Does travel make you happy?

Post date: JULY 2, 2019

Most people are in the pursuit of happiness, but what makes you truly happy?

Can money buy you happiness? Research by Economists, Stevenson and Wolfers (2008,2013) suggested that money can make you happier, but only to a point . After your basic needs are met it doesn’t make you that much happier.

Recent research by Dr Thomas Gilovich and Amit Kumar form the Psychology Department at Cornell University suggests that you will be happier if you spend your money on experiences rather than material things.

Now you might be thinking you will get to enjoy the material possession for a longer time than a one-off experience, but although you might still be driving your “new” car three years later, it will not be as exciting as when you first bought it. New things are exiting to us at first, but then we adapt to them, and they become part of the new normal. On the other hand we tend to enhance memories.

The research by Gilovich and Kumar found that initially people ranked their happiness with material and experiential purchases about the same. Over time though, people’s satisfaction with the things they bought went down, whereas their satisfaction with experiences they spent money on went up.

Even negative experiences tend to be reinterpreted in a more positive light retrospectively. Negative experiences are more likely to be seen as a valuable learning experience or a good story to tell than disappointing material purchased.

The study found that experiences provide long term happiness because it involve some planning far ahead, it yields more social benefits, it becomes part of our identity and we don’t compare our experiences as much as material possessions.

Experiences become a part of us, the stories we tell and the photo’s we share.

Now we have scientific proof that travel really does make you happier.

Happy Travels!

Ps. If you would like to read the research paper you can find it here or visit Will Travel for all your travel inspiration and start accumulating those experiences to keep you happy.