REALITYWIPE

RESEARCHERS

The Science of Status and Lifestyle Comparison: Why Keeping Up with the Joneses Is Wired In

4 the researchers behind it — "Why do I feel broke even after a raise?" and "Why does everyone else's life look so much better on Instagram?" feel like personal failures. Behaviora

Dartmouth College (formerly Harvard Kennedy School)

Erzo F.P. Luttmer

Known for:Empirically establishing that neighbors' relative earnings predict individual wellbeing as strongly as own income, coining the 'Neighbors as Negatives' framework

Key findings

  1. 2005

    Using US General Social Survey data, Luttmer found that higher neighborhood income — controlling for own income — significantly reduced individual happiness, with an effect size roughly equal to an equivalent drop in one's own earnings. The study placed relative income on the same causal scale as absolute income for predicting subjective wellbeing. ↗

Knox College

Tim Kasser

Known for:Empirical research on materialistic values and well-being, showing that placing financial success above intrinsic goals predicts lower life satisfaction, higher anxiety, and compensatory acquisitiveness

Key findings

  1. 1993

    With Richard Ryan, Kasser found that aspiring for financial success above intrinsic goals was associated with lower vitality, more negative affect, and higher anxiety — the first empirical demonstration of materialism as an independent psychological risk factor. ↗

  2. 2002

    Kasser synthesized a decade of findings showing materialistic individuals consistently report lower personal well-being across dozens of studies, and proposed that chronic insecurity — not personality — drives compensatory acquisitiveness as a strategy to meet unmet psychological needs. ↗

University of Southern California

Richard A. Easterlin

Known for:The Easterlin paradox — the finding that rising national income does not raise average happiness over time, explained by relative comparison and hedonic adaptation

Key findings

  1. 1974

    Easterlin showed that within countries at a given time, higher income correlates with higher reported happiness, but across countries and over time the correlation breaks down — countries do not get happier as they get richer. He proposed that subjective wellbeing tracks relative income rather than absolute income, and that people adapt their happiness aspirations upward as incomes rise. ↗

University of Sussex

Helga Dittmar

Known for:Meta-analytic synthesis of the materialism and wellbeing literature, establishing the cross-cultural robustness of materialism's negative effect on happiness

Key findings

  1. 2014

    With Bond, Hurst, and Kasser, Dittmar synthesized 259 studies on materialism and personal wellbeing (n > 175,000), finding a consistent negative correlation (r = -.19) that held across happiness, life satisfaction, vitality, and absence of depression — and across every culture and age group in the sample. ↗

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