"compared survey data on the life satisfaction of more than 900,000 citizens of 27 European countries from 1980 to 2011 with data on annual advertising spending in those nations over the same period."
"The higher a country’s ad spend was in one year, the less satisfied its citizens were a year or two later. Their conclusion: Advertising makes us unhappy."
"I think it’s rather intuitive that lots of ads would make us less happy. In a sense they’re trying to generate dissatisfaction—stirring up your desires so that you spend more on goods and services to ease that feeling."
"the alternative argument, which goes back to Thorstein Veblen, is that exposing people to a lot of advertising raises their aspirations—and makes them feel that their own lives, achievements, belongings, and experiences are inadequate."
"we know from lots of research that making social comparisons can be harmful to us emotionally, and advertising prompts us to measure ourselves against others."
Thoughts:
While there is a clear correlation between higher ad spending and lower life satisfaction in the 27 EU countries surveyed, a sceptic would naturally point out that correlation does not imply causation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
The article addresses this question head on:
"First, we controlled for lots of other influences on happiness. Second, we looked at increases or drops in advertising in a given year and showed that they successfully predicted a rise or fall in national happiness in ensuing years. Third, we did lots of statistical checks to make sure the empirical linkages were strong. Fourth, people sometimes forget that causality always requires there to be a correlation somewhere."
It appears that they have been rigorous in controlling for other variables like GDP, unemployment and "shocks" like oil price spikes. I'm keen to see if this research will be developed further.
This latest paper is titled: "Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction"
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-15835-4_10
The methodology seems good and it has plenty of good references to other studies (bibliography).
But I didn't pay £24 to read a chapter in an eBook ... 🙄 💸
This kind of research finding should be free for people to read!
At least the HBR article is "free" (if you read it in incognito).
nelsonic
commented
2 years ago
https://hbr.org/2020/01/advertising-makes-us-unhappy
Thoughts:
While there is a clear correlation between higher ad spending and lower life satisfaction in the 27 EU countries surveyed, a sceptic would naturally point out that correlation does not imply causation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation The article addresses this question head on:
It appears that they have been rigorous in controlling for other variables like GDP, unemployment and "shocks" like oil price spikes. I'm keen to see if this research will be developed further.
Professor Oswald has published several peer-reviewed and highly cited papers on measuring happiness: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=andrew+oswald+advertising+happiness
This latest paper is titled: "Advertising as a Major Source of Human Dissatisfaction" https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-15835-4_10
The methodology seems good and it has plenty of good references to other studies (bibliography).
But I didn't pay £24 to read a chapter in an eBook ... 🙄 💸
This kind of research finding should be free for people to read!
At least the HBR article is "free" (if you read it in incognito).
HN Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22054715 (mostly anecdotes ...) Related to: https://github.com/dwyl/learn-react/issues/23 The More You Use Facebook, the Worse You Feel: https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-the-more-you-use-facebook-the-worse-you-feel