MODERN society is going to hell. Mental well-being is worsening. The cause, according to Oliver James in Affluenza, is the virus of materialism. This virus is particularly prevalent in the US, where everyone looks over their shoulder and wants to be richer than their neighbours. Denmark, by contrast, is organised more sensibly, is less unequal, and is therefore happier. We should aim to be like the Danes, says James.
On one thing he is right. There is evidence that all is not well. Mental health in the UK is getting worse, according to an annual survey of 10,000 Britons analysed by myself and Nattavudh Powdthavee at the University of London (see Chart). The survey asks participants 12 questions relating to mental distress, such as “Have you lost much sleep over worry?”, “Have you been feeling under strain?” and “Have you been able to concentrate on things?” Amalgamating their answers gives a rating known as the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) psychological strain score.
Britons are not alone in their unhappiness. More generally, we know from the work of the economist Richard Easterlin of the University of Southern California in the mid-1970s and from some later work in which I and others had a hand, that happiness and job-satisfaction levels have not increased in western society in the last few decades. Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard University, has shown that people are bad at predicting what will make them happy. Economist Erzo Luttmer at Harvard, among others, has shown that comparing oneself to others is responsible for a lot of unhappiness and subconscious jealousy. In a further study in 2002, comparing the lives of British people born in 1958 with those born in 1970, Amanda Sacker at University College London and Dick Wiggins at City University in London have provided us with some of the best evidence that levels of mental well-being are falling.
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Curiously, none of these writings, perhaps the most reliable and influential in the field, is explored in Affluenza. James merely states that rates of depression are going up. He is probably correct, but it would have been more even-handed if he had cited contrary evidence such as the work of Jane Murphy and colleagues at Harvard, and Eugene Paykel at the University of Cambridge, which indicated that the incidence of depression is flat. A proper discussion of Denmark’s high suicide rate might also have been sensible.
James blames capitalism. “We are truly in a bad way emotionally… Selfish Capitalism is not a good way to run things, if you care about people’s emotional well-being,” he writes.
He wants to ban foreigners from owning the mass media in Britain, to prohibit the use of attractive men and women in advertisements, more generous leave from work for young parents, a society with lots of referenda, and education to be less focused on exam results and to be divorced from the needs of industry. I do not know of any clinching evidence that these propositions would work (though some sound interesting), and almost none is presented in the book. It is plausible, in my judgement, that the large amount of advertising in a country such as the US or UK induces discontent and jealousy, and ultimately makes us all more miserable. But this conjecture has not been proven in the research literature.
The author’s advice on other topics suffers from a similar lack of evidence to back it up. For example, on page 297 he writes: “If you can grasp the fact that modern education is largely about creating good little consumers and producers…you can start to feel better about yourself.” And on the following page he says: “The key is to examine what it is about your work that you find truly interesting, and put that before pay and promotion.” Intriguing statements but on what research are they based?
On divorce and family break-up, James is particularly strident. His advice is to stick it out with your spouse. In some cases he may be right – this is a complicated area. Yet the latest research by Jonathan Gardner at the London consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide has found that people often gain emotionally from divorce. Here we need much more research.
On the problems caused by materialistic values, I have sympathy with James’s views, although the quality of the causal evidence is not as strong as the author asserts. Nevertheless, if you can follow James’s advice – admittedly not easy – to compare yourself less with others, not to borrow large sums for a house, to grow up emotionally, to do your best to make your love life work, to be more tolerant of your failings, and to get your deep psychological issues with your own parents sorted out with the help of a therapist, then perhaps you can learn to be happier.
So should you buy this book? Affluenza is ranting, sensationalist and journalistic. It is closer to a sermon than science. Nevertheless, the issues covered in the book are important, James writes with clarity and panache, and much of Affluenza is a stimulating, if sometimes frustrating, read. More importantly, some of the claims he makes in this book are probably correct.
“Affluenza is closer to a sermon than it is to science”
If you already hate, or are suspicious of, the way that modern society is going, you are likely to enjoy Affluenza. If you wonder in an open-minded way whether we have taken a wrong turn in the way we live today, then, as long as you remember that the author is not a research scientist, and approach with caution some of the statements and statistics in this book, I think it is worth buying.
Affluenza
Vermilion/Random House
