Maybe Money Does Buy Happiness After All: To put it in today’s terms, owning an iPod doesn’t make you happier, because you then want an iPod Touch. Relative income — how much you make compared with others around you — mattered far more than absolute income, Mr. Easterlin wrote. The paradox quickly became a social science classic, cited in academic journals and the popular media. It tapped into a near-spiritual human instinct to believe that money can’t buy happiness. As a 2006 headline in The Financial Times said, “The Hippies Were Right All Along About Happiness.” But now the Easterlin paradox is under attack. [NYT]
Self-belief in sport ‘as good as performance-enhancing drugs’: Self-belief can improve sporting success as much as illegal performance-enhancing drugs, according to psychologists. English footballers who miss penalties, women who underperform at mathematics tests and black minorities who fare worse at IQ tests are all examples of groups who have been burdened with self fulfilling prophecies, say the researchers. [Telegraph]
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