Is Happiness Having What You Want, Wanting What You Have, or Both?

Abstract

Rabbi Hyman Schachtel (1954) proposed that "happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have" (p. 37). In two studies, we tested Schachtel's maxim by asking participants whether or not they had and the extent to which they wanted each of 52 material items. To quantify how much people wanted what they had, we identified what they had and the extent to which they wanted those things. To quantify how much people had what they wanted, we identified how much they wanted and whether or not they had each item. Both variables accounted for unique variance in happiness. Moreover, the extent to which people wanted what they had partially mediated effects of gratitude and maximization on happiness, and the extent to which they had what they wanted partially mediated the effect of maximization. Results indicate that happiness is both wanting what you have and having what you want.

A Review of the Tripartite Structure of Subjective Well-Being: Implications for Conceptualization, Operationalization, Analysis, and Synthesis

“…This view is consonant with other research in which global happiness is considered to be interchangeable with a higher order latent well-being factor (e.g., Stones & Kozma, 1980. In such accounts, happiness and SWB are assumed to "share a common core of meaning" (Stones & Kozma, 1989, p. 526; also see Larsen & McKibban, 2008;van Praag, Frijters, & Ferrier-i-Carbonell, 2003). In other models, happiness is specified as one of several lower order indicators of a higher order SWB factor (e.g., Arthaud-Day, Rode, Mooney, & Near, 2005; Kozma, Stone, Stones, Hannah, & McNeil, 1990;McKennell, 1978;McNeil, Stones, & Kozma, 1986;Oishi & Koo, 2008;Schyns, 1998).…”

The Happiness of Individuals and the Collective

“…Since the establishment of subjective well‐being measures in the late 1980s, researchers have begun to look at both internal factors (e.g., habitual patterns of thought) and external factors (e.g., cultural lay theories) to answer more substantive questions, such as “Who is happy?” and “When do people feel happy?” On the one hand, happiness and well‐being are subjective states that are constructed from relatively stable internal or personal factors, such as genetics (De Neve, Christakis, Fowler, & Frey, ; Weiss, Bates, & Luciano, ), personality (see DeNeve & Cooper, ; Lucas, for review), material satisfaction (Larsen & McKibban, ), promotion‐prevention focus (Higgins, Grant, & Shah, ), locus of control (Helzer & Jayawickreme, ) and emotion regulation (Gross & John, ). On the other hand, engaging in activities (Sakawa, Ohtake, & Tsutsui, ) such as expressing gratitude, counting one's blessings, and thinking about an ideal future, also predicts happiness (see Lyubomirsky & Layous, for a review), thus leading to the occasional application of interventionist approaches to enhance happiness.…”

The relationship between career maximization and employee engagement

“…Though maximized decisions are taken after considerable caution and evaluation, in anticipation of happier and better outcomes, empirical evidences suggest a paradoxically opposite result. However, after taking the decision, those who have involved in maximized decisions become less satisfied than those who were low in maximization (Dar-Nimrod et al, 2009;Iyengar et al, 2006;Larsen & McKibban, 2008;Parker, et al, 2007;Voss et al, 2019). Iyengar et al (2006) observed maximizers to secure jobs with higher initial salary.…”