It is the season…
On Friday, I have shown that Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus) is making a lot of losses on Christmas since he gives away all those presents that cost him billions to produce. And Christmas really is the season of buying things we can’t afford to give it to people we like, but who don’t need them either.
As materialism gets criticized more and more, there are two trends that have emerged in recent years that may help us act more responsibly during the holiday season.
First, there is the option of green buying, i.e. buying things that do not damage the environment, like fair trade products and other things.
Second, there is the option to Mari Kondo* your life, reduce consumption and instead focus on spending quality time with your loved ones over Christmas. However, I am not sure if Mari Kondo is the right poster child for reduced consumption since she seems to have sold out and opened an online shop where she sells crap that definitely nobody needs…
A study by Sabrina Helm and her colleagues has recently investigated if materialistic behaviour (i.e. buying stuff) amongst young people makes them happy. They then compared this materialistic behaviour to the effect green buying and reduced consumption has on them. We all remember from high school that which clothes you wear and what things you own determines your status amongst your classmates. So, it probably isn’t too surprising that materialistic behaviour does indeed slightly increase personal wellbeing.
But as the chart below shows, it also increases emotional stress because it gets people into the rat race of keeping up with the Joneses, a main source of what makes us unhappy in life. In fact, the study showed that in the conflicting impact on personal wellbeing and psychological distress, it seems as if psychological distress has a bigger effect because when testing the impact of materialism on life satisfaction, it was slightly negative (though not statistically significant).
Interestingly, green buying did not seem to differ much from materialistic behaviour. It also increased psychological distress and reduced life satisfaction (again, the effect was not statistically significant).
The only action that increased personal wellbeing, reduced psychological stress in a statistically significant way was for young adults to consume less.
Impact of different consumption behaviour on the happiness of young adults
Source: Helm et al. (2019).
Which brings me to what I consider some of the best advice I have heard in recent years for Christmas. In an interview with Behavioral Scientist, Sabrina Helm recommends:
It’s about reconsidering how we live and how we spend our time and how we spend our money. The interesting thing is everybody agrees when you tell them, actually, if you spend time with your children and you read to them and you play with them, that’s the thing they remember and not the umpteenth toy you bring them. And luckily now for that purpose, we also have secondhand markets. That’s something to consider: buy a toy that already has a story. Just clean it before use. (Laughs).
*I apologize to all my journalist friends who are going to send me angry emails that it is a terrible sin to turn a noun into a verb.