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On the Role of Personal Values and Philosophy of Life in Happiness Technology

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Nothing is enough for the man to

whom enough is too little.

Epicurus.

Abstract

The paper suggests a happiness technology in which income, and personal values and philosophy of life (PVPL) serve as means of happiness production. We offer a theoretical model predicting that people who underinvest in acquiring PVPL will have greater income but produce less happiness. We also present empirical evidence, obtained by analyzing survey results from 980 salaried employees aged 25-64, confirming that the association between income and subjective well-being is relatively small. We find that PVPL, as measured by materialistic values, maximization tendency, and income satisfaction, is an important predictor of personal happiness even when controlling for socio-demographic factors and health status. In addition, we show that the components of PVPL are not strongly correlated among themselves or with income, implying that each one makes an important contribution to happiness given the same amount of money.

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Notes

  1. Fowers (2010, p.106) argue that instrumental rationality has five characteristics, among them: strict separation between means and ends in human activity; means that are constructed as strategies, tools or techniques; and assessment of the desired outcome on the basis of criteria such as effectiveness of the means.

  2. Other Greek philosophers argued, “Being contented with the minimum required for living brings the ‘liberty’ of not being a slave to external goods – another way of being rich, in that one has what is needed” (quoted in Vivenza 2007, p. 13). Also, the Roman philosopher Seneca claimed, “the happy man is content with his present lot, no matter what it is”, (Quoted in McMahon 2006, p. 55)..

  3. Note that the philosopher Adam Smith was aware that thinking that wealth, social recognition and fortune leads to happiness is a deception (Bruni, 2004).

  4. We drew the isoquant curve as convex because we assume decreasing marginal productivity.

  5. Marquis de Condorcet..

  6. The mapping from \(T_{\alpha } \le \bar{T}\) to \((T_{p}^{*} ,T_{s}^{*} )\) can be calculated in the manner demonstrated in Fig. 1 using all \(\bar{T}^{\prime } \le \bar{T}\).

  7. The original scale included 10 items. When examined the validity of this construct by means of CFA, we removed items with low factor loadings; only 6 items remained..

  8. The original scale included 7 items. We examined the validity of this construct using CFA, and removed the items with low factor loadings; only 4 items remained.

  9. The options were: (1) 8 years, (2) 9-10 years, (3) 11-12 years, (4) Some high school, (5) High school graduate, (6) Some nonacademic training, (7) Competed non-academic training, (8) Studying for bachelor’s degree, (9) Bachelor’s degree, (10) Studying for master’s degree, (11) Master’s degree graduate, (12) Studying for doctorate, (13) Doctorate..

  10. Individual income was chosen, consistent with the model described in Sect. 2. We also asked about household income, and the regression results (presented in Sect. 3) were similar with both income variables. Based on the Social Survey 2017, administered by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, there were 10 possible answers, in New Israeli Shekels (NIS). (1) Less than 2000; (2) 2001-3000; (3) 3001-4000, (4) 4001-5000, (5) 5001-6000; (6) 6001-7500; (7) 7501-10,000; (8) 10,001-14,000; (9) 14,001-21,000; (10) More than 21,000. The average and median income for salaried employees in Israel in 2017 were NIS 9700 and NIS 7030 respectively (Israel Central Bureau of Statistics 2017).

  11. SEM is appropriate for this study for several reasons. First, SEM allowed us to control for a situation in which some predictors of the dependent variable are predicted by others. Second, SEM allows using Confirmatory Factor Analysis, which justified the structure of the constructs and demonstrated their good psychometric properties. Third, when capturing constructs based on multiple indicators, SEM identifies measurement errors, which facilitates depicting more accurate relationships between the constructs.

  12. Sherman and Shavit (2017) report similar result when adding financial satisfaction to the regression.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of Economics, Ruppin Academic Center, Emek Hefer, Israel

    Arie Sherman, Guy Barokas & Nonna Kushnirovich

  2. The School of Business Administration, The College of Management Academic Studies, 7 Rabin Ave., Rishon-Le’Zion, Israel

    Tal Shavit

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  1. Arie Sherman
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  2. Tal Shavit
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  4. Nonna Kushnirovich
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Correspondence to Tal Shavit.

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This study was supported by the Research Unit of the School of Business Administration at the College of Management Academic Studies, Israel.

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Sherman, A., Shavit, T., Barokas, G. et al. On the Role of Personal Values and Philosophy of Life in Happiness Technology. J Happiness Stud 22, 1055–1070 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-020-00263-3

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