HAPPINESS / MARKETING SPECIAL ......................Time, not, money is the key to happiness: Wharton marketing professor Cassie Mogilner

Time, not, money is the key to happiness: 

Wharton marketing professor Cassie Mogilner says use time , not money 

Wharton marketing professor Cassie Mogilner researches happiness. In a series of papers — "Happiness from Ordinary and Extraordinary Experiences," co-authored with Dartmouth professor Amit Bhattcharjee; "How Happiness Affects Choice" and "The Shifting Meaning of Happiness," both co-authored with Stanford professor Jennifer Aaker and MIT professor Sep Kamvar; and "The Pursuit of Happiness: Time, Money and Social Connection" — Mogilner looks at the different experiences and emotions that factor into human contentment, finding that happiness isn't just one thing, but also isn't as unique to each person as we might think. In a conversation with Knowledge@Wharton, she discusses her findings and their implications for consumers and marketers. Edited transcript:
On the connection between time and happiness
I research people's happiness, and what I've found across the work is that time plays a critical role. For instance, I've looked at what is the effect of merely drawing people's attention to time, as opposed to our other resource of money. How does that impact people's levels of happiness? How do age and, more specifically, the amount of time people feel like they have left in life influence both how people experience happiness, as well as the types of experiences that elicit greater happiness?< .. 

For example, I have found that focusing on time leads to greater happiness than focusing on money. The way that I explored that was building on prior work, which tracked how people spend their days and also how people feel over the course of their days, finding that people are happiest when they are connecting with other people. They're least happy when they are doing work or commuting. I wanted to see if thinking about time vs. money would influence people's tendencies to behave in particularly happy or unhappy ways.
The most surprising conclusions of the research
I thought it was really interesting that when a 20 year-old says, "I feel happy," and when a 60 yearold says the very same thing ... they're likely feeling very different things. One will be feeling excited, and the other, a greater sense of calm. I also think it's surprising — and actually quite nice — that ordinary experiences, those little moments that pop up every day, can produce as much as happiness as extraordinary moments. I think that's really powerful in terms of where people find the happiness in their life.

On the practical implications

An interesting implication for consumers, or really anyone who's interested in feeling happy, is to shift attention away from money, which is a resource that tends to absorb most of our attention and our thinking and planning on a daily basis, and shift attention to this fundamentally precious resource of time. Making that shift will remind you and motivate you to behave in ways that are happier, and to spend your time in more fulfilling ways.

Another implication is to understand that what makes you happy, and even the way that you feel happiness, will or has changed over the course of your life. So you shouldn't evaluate or assess your level of happiness, or hold yourself to a standard, based on a concept that you had when you were younger. You should allow yourself to accept and appreciate that it is maybe those quiet moments, those calming moments, where you really will find happiness. It doesn't mean that you're boring if you're fired up about a Friday night on the couch watching TV or movies.

What this means for marketing

The research has tremendous implications for marketers in two ways. First, you see more and more examples of marketers through their campaigns and branding trying to really connect with consumers on a fundamental level by promising happiness. And what it suggests is that they should think about, first of all, who they are targeting. What demographic are they trying to speak to, older or younger individuals? And relatedly, how should they be communicating the happiness they're promising? Is it excitement, with loud colors, high energy and intense color? Or should they be conveying happiness as a more tranquil, serene, calm type of happiness to really connect with and resonate with an older consumer?

In addition, there is a trend toward dialing up the experiential aspect of your product or brand. It's suggesting that, again, marketers should consider who they're looking to connect with and speak to in order to inform the types of experiences that they are positioning themselves with a respect to. Is it exciting, extraordinary, types of experiences? Or is it those more every day, mundane experiences that will really resonate with their target consumer?

How "Happy" (the song) relates to the research

There was a news story from a couple of weeks ago when six Iranians were arrested for posting on YouTube a video of them dancing to the Pharrell song "Happy." First of all, the fact that the Pharrell song "Happy" has become a phenomenon in and of itself suggests that this emotion of happiness is so fundamental and so motivating and so resonant with people
On the misperceptions dispelled by the research

Happiness is not a singular thing that people are pursuing and will someday find. It's also not purely idiosyncratic and something different to everyone. Instead, there is predictable regularity in how people experience happiness, as well as in the experiences that elicit happiness. Also, there is a systemic shift over the course of people's lives whereby when people are younger, happiness is more about feeling excited, and as people get older, happiness is more about feeling calm.

On what sets the research apart
We should be shifting our attention away from money and toward time. There is a lot of attention and business research focused on money and the bottom line. There is also psychology and happiness research questioning if money does buy happiness. I would argue — and my research would argue — that there is a lot of value in shifting attention altogether toward the other resource that is so fundamental to us: time.
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