Was it Lil' Kim who rapped the lyrics "Money power respect... It's the key to life"? Turns out, she was only partly right. New research suggests happiness has a lot more to do with respect than it does with money,
Medical News Today reports.
In a series of studies, psychological scientist Cameron Anderson of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, found that:
1) Respect and admiration, but not socioeconomic status, predicted students' social well-being. 2) The relationship between respect/admiration and well-being was partly due to the sense of power and social acceptance that the students felt in their personal relationships. And 3) Changes in respect/admiration corresponded to changes in MBA students' well-being. And respect/admiration predicted well-being more strongly than socioeconomic status.
"I was surprised at how fluid these effects were -- if someone's [social] standing in their local ladder went up or down, so did their happiness, even over the course of 9 months," said Anderson. What makes you happier: money or respect?
So, in a sense, money makes me happy, because the people, animals, and things that matter to me all make me happy, and they all cost money.