News | Science confirms money can buy you happiness

News

Science confirms money can buy you happiness

Published on 08 April 2016

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OK, so life ain’t all about love. As it turns out, money can by you happiness, according to Cambridge University. But it’s not as simple as dollar bills = good times. You actually have to spend the money correctly to get the happiness. And the key is to buy things that reflect your personality. Like pizza.
Researchers worked this out by examining 77,000 bank transactions and splitting them into the “Big Five” personality traits – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Eating out at a bar, for example, was considered an extrovert transaction.

The scientists then matched the transactions to the people who made them to see if their personality matched the purchases they made. Naturally, they found that people generally purchased stuff that reflected their personality and that contributed to their personal sense of wellbeing. One of the authors of study, Sandra Matz, explained it like this: “Our findings suggest that spending money on products that help us express who we are as individuals could turn out to be as important to our well-being as finding the right job, the right neighbourhood or even the right friends and partners.”
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