Notes on: Acquisition Centrality

'Acquisition Centrality is taken from the course 'Managing Happiness,' by Arthur Brooks on edX.org.

Acquisition Centrality

Acquisition centrality is the idea that acquiring money and material possessions indicates success and is central to our happiness. This belief motivates us both consciously and subconsciously.

Materialism, the value people place on acquiring money and possessions, has different negative effects on us. Research at the University of Sussex in the UK found no association between materialism and wellbeing regardless of culture, age, sex or status.

Most studies show the opposite. In fact, materialism can have a negative impact on wellbeing when the person places too much value on it.

Diminishing Returns of Money

Economists Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton published a study from the Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences where they investigated the relationship between income and wellbeing. They discovered that wellbeing rises and improves as salaries increase, but peaks and falls after a $70,000 in income. This was known as the satiation point, and it shows money is limited in its ability to improve our wellbeing.

Psychologists have researched how much wellbeing is associated with attaining goals and dreams. The association depends on the type of goal one is aspiring to achieve: intrinsic vs extrinsic:

• Intrinsic aspirations, things related to personal growth, improves psychological health and personal wellbeing.

• Extrinsic aspirations, things like money, fame, and status, have zero to negative impact on psychological health and personal wellbeing.

Acquiring more money can only improve one's life by lowering sources of unhappiness, but after a certain point it costs you happiness to make more money.

"Happiness belongs more to those who have cultivated their character and mind to the uttermost, and kept acquisition of eternal goods within moderate limits, than it does to those who have managed to acquire more external goods than they can possibly use, and are lacking goods of the soul....Any excessive amount of such things must either cause its possessor some injury, or, at any rate, bring him no benefit." - Aristotle