or what have you. When it came time to replace the family station wagon (and it was of course a station wagon), Dad knew what to buy and where to buy it.

Grandpa bought Fords (or whatever) and therefore so did Dad. Old Faithful was traded in on the latest iteration and that was that. Dad was happy. He knew what he wanted and when he brought it home and parked it in the garage, that was that. Grandfather had his reasons for being a Ford man and that was good enough for Dad.

Now if Dad achieved a station higher in life than Grandpa did, he would graduate to a Lincoln. But for the most part, people whose economic status was best represented by a Buick didn’t shop for a Cadillac. They knew better.

The Big Three and their strata was all there was and all there needed to be.

Nowadays, the minute you put yourself behind the wheel of your new ride, you are bombarded with the twenty other choices you could have made. You should have made. You’re never quite sure you’ve made the optimal choice. Never quite satisfied.

Couple that with the fact that you may very well have signed for a car you really can’t afford, because you’d so very much like to impress the Jones’, and you have sixty months of dissatisfaction.

Turn on the TV twenty five years ago and you had PBS and three network affiliates. On a given night your family was a “CBS” family or a “PBS” family. And it was fine. Carol Burnett was plenty funny without saying “F*ck” or showing us her breasts.

Nowadays, turn the TV on, and as a wise man by the name of Springstein exhorted:

bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills
With a truckload of hundred thousand dollar bills
Man came by to hook up my cable TV
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We switched ’round and ’round ’til half-past dawn
There was fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on

Well now home entertainment was my baby’s wish
So I hopped into town for a satellite dish
I tied it to the top of my Japanese car
I came home and I pointed it out into the stars
A message came back from the great beyond
There’s fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on

So – the ad at the Metrodome today?

You, Happier.

BestBuy

If only.

Our entire economy, if not our culture, is designed to convince the consumer that whatever you drive, whatever you wear, whatever sits on your desk, or hangs on your wrist is obsolete the moment the purchase is transacted.

The consumer that can’t afford the new Lexus, Benz or Bimmer gives no mind to whichever has the best collision avoidance system or GPS navigation system. The 1995 Honda Accord with 100,000 miles on the dial is just fine thank you. Those things not in reach have no appeal.

For an ever increasing number of American consumers however, little is not within reach. A luxury becomes a necessity twenty four hours later. 

And there you have it. Even the average American has, by the world’s standards, a menu of choices in almost every aspect of their life. You’d think we’d be happier. But apparently we’re not.

The moral? You’ll have to decide that for yourself.

Sorry.

This entry was posted by by Johnny Roosh on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Deep Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.