Caught in the Monkey Trap: Elaborating the Hypothesis for Why Income Aspiration Decreases Life Satisfaction

Tamás Keller ()

Journal of Happiness Studies, 2019, vol. 20, issue 3, No 9, 829-840

Abstract: Abstract This research note links recent psychological research to literature about income aspiration, and advances the monkey-trap hypothesis for further research. It argues that what people have not yet acquired makes them dissatisfied, because it prevents them from enjoying what they have already accomplished. Therefore, people’s income aspirations limit their life satisfaction, in the sense that if they aspire to more, they feel less satisfaction. The empirical analysis, which uses two waves of Special Eurobarometer surveys in 27 European countries, finds support for this hypothesis, and reveals that income aspiration decreases life satisfaction. The results, however, should be interpreted with caution, on account of possible measurement issues. The implications of the results are discussed, in order to encourage future research on this question.

Keywords: Income aspirations; Minimum income; Life satisfaction; Wandering mind; Focusing illusion; Cross-country analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10902-018-9969-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jhappi:v:20:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10902-018-9969-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... fe/journal/10902/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10902-018-9969-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Happiness Studies is currently edited by Antonella Delle Fave

More articles in Journal of Happiness Studies from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().