Time Money And Happiness Essay

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Happiness is arguably the most sought after goal of the human condition, and time and money are possibly two of the most valuable resources any individual possesses. The article “Time, money and happiness: How does putting a price on time affect out ability to smell the roses?” by Sanford E. DeVoe and Julian House (2012), sets out to answer the question; what is the connection between time, money, and happiness? The hypothesis that DeVoe and House (2012) proposed was that there is a frustration caused when the goal of maximizing the economic value of time is obstructed and that this frustration can lessen other benefits of experiences, especially pleasure. This hypothesis requires that the individual think about time in relation to its monetary value and therefore whether or not time can be better …show more content…

The procedure of this experiment was to take 53 undergraduate students (32 female) and initially tell them to fill out a survey asking them about their current level of happiness, expected hours worked per week post graduation, expected weeks worked per year, and what they expected their pretax salary to be. After this they would receive 10 minutes of leisure time to do anything they wanted on the Internet followed again by a survey about their level of happiness. The independent variable was that half of these participants would proceed with the experiment first by calculating their expected hourly wage while the other half did not. The dependent variable was that the happiness of both groups was assessed directly before they were divided into the groups and then again after the 10 minutes of leisure. The conclusion of the first experiment showed that the level of happiness of those in the control group stayed the same while those who in the time/money group demonstrated that they were less happy after spending the 10 minutes of free time, matching the original

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