Study: Want to be rich? Be Moderately Happy

We’ve all hear that the rich are unsurprisingly more happy on the whole than typical common folk, but there is a new study that says when it comes to financial success, it’s better to be only slightly more happy than average.

Turns out that after researchers at U. Virginia, U. Illinois, and Michigan State analyzed data and published findings in Perspectives on Psychological Science. The conclusion was that people who rank themselves a 7 or 8 on a scale of 10 achieve more success than people who rate themselves a 10.

So, does this mean that someone like Richard Simmons who is an eternally perky 11 on 10-point scale would do better if he turned it down a notch? Not sure, it’s difficult to accurately quantify happiness since happiness is a subjective beast.

The study posits that people who score off the charts for happiness tend to look at the world through rose colored glasses and as such don’t learn from mistakes – making them less productive than people who are less happy.

I will throw my completely unscientific theory out there… I think that people who are really happy are less successful because they are in a word content. People who are completely content in my opinion generally have less drive – and maybe lack the Type A high achiever personality found in many people who find above average financially success. People who are super happy might fall into either people who are content with meeting an average level of success and comfortable lifestyle – or they may be entrepreneurs who continue to keep on going regardless of what life may throw at them taking bigger risks for bigger rewards. Just my two cents.

Link @ Yahoo Finance

Image: Itzafineday @ Flickr