After decades spent focusing on the psyche's dark side, now there's a new weapon in the arsenal: the emerging field of scientific research into what makes people happy.
One happiness researcher attracting attention is Stanford's Brian Knutson. He is a professor of psychology and neuroscience who uses brain-image technology to measure satisfaction. Some of his research is designed to track how money affects the brain.
In one study, he had subjects play a video-game that involved, at certain points, the anticipation of winning money, and, at other points, actually taking possession of that money. He measured the difference in oxygen flow in the brain between those two activities.
His conclusion: gearing up to do something can make you happier than actually doing it. "Anticipation is totally underestimated," says Prof. Knutson, whose work is funded in part by the National Institute on Aging and the MacArthur Foundation. "Why do slot machines have arms?" You could just have a button--but the arm heightens the anticipation."
Selling the experience rather than the product makes sense. A running shoe ad that focuses more on the pleasure of running, for example, can build a viewer's anticipation in a way that talking about the makeup of the shoe itself can't.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2006