by A reader comment on an earlier post, Happiness is in our Choices, prompted me to think more about the role of values changes in our happiness. I visited the “gold mine” of values research, Inglehart’s The World Values Survey, and came across an excellent piece by Jan Delhey, From Materialist to Postmaterialist Happiness that did an excellent job of addressing this question.
As one might suspect, there is some debate about whether people are really moving toward postmodern value priorities emphasizing self-expression and quality of life, or whether they are still basically motivated primarily by money and material goods acquisition. It’s not necessarily either-or, but the view here is that the postmodern value priorities are gaining influence in the affluent countries. Put simply, if you are economically secure, your priorities change away from greater economic accumulation. If you are not economically secure, becoming so is the priority.
So, the author’s paper explores whether a so-defined happiness recipe is indeed more post-materialist in rich, post-industrial societies. He suggests that “…under the condition of affluence, happiness is increasingly derived from the fulfillment of post-materialist needs – what I call post-materialist happiness. At this point it is important to note that in the first place value change theory is about relative preferences: “Postmaterialists are not non-Materialists, still less are they anti-Materialists” (Inglehart 1997: 35). Yet materialist concerns should lose ground, relative to post-materialist concerns, in their capacity to make people happy – this is the prediction tested empirically in this paper.” Those qualifiers are important. It’s not as if one simply foregos any concern with material goods whatsoever, but that it becomes a less important motivator.
The conclusion of the paper is that indeed “money matters less in richer countries.” This may seem obvious — duh, right? Believe me, however, it makes a difference. In working with clients who make “goods,” this represents a sea change. Their customers are not going to continue to want more and more stuff — their priorities are changing, and unless organizations recognize this, they’re going to using a happiness recipe that their customers are not going to like. Andy Hines
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